MIT Mystery Hunt 2019

MIT Mystery Hunt 2019
Running Team	Setec Astronomy
No. of Registered Teams	105
Winning Team	Left Out
No. of Rounds	11
No. of Puzzles (Feeders and Metas)	174 (excluding Your Birthday town, endgame, and events meta)
Timeframe and Location
Location	MIT (Cambridge, MA)
Start Time	12:00PM EST, January 18, 2019
Finishing Time (Winning Team)	5:49PM EST, January 20, 2019
Links
Hunt Link	Link
Kickoff Link	Link
Wrapup Link	Link
MIT Mystery Hunt Chronology

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

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

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

From the organizing team

• Dan Katz - Part 0: The Watercooler - Part 1: Structure and Story - Part 2: Metapuzzle Development - Part 3: Metapuzzles - Part 4: Puzzles - Part 5: Acknowledgments - Metapuzzles, Backsolving, and Short-Circuiting: A Study of Three Puzzlehunts
• gredelston - Puzzlehunts: An Overview - Recapping Mystery Hunt 2019, Part 1: Story - Recapping Mystery Hunt 2019, Part 2: Structure - Recapping Mystery Hunt 2019, Part 3: My Puzzles
• obijywk - Writing about the puzzles I wrote for the 2019 Mystery Hunt
• tmcay - 2019 MIT Mystery Hunt
• Reddit AMA

From solvers

• Alex Irpan - MIT Mystery Hunt 2019
• betaveros - 2019 MIT Mystery Hunt
• CheshireSolves - Two Man Mystery Hunt (Postsolve) : 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6 - 7 - 8 - 9 - 10 - 11 - 12 - 13 - 14 - 15 - 16 - 17 - 18 - 19
• devjoe - MIT Mystery Hunt 2019, Part 1
• dr_whom - The Mystery Hunt is the best holiday
• dr4b - Deanna's 2019 MIT Mystery Hunt Saga
• Eric Berlin - MYSTERY HUNT 2019
• fortenforge - Part 1/2 - Part 2/2
• Joe Bohanon - 2019 Mystery Hunt Wrap-Up
• lahosken - MIT Mystery Hunt 2019, East Coast Left Out
• seekingferret - (no subject)
• Shashakiro - Huge 2018 writeup part 1 (with spoilers) - Huge writeup part 2 (with spoilers): post-hunt solving - Huge writeup part 3 (with spoilers): to 100% completion
• sniffnoy - 2019 Mystery Hunt Roundup
• Tanya Khovanova - Mathy Review of the 2019 MIT Mystery Hunt
• 2019 MIT Mystery Hunt Recap (reddit comment thread)

Leaderboard

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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