MIT Mystery Hunt 2020/The Trebuchet

The Trebuchet is a word-based puzzle from the Grand Castle round of the 2020 MIT Mystery Hunt. It's themed after sieges and the use of trebuchets with relatively odd types of projectiles, although with a degree of creative interpretation of those projectiles.

Solve Path

The puzzle's icon, an old medieval-style wooden trebuchet.

Click to revealThe puzzle starts off by providing the solver with a lot of nonsensical letter strings and letter walls, but acknowledging the flavourtext's mentions of projectiles, weights, and an offhand mention of the word "boggle", there are two places one can break in: the trebuchets themselves, and the walls.

Click to revealIf one looks at the trebuchets first, they can find a phrase that may describe a type of launched projectile interwoven with a unit of measurement (albeit mostly ones that aren't commonly used in modern times) such as HOT METAL and HUNDREDWEIGHT.

Click to revealIf one looks at the walls, they may be able to find several words and phrases hidden in them boggle-style. Things like CATS EYE, VERMOUTH, and SLIPKNOT can be found in the first, fifth, and seventh walls respectively. Additionally, each of the walls can be almost filled by the boggle entries in them, aside from 3-4 letters that go unused.

Click to revealAlone, not much can be done with these two sets of information, but after finding a few things in a single wall (like SLIPKNOT, TOOL, MEGADETH, and MASTODON in the fifth) a revelation can be made. The projectiles from the trebuchets can be used to describe what is found in the walls. For example, HOT METAL describes the seventh wall, which is filled with "hot" metal bands like Slipknot and Megadeth. The grid at the bottom of the puzzle implies an ordering for these: lightest weight to heaviest weight. If that's done properly, the unused letters in each wall can be taken and placed in the columns in dropquote fashion, revealing a final phrase that clues the puzzle's final answer: Click to revealMISTER POTTER.

Puzzle Elements

• Asked and Answered - "who’s commanding the opposing forces[?]" While not explicitly posed as a question, the flavourtext does imply that the goal of the puzzle is partly to figure out exactly who the commander is. As it turns out, it's Mister Potter from It's A Wonderful Life.
• Creative Interpretations - While all of the "projectiles" presented are in fact projectiles that may be used (albeit some not in real life), they can be parsed in ways that describe other things. "Throwing Stars" are in fact NFL quarterbacks, while "Pieces of Glass" refers to musical compositions by Phillip Glass (his 'pieces').
• Dropquote - Despite the abnormal presentation of the dropquote grid, it's relatively straightforward. Thanks to the clear delineations made by the different shading in the columns, it's clear which cells belong to them even among the jagged, brick-like construction.
• Final Clue Phrase - "COLDHEARTED FOE OF GEORGE BAILEY"
• Hint In Flavourtext - Several hints, in fact. The flavourtext mentions weights, projectiles, boggle, and even hints towards the idea of using unused "bricks" to help construct the new "wall" (via the dropquote).
• Interwoven Words - On the trebuchets. Thankfully, not in clue format so it's much shorter and clearer, especially when the lengths of the weight and projectile differ.
• Reordering - By Magnitude. Helpfully clued by a feather at one end of the grid and a cartoonishly large weight at the other.
• Units of Measurement - Weight. Not exactly common ones (Dalton and Scruple especially), but valid nonetheless.
• Unused Information - Letters that go unused in the word search grid get transferred (in no particular order) to the proper columns in the final dropquote.
• Word Search - Boggle-Style.