The 1995 MIT Mystery Hunt can be found here, and it is a
bit of a mess to wade through, with answers filled in for some
puzzles by the team whose packet was provided for the archive,
henceforth called the solving team. It is based on the board game
Clue. As we did with other old Mystery Hunts, we have solved most
of this Hunt.
In some puzzles, we are missing components that accompanied the
puzzle. This occurred for puzzle 1 (cereal samples) and puzzle 10
(web site - partial). The answers to these puzzles are available;
it is just the path to those answers that is missing.
Puzzle 11 was a scavenger hunt.
Puzzle 21 is a runaround that has not been performed. If the
starting point can be identified (either by a better
reconstruction of puzzle 20 or by guessing where the nexus of four
paths is), and if the campus has not changed too much, it may
still be possible to do this one.
Puzzle 22 is solved except that a couple trivia answers are
unknown.
Puzzle 31 was an ordering logic puzzle on the videotape but
errata said scenes were missign and the puzzle provided could not
be solved.
Puzzle 38 is a long liar logic puzzle provided on video, with a
transcript made by a solving team.
The runaround described in the metapuzzle cannot be performed
because it probably depended on signs posted around campus for the
purpose of the hunt. One of the locations was in a building which
no longer exists.
Before the puzzles start, there is a page of introductory
information. There was a Clue tournament Saturday morning, and it
was supposed to be important to attend. I don't know what
information came out of it, but I think solvers got the video
which included this message from Mr. Boddy.
There is also a checkoff sheet with the names of the suspects,
weapons, and rooms, removing any possible ambiguity on those over
different versions of the game. For puzzle 40 we are supposed to
find all of these names except the Clue game solution hidden in
other puzzles.
The second page of the posted packet is a summary of answers
found by the solving team. It includes some other information
related to meta solving.
The third page of the posted packet seems to be scratch work for
some of the other puzzles. The upper right portion of this page
lists several of the answers which are locations within the United
States. This is part of the work on the meta. The bottom portion
of this page looks like work on puzzle 22.
The fourth page of the posted packet contains errata and hints.
After this we finally get to the puzzles. Each puzzle has a location, which is not always the name of a Clue room. These are used later.
This puzzle appears to require searching multiple newspapers from Friday of the Hunt (all the ones published in Boston?). I have not been inspired to try to dig these up. The flavor text here refers to the Globe, but the Globe does not normally have page numbers like 82, mentioned in the puzzle text. That would be one of the tabloid papers like the Herald or Phoenix.
Solving teams identified the page in question in one of the papers as having the Dilbert cartoon on the page in question. A copy of this cartoon is archived here. The word in the upper right-hand corner of the comic strip is SUITE.
This puzzle was based on samples of cereal provided to the teams, which, naturally, we do not have. The bags were labeled with ordering numbers and indexes for letters to extract. (Two extraction indices were swapped by an erratum in the puzzle handout.)
The correct phrase is FLAME OR DEMIT. Demit is an archaic word
meaning to dismiss or resign an office. These two words both clue
the word FIRE (written next to this puzzle on the solving team's
meta worksheet).
A variant letter links puzzle. The links are provided erratically
and not strictly from one name to the next. This puzzle had an
accompanying video tape segment (now available on
Youtube) with Disney movie characters to identify. The
answers are:
The answer formed by placing the numbered letters in order is
SPARTA, TN.
Unless the black squares were shaded so lightly that they did not
come through, this is a diagramless Jigsaw Quote. The solving team
has written in the "quote" solution: PART ONE OF THIS ANSWER
CONSISTS OF THE FOURTH SONG ON THE ALBUM THAT HAS THE TRACK BASKET
CASE. IN ORDER TO DISCOVER THE COMPLETE SOLUTION, FIND MY HIDDEN
COPY OF THAT GEORGE SOMEBODY COUNTRY ALBUM ABOUT HIS BEACH HOUSE
AND TAKE THE SIXTH WORD OF THE OPENER.
The first album mentioned is Dookie by Green Day (released November 1994!) and the song is Longview. The second album is 1987's Ocean Front Property by George Strait. The opening track is All My Ex's Live in Texas, so Texas is the 6th word, and the answer is LONGVIEW, TEXAS.
