Refreshment Stand (MIT Mystery Hunt 2020)
| Refreshment Stand | |
|---|---|
| MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 | |
| Creative Pictures Studios | |
| Author(s) | Todd Etter, Yar Woo |
| Answer | Click to reveal🧙♀️ |
| Statistics | |
| No. solves | 16 |
| No. total guesses | 143143, including 17 partials |
| Links | |
| Puzzle | Link |
| Solution | Link |
Refreshment Stand is a Crossword from the Creative Pictures Studios round of the 2020 MIT Mystery Hunt.
Puzzle Elements[edit | edit source]
Crossword - The puzzle is a standard barred crossword on a 15x15 grid.
Something in Common - While solving the grid, one may notice entries sharing some similarities. In particular, eight entries are colored liquids, while seven entries are homophonic to a color + letter (e.g. READ YOU = red U).
Intermediate Clue Phrase - Associating the color of each liquid to a letter, then reading these letters in clue order (across, then down), reveals a phrase: JUICED UP. Given that this is a round where every answer is an emoji, this is not the answer, but submitting it is required to continue.
Physical Puzzle - The puzzle then asked solvers to visit HQ; upon doing so, they received a 3-D printed block with a 15x15 grid of holes, along with four liquids (red, tan, blue, black).
Paint-By-X - Reusing the color-to-letter associations from earlier and pouring each liquid into every cell with a corresponding letter also causes other cells to fill. Eventually, this draws out the answer.
