Spreadsheet (Puzzle Presentation)
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Spreadsheet files are a type of alternate media somewhat uncommonly found in hunt puzzles.
Background[edit | edit source]
Spreadsheets originated as a way to keep track of business data and perform calculations on this data. Over time, a robust library of spreadsheet functions have made spreadsheets a tool almost as powerful as writing programs. Since many hunt puzzles also involve organizing data and then subsequently extracting from them, spreadsheets have become a tool of choice, especially with the introduction of Google Sheets, which made online spreadsheet collaboration much easier.
Puzzle Application[edit | edit source]
Puzzles presented as a spreadsheet are somewhat uncommon, but generally fall under a few categories. It can be a way to present large amounts of data in a tabular form, or spreadsheet functions can be used extensively as a sort of "black box" puzzle.
More recently, with the advent of Copy-to-clipboard in 2020 (first seen in Hackin' the Beanstalk (MITMH 2020), and then later introduced on a hunt-wide scale in Teammate Hunt 2020), it has become much more convenient to import a puzzle page into a spreadsheet in a consistent manner. Some hunts have also provided links to spreadsheets to copy from, for convenient solving.
Strategy[edit | edit source]
TO DO
Notable Examples[edit | edit source]
- The Excelerator (MITMH 2020) (web) - There is a lot of data in this puzzle. Words are also reinterpreted as spreadsheet formulas.
- Hey, Can You Give Me A Hand With This Puzzle? (MITMH 2021) (web) - Presented in the intro round of the Mystery Hunt, this puzzle is intended to showcase ways to use formulas to do common tasks in puzzle hunts, such as indexing a list with a given list of indices. These formulas are later reused for the final puzzle.
- White as a Sheet (Silph) (web) - Not only is this puzzle a spreadsheet, but there is no apparent content! This puzzle has several subpuzzles, which range from references to other material, to using formulas as a black box of sorts.
- Machines (MITMH 2024) - This puzzle goes into some more esoteric spreadsheet functions, perhaps introducing hunters to some new functionality that they may not have known of before. The subpuzzles are black box puzzles, where it becomes important to understand these functions to determine what word would be accepted.