PART ONE OF THIS
ANSWER CONSISTS
OF THE FOURTH S
ONG ON THE ALBUM
THAT HAS THE TR
ACK BASKET CASE
IN ORDER TO DISC
OVER THE COMPLET
E SOLUTION FIND
MY HIDDEN COPY O
F THAT GEORGE SO
MEBODY COUNTRY A
LBUM ABOUT HIS B
EACH HOUSE AND T
AKE THE SIXTH WO
RD OF THE OPENER
The hidden clue weapon LEAD PIPE appears in a column of this
grid.
The flavor text talks about reading a book or two, and we are in
a library. Rearrange the trigrams to spell book titles. Each title
has a multiple of 3 letters and ends on a trigram break.
In order to spell all these titles, we need one more THE trigram
than is given. I am not sure which book title they thought didn't
have an initial "The." In addition, The House of Seven Gables
should really be The House of the Seven Gables.
The leftover trigrams spell the answer, EITHER.
This is a standard puzzle type, but the only example of it I have on hand is from P&A Magazine (Sep/Oct 2008) where it is called Back and Forth. Words read in opposite directions, each starting with the last three letters (reversed) of the previous answer.
C D R E G E S A R S D N G P
A E E V N L I L E E A E N A
L I B E O E R U G S R T A L
L M E R M G D D I T N H W
E O L T E I A E O E E E E
R S S S S T R L N T L R D
The letters that go in the numbered boxes, in numerical order,
spell the answer, WITTICISM.
This is a standard logic-elimination puzzle with 5 variables with
10 values each: batting order, names, positions, cities, and
teams. Note that the flavor text is part of the puzzle, and
clarifies that in this league both the pitcher and designated
hitter bat, so the lineup is 10 slots long. It is also necessary
to assume each name corresponds to a person of the most common
gender for that name (so for example, Charlie is male), and to pay
attention to pronouns throughout the clues.
| Order |
Name |
Team |
City |
Position |
| 1 |
Chin-music Charlie |
Dermatologists |
Cleveland |
SS |
| 2 |
Out-of-play Owen |
Receptionists |
Los Angeles |
2B |
| 3 |
Lime-spreadin' Lisa |
Talk Show Hosts |
Toronto |
DH |
| 4 |
Mayday Mary |
Taxi Drivers |
Houston |
LF |
| 5 |
Ump-Hatin' Upton |
Televangelists |
San Francisco |
RF |
| 6 |
Salary cap Sally |
Channel Surfers |
Detroit |
3B |
| 7 |
Tarpaulin Tom |
Short Order Cooks |
Pittsburgh |
P |
| 8 |
Astroturf Al |
Back-Up Singers |
Atlanta |
CF |
| 9 |
Rhubarb Rhonda |
Undertakers |
Kansas City |
C |
| 10 |
Dugout Dorothy |
Etymologists |
Boston |
1B |
The initials of the suspiciously alliterative player names spell
our suspect COL. MUSTARD. To get the answer, you have to read on
the diagonal in the suspiciously long team names to get
DELIVERIES.
Here's what the connect-the-dots solution is supposed to look
like:
This is a maze with warps indicated by letters. The copy in the archive, a scan of a fax of the original puzzle, does not possess enough resolution to identify all the warp letters, and also one end of the maze is cut off, so it is not solvable. A better resolution version is here, and the newer archive copy provides this solution. The maze path spells out MT VERNON KY in large letters, and the warp letters used spell CANDLESTICK.
Each clue has a punny answer (e.g. DISPERSAL, "This purse'll" for
the first one) which can be found on winding paths (orthogonal
steps only, using every letter exactly once) in the grid. Use the
numbers in the second grid to associate a value with each letter
and transfer these to the blanks, then perform the arithmetic to
get a value for each answer, and add up those values.
There is an erratum to remove the words "is on" from clue 9. They
are supposed to be part of the pun, and it doesn't work if they
are printed in the clue.
The total is the answer, 36264.
