Arts and Witchcrafts (MIT Mystery Hunt 2020)

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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.