MIT Mystery Hunt 2019

MIT Mystery Hunt 2019
Running TeamSetec Astronomy
No. of Registered Teams105
Winning TeamLeft Out
No. of Rounds11
No. of Puzzles (Feeders and Metas)174 (excluding Your Birthday town, endgame, and events meta)
Timeframe and Location
LocationMIT (Cambridge, MA)
Start Time12:00PM EST, January 18, 2019
Finishing Time (Winning Team)5:49PM EST, January 20, 2019
Links
Hunt LinkLink
Kickoff LinkLink
Wrapup LinkLink
MIT Mystery Hunt Chronology
← 2018
2020 →

MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 was the 39th iteration of the MIT Mystery Hunt, with kickoff occurring on January 15, 2019. Run by Setec Astronomy, the hunt was themed after holidays with a plot inspired by The Nightmare Before Christmas.

In this iteration of the Mystery Hunt, metapuzzles were consistently placed between two rounds and took some feeder answers from both rounds adjacent to them. Matching feeder answers to metapuzzles was left to the solvers and was a major component of the hunt's structure.

This was the most recent Mystery Hunt to use over-the-phone answer confirmation from HQ instead of an automated answer checker. This was also the most recent Mystery Hunt to not have an explicit upper limit on guess frequency (though the rate-limiting formula in 2020 was not revealed to teams until wrapup.)

The live hunt also ended with both of the leading teams (Left Out and Palindrome) having only First You Visit Burkina Faso and its associated meta as solves that could potentially give them progress. This is the only instance to date where an individual feeder puzzle that was completed by several other teams ultimately determined the winner of the Mystery Hunt. The incident inspired direct follow-ups to First You Visit Burkina Faso to appear in the Mystery Hunt in both 2020 (written by Left Out) and 2022 (written by Palindrome).

List of Rounds[edit | edit source]

Round Title Number of Feeder Puzzles Number of Metapuzzles
Christmas Town 6 1*
Halloween Town 17 3*
Thanksgiving Town 16 3*
Valentine's Day Town 17 3*
President's Day Town 12 2*
New Year's Town 13 3*
Arbor Day Town 18 3*
Holi Town 17 3*
Pi Day Town 28 3*
Patriots' Day Town 11 2*
Bloomsday Town 14 2*
Other 0 1†
Events 5 1

* The metapuzzles for this round were also fed by puzzles in another round.

† Includes Your Birthday Town, April Fools' Day Town, and Molasses Awareness Day Town.

Unlock guide[edit | edit source]

Warning: It is not safe to look at the solution pages to completed feeder puzzles for this hunt unless your team has already solved that puzzle's associated meta. Every feeder's solution page spoils which metapuzzle uses that puzzle's answer.

This hunt exclusively unlocks single puzzles in response to solves, except in cases when new rounds are unlocked. In these cases, two puzzles from that round are unlocked at once.

A full unlock order/guide can be found here, including a map of the hunt, and tools for running the entire hunt in an instance of Google Sheets.

Reviews and write-ups[edit | edit source]

From the organizing team[edit | edit source]

From solvers[edit | edit source]

Leaderboard[edit | edit source]

The data for this leaderboard comes from the solve log (found in the source code behind the statistics page). Teams are ranked in order of most solves, tiebroken by last solve time. (Only Left Out and Palindrome finished the hunt, and this correctly orders the two teams.)

Rank Team Solves Last Solve
1 Team Left Out 181 2019-01-20 4:25:51 PM
2 Palindrome 176 2019-01-20 5:24:44 PM
3 Death and Mayhem 169 2019-01-20 5:47:28 PM
4 teammate 158 2019-01-20 5:41:53 PM
5 ✈✈✈ Galactic Trendsetters ✈✈✈ 157 2019-01-20 5:39:23 PM
6 The Team Formerly Known as the Team to Be Named Later 148 2019-01-20 5:40:21 PM
7 Test Solution Bees Ignore 144 2019-01-20 5:14:49 PM
8 CODEX VOYNICH 144 2019-01-20 5:40:29 PM
9 Dick-Pointing Teapots 142 2019-01-20 5:39:40 PM
10 Hunches in Bunches 138 2019-01-20 5:40:13 PM
11 Exit, Rage Left (Pursued by a Bear) 135 2019-01-20 5:51:04 PM
12 Super Team Awesome 131 2019-01-20 5:37:58 PM
13 Metaphysical Plant 127 2019-01-20 5:29:32 PM
14 Up Late 120 2019-01-20 5:29:51 PM
15 Central Services 117 2019-01-20 5:41:23 PM
16 The Providence Transplantations 114 2019-01-20 5:44:39 PM
17 Wafflehaüs 112 2019-01-20 5:49:57 PM
18 Frumious Bandersnatch 106 2019-01-20 5:47:33 PM
19 Molasses Slalom 102 2019-01-20 4:16:48 PM
20 Immoral, Illegal, and Fattening 94 2019-01-20 5:17:58 PM

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