MIT Mystery Hunt 2020

MIT Mystery Hunt 2020
Running TeamLeft Out
No. of Registered Teams150
Winning Team✈✈✈ Galactic Trendsetters ✈✈✈
No. of Rounds13
No. of Puzzles (Feeders and Metas)194
Timeframe and Location
LocationMIT (Cambridge, MA)
Start Time1:00PM ET, January 17, 2020
Finishing Time (Winning Team)2:56PM EST, January 19, 2020
Official End Time5:00PM EST, January 19, 2020
Links
Hunt LinkLink
Kickoff LinkLink
Wrapup LinkLink
MIT Mystery Hunt Chronology
← 2019
2021 →


MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 was the 40th iteration of the MIT Mystery Hunt, with kickoff occurring on January 17th, 2020. Run by Left Out, the hunt began with a live wedding ceremony of two of the team's members, before proceeding into the customary opening skit. The hunt revolved around a fictional theme venue known as Penny Park, and the efforts of the park's owner to draw in new guests by fixing problems and introducing experimental new attractions.

Plot[edit | edit source]

After getting married, two members of Left Out decided to have their honeymoon at Penny Park, a theme park from their youth. However, upon arrival, they were informed by Penny Miller, the owner of the park and granddaughter of the park's founder, that the park would be closing forever after that weekend, due to continued low attendance. Upon hearing this the mascots of the park, the Loonie Toonies, came up with a plan to save the park; with a large group of people attending the final weekend along with the newlyweds, the mascots encourages everyone to group together into teams and experience the park to its fullest.

By experiencing all of the park's attractions and fixing any problems they encounter, teams were able to generate Buzz, a metric of how popular they were making the park. As the park gained popularity, areas of the park that were originally closed to the public opened up to the new visitors. Eventually, when a significant amount of Buzz had been generated, teams were able to talk with Penny directly.

Penny explained to teams that, while the original park was founded by her grandmother, Judy, she had also attempted to expand the park since taking over. However, none of her ideas panned out due to various oversights in design. Acknowledging the situation, she recruited the teams to help fix these experimental regions and get them ready for public release. By working on these areas, teams helped to generate something new to help the park get back on its feet: Wonder.

As teams finished their job of fixing the park, they eventually came across a secret tunnel underneath the main square, leading deep underground to a mysterious machine. After some investigation, Penny and the teams discovered that the machine was capable of generating Buzz indefinitely, something that could save the park and guarantee its success for years to come. While it took quite a bit of work, teams were able to power the machine up and as thanks for saving the park, Penny presented them with a keepsake of their time there: Final metameta answerA PRESSED PENNY.

List of Rounds[edit | edit source]

Round Title Number of Feeder Puzzles Number of Metapuzzles
The Grand Castle 6 1
Storybook Forest 8 1
Spaceopolis 10 1
Wizard's Hollow 15 1
Balloon Vendor 8 1
Yesterdayland 12 1
Big Top Carnival 12 1
Creative Pictures Studios 24 1
Safari Adventure 25 Click to reveal62 Feeder Answers 12
Cascade Bay 18 3
Cactus Canyon 21 1
Workshop 0 1
Heart of the Park 10 0

State Diagram[edit | edit source]

Mentions in Other Media[edit | edit source]

Reviews and write-ups[edit | edit source]

From the organizing team[edit | edit source]

From solvers[edit | edit source]

Leaderboard[edit | edit source]

This data is taken from the CSV solve log in the statistics. Finishing teams are ranked in order of when the team solved the runaround (calling in all ten minipuzzle answers); hunt placement is locked beyond this point. Other teams are ranked in order of number of solves, followed by the time of the last solve. Team names are the usernames used for the site (as there is no publically available mapping from the username to team name provided).

Rank Team Solves Finish Time
1 trendsetters 176 2020-01-19 1:54:15 PM
2 palindrome 172 2020-01-19 3:29:45 PM
3 teammate 174
4 ttbnl 171
5 deathandmayhem 170
6 ignorethebees 165
7 setec 151
8 Codex Argenteus 138
9 rage 130
10 unitedstatescensus 128
11 superteamawesome 121
12 thelorax 112
13 uplate 110
14 waltkidney 100
15 plant 97
16 simhunt 93
17 cservices 91
18 ange 90
19 frumious 88
20 iif 86
21 halibass 82
22 cardinality 80
23 etphoneinanswer 74
24 unseen 73
25 amateurhour 68
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See Also[edit | edit source]