Dragon (MIT Mystery Hunt 2020)

Dragon
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020
Safari Adventure
Author(s)Nick Parisi
AnswerClick to revealBEERS, BOING, DEER, SEMINAR, THE IMPURE
Statistics
No. solves1919 full solves, 105 correct guesses
No. total guesses149
Links
PuzzleLink
SolutionLink

"And over there is our very own dragon's lair. See that red creature perched on top? That's Steve the Dragon, everyone wave to Steve! The legends say there are great riches deep within the cavern which Steve has been defending for thousands of years. Anywho, have your cameras ready. If we're lucky Steve will breathe some fire for us, making for a great photo-op."

Dragon is an Interactive puzzle from the Safari Adventure round of the 2020 MIT Mystery Hunt.

Puzzle Elements[edit | edit source]

Interactive - The puzzle is styled after a classic Japanese role-playing game, with mechanics to match—solvers can assign each of three characters a list of skills to execute.

 

Optimization - As with most games of this nature, the goal of this puzzle is to defeat the opponents—in this case, the standard way of reducing HP to zero will suffice. There are a great many possibilities for how to do this.

Extraction By Reward - Accomplishing certain tasks in the game (fully defeating the enemies, or reaching some kind of halfway point) yields a puzzle answer.

Multiple Answers - Like most Safari Adventure puzzles, this puzzle has multiple answers. Each of the three levels can be approached individually, though some answers will necessarily be obtained before others, since the second and third levels have an answer at the midpoint.