Marching Band (MIT Mystery Hunt 2020)

Marching Band
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020
Creative Pictures Studios
Author(s)Todd Etter, Matthew Hartman
AnswerClick to reveal🌪️
Statistics
No. solves16
No. total guesses58
Links
PuzzleLink
SolutionLink

Marching Band is a Marching Bands puzzle from the Creative Pictures Studios round of the 2020 MIT Mystery Hunt.

Puzzle Elements[edit | edit source]

Marching Bands - The puzzle is a standard Marching Bands crossword.

 

Knowledge Required (Music, Miscellaneous) - Several clues in the puzzle have parentheticals attached to them: a unique number from 1-8, followed by a date (always in the later half of the year, and always a Saturday) and a range. Noting the puzzle title and the inclusion of "Home of the Buckeyes" (OSU) in the clues should lead to the Ohio State University Marching Band, which performed at an event on each given date; these performances can be found on YouTube.

Indexing - At some point during each performance, the band produces a display matching the word with the corresponding parenthetical. Here, the range comes into play: these are actually the yard lines on the football field, and a single character appears between them.

Recursion - Taking these characters produces "'14 CINCY #2" in the given set of blanks. This points to another performance, whose second picture depicts the answer.