As hard as it is to imagine, this hunt contained a puzzle
presented on a web site, yes, in January 1995! It was at
http://xenon.stanford.edu/~bosch/MysteryHunt/
but, unsurprisingly, is not there now. We have a
scan of printouts from the site, but don't know how to solve
it. The official solution document gives the answer as ERIE,
PENNSYLVANIA and the hidden Clue character as MISS SCARLET hidden
in the 17th column of the newsgroups to which Mr. Boddy
subscribes. It adds: Parts, if not all, of this puzzle no longer
exist. You explored Mr. Boddy's computer transactions, including a
message he posted to the newsgroup rec.puzzles.
This was a scavenger hunt for various articles of clothing. For
each four items brought in, you would get one part of the five
part answer, which was made of 5 digits. The solving team appears
to have only managed to get 3 of these, making an answer starting
with 357. It looks like in the meta solving, the solving team
determined this was 35758, the zip code for Madison, AL, but the
official solution document gives 35768, the zip code for Hytop and
Scottsboro, AL.
The puzzle was on the video tape and can be viewed on Youtube. Teams had to find the missing item from a list on the tape, ignoring the duplicates, which were unintended. The appendices of the official solution document give these as the names of US state capitals, spelled backward. The missing one was LUAP TNIAS.
This is a metapuzzle, so I have placed its solution at the end of
the page.
Music to identify. The puzzle explains to use the number next to
each song as an index into the title of that song, and then shift
the resulting letter back that number of letters in the alphabet.
The solving team did not appear to solve it, but they left a big
hint in their meta notes.
The sheet music is not real music. Instead, the notes are a
cryptogram. Each rest length and note/chord value represents a
different letter consistently throughout the puzzle. Ignore the
key signatures (maybe the real keys of the songs?) and the note
lengths are chosen to make each word fit into a whole measure.
Then the notes decode according to the following key to produce
lyrics.
| Lyrics |
Song |
N |
Nth Letter |
Shifted |
| 1. Hello darkness my old friend I've come to
talk with you again |
The Sound of Silence by Simon and Garfunkel
[Mistakenly taken as Sounds of Silence] |
12 |
E |
S |
| 2. Hey hey mama say the way you move gonna
make you sweat gonna make you groove |
Black Dog by Led Zeppelin |
7 |
O |
H |
| 3. At home drawing piktures [sic] of mountain
tops |
Jeremy by Pearl Jam |
1 |
J |
I |
| 4. We don't need no education we don't need
no thought control |
Another Brick in the Wall Part 2 by Pink
Floyd |
21 |
L |
Q |
| 5. Oh life it's bigger it's bigger than you
and you are not me |
Losing My Religion by REM |
5 |
N |
I |
| 6. Look at them yoyos that's the way ya do it |
Money for Nothing by Dire Straits |
4 |
E |
A |
| 7. Ten [sic] soldiers and Nixon's coming
we're finally on our own |
Ohio by Neil Young |
1 |
O |
N |
| 8. Goodbye Norma Jean though I never knew you
at all |
Candle in the Wind by Elton John |
5 |
L |
G |
The shifted letters spell the answer, SHIQIANG, a Chinese name.
The namystics in this puzzle spell names of Shakespeare's plays.
Follow the given directions to find the position of the last L in
each play, and subtract this from the given number (28 was missing
from the first one, and 9 is cut off of the second one on the fax
copy. Rearrange these letters in alphabetical order of the plays
to spell FAVORITE.
The sample namystic does not spell RESTING as the instructions
state. It actually spells MISTER GREEN, one of our hidden Clue
suspects.
Solve the three division problems normally. The first two are of
the type where most of the digits are missing; the last one is a
standard alphametic.
2143009 51602 2132 0123456789
213 456460917 = a 17 877234 = k 4110 8766109 ECDAWFRHIN
426 = b 85 = l 8220
304 = c 27 = m 5461
213 = d 17 = n 4110
916 = e 102 = p 13510
852 = f 102 = q 12330
640 = g 34 = r 11809
639 = h 34 = s 8220
1917 = i 0 3589
1917 = j
0
Hidden Clue part: 460917 from row a translates to WRENCH using
the code from the last division.
Answer: Apply the formula from the errata. (k*l)/n + (g-d)*e
(n+r)(d-r) - h + r + n + l - b = 4785502, which translates to the
answer WHIFFED using the code from the last division.
This is almost a standard diagramless, without symmetry. There is
no clue 31; the errata page tells us to ignore it, skip numbering
from 30 to 32 when we get there. It's also a rebus crossword; each
* below represents the letters MIT both across and down. The last
part of the down clues is printed below the diagram on the first
page of this puzzle, and the clue for 75D is cut off in the copy
in the archives.
A*Y FLY ICE
CEO RIO *ES EVOKES
ERG VO*S AGE MOVEIT
IMPASSE EAT *TERRANDS
VEGE*E *TENS TER*E IOUS
*IGATES EASTERS *TER
TOO HER*AGE# ZETA
S*S SHARNS
PSI DE*ASSE
SUB*TER BAR YETIS
NORITE ADAGES UPS
TRANS* S*HANDWESSON
OGLE TICKS DESIGNERS
ERIE DOUSE
DEAR ENG
In the diagram above, the numbered spaces are marked with red
letters, except the #, which is a numbered space that gets blacked
in. Putting these letters in numerical order, using the black
space as a space, spells MACK TRUCK.
The big shape of black squares in the middle of this puzzle that
is so awkward to work around while solving is a picture of the
KNIFE, one of the hidden Clue items.
This is a cryptolist on Magic: The Gathering cards. The answers
are specifically all creatures. Read their power/toughness numbers
as a fraction, and plug these into the given formula.
Key:
NIVBYALGQDMCKXHF EROZJUWP cipher
ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
FDLJRPHOBVMGKATYIS WCXNEU plain
Answers G through K form an acrostic of STUDY, one of the hidden
Clue rooms.
Applying the formula gives the answer 53140.
First solve the synonym/anagram/rhyme puzzles to get the word
list.
Answers 4 through 11 have an acrostic of MRS. WHITE, one of our
hidden Clue suspects.
Then solve the criss-cross puzzle.
S
BEACON PRIEST
B A H N E
PALLID E R B S C
E G MALICE A U
EARNED E B R N R
C R VACATE E
BREATH M L T
A E HANDLE
M A H L
BIASED A L
L E S E
E BRAIDS T
L
BAWLER
H
O
R
E
S
If the word list is correct, the solution is ambiguous because
EARNED and MALLET can be swapped. But the meta confirms that this
is the intended answer, with the marked letters in numerical order
spelling the answer DEMON SOUND (as oppoed to DEMON SOUL'D for the
other solution). In addition to this, the word ANIMAL is not used
at all. There are only 23 spaces in the grid for the 24 words.
There are two parts to this puzzle. First assemble the jigsaw
(which is quite difficult from the fax copy in the archive). Then
solve the balance puzzle (20b). This provides the coloring key:
This is a runaround of MIT. I did not attempt to follow it. The flavor text says to start in the obvious location given by puzzle 20A; that is presumably with the image in this orientation:
I am not sure where this is, or it it still looks anything like
this, but I am guessing that the X represents the nexus of four
paths mentioned at the start of the text.
The solving team got the answer ROBOCOP. This means that the sign
at the end contains the letters B* OP?R* C?????O?
Each of the clues leads to an answer which is or prominently
features a letter, number, or punctuation mark.
The little grid in the puzzle represents the arrangement of keys
on a QWERTY keyboard for the letters, numbers, period, and comma.
If those keys represent the ciphertext, then the answers to the
corresponding clues give the plaintext.
The clue for A = 6 is solid, but it doesn't make any sense in the
line "yields 6 uniquely mischievous solution". Probably this is an
error and that letter was not encoded. In any case, this leads to
the key:
39GS7PAORKDUF4VQN,8BX5ZYTML.6WHC02E1JI cipher
0123456789,.ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
UXV0BJQ4G1FP6HT,WA2SZY9ONE75D83M.CRILK plain
If you write out the cipher key in the order of the keyboard, as shown in the puzzle with the numeric key, it becomes:
XV0BJQ4G1U
DRW8ML.Z75
63,A25Y90
KITCHENFP
providing the Clue room KITCHEN.
And the message (in which punctuation is part of the code and
spacing is to be ignored):
THIS SUBLIMELY QUIXOTIC