Arts and Witchcrafts (MIT Mystery Hunt 2020)

Arts and Witchcrafts
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020
Wizard's Hollow
Author(s)Rachel Petterson
AnswerClick to revealSKEINS
Statistics
No. solves7
No. total guesses315
Links
PuzzleLink
SolutionLink

Arts and Witchcrafts is a crocheting puzzle from the Wizard's Hollow round of the 2020 MIT Mystery Hunt.

Puzzle Elements[edit | edit source]

Flavortext - Whenever I think about joining stitches, it always seems to go in one ear and out the other…

 

A Stitch In Time - The puzzle is presented as a set of crochet instructions. It will eventually form into a cylinder, mostly consisting of double crochets with a number of clusters of other stitches in between.

Hint in Flavortext - Whenever I think about joining stitches, it always seems to go in one ear and out the other

Connect-the-Dots - Categorizing the clusters of other stitches by type and number, each type of stitch turns out to have one cluster each of sizes 1 to N for some integer N. Connecting these clusters in sequence through the inside of the hat...

Indexing - ...reveals a number, which can be used to index into the name of the corresponding stitch.

Reordering - The clusters of size 1 are all at the base of the hat and equidistant from each other. Ordering using these clusters, starting at the single crochet, reveals the answer.