Pied Piper (MIT Mystery Hunt 2020)
| Pied Piper | |
|---|---|
| MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 | |
| Storybook Forest | |
| Author(s) | Mark Gottlieb |
| Answer | Click to revealNEW YEARS DAY |
| Statistics | |
| No. solves | 91 |
| No. total guesses | 199 |
| Links | |
| Puzzle | Link |
| Solution | Link |
Pied Piper is an audio puzzle from the Storybook Forest round of the 2020 MIT Mystery Hunt.
Puzzle Elements[edit | edit source]
Audio - Besides the grid of letters with no apparent meaning, the main body of the puzzle is a set of 33 audio clips.
Identification (Pop Music) - The song used in each audio clip can be identified.
Cryptogram (Word to Letter) - The song titles can be shown to share exactly twenty-six unique words between them, meaning each can be assigned a (completely arbitrary) letter.
Word Search (Gimmicked) - This gives the letter grid meaning—treating the letters as equivalent to those words, we can find the titles of all thirty-three songs in the grid. Of course, figuring out which letter is which is itself a part of the puzzle, but the easiest in-road to decryption is "Please, Please, Please, Let Me Get What I Want".
Chekhov's Letters - The classic word search extraction of taking the unused letters is in play here—except here you take the words from the cryptogram. This forms...
Final Clue Phrase - HURTS ALL I WANT FOR CHRISTMAS IS WHAT, where the WHAT can be filled in with the answer to this puzzle.
