Star Maps (MIT Mystery Hunt 2020)
| Star Maps | |
|---|---|
| MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 | |
| Creative Pictures Studios | |
| Author(s) | Benjamin L de Bivort |
| Answer | Click to reveal📦 |
| Statistics | |
| No. solves | 21 |
| No. total guesses | 63 |
| Links | |
| Puzzle | Link |
| Solution | Link |
Star Maps is a physical puzzle from the Creative Pictures Studios round of the 2020 MIT Mystery Hunt, provided to teams as a jigsaw puzzle with a piece of cardstock.
Puzzle Elements[edit | edit source]
Physical Puzzle - Teams received a jigsaw puzzle and a piece of cardstock containing several "nodes".
Jigsaw Puzzle - The puzzle is provided as a 19x15 jigsaw.
Knowledge Required (Mathematics, Graph Theory) - Assembling the jigsaw reveals its true nature: a bunch of circles, interspersed with a number of graphs. The cardstock reveals that the circles compose a graph themselves; assembling it requires knowing various types of graphs. Each node is a type of graph (helpfully enumerated with blanks), and each edge passes through the center of a graph that satisfies its two nodes.
Marked Spaces - One blank on each node has a number on it. Arranging the letters on those blanks reveals...
Instructional Extraction - ...the final clue phrase ANSWER IS THE SUBGRAPH OF VERTICES WITH DEGREE TWO K PLUS ONE. There are a few vertices with an odd number of edges; taking only those and the edges connecting them reveals a drawing of the answer.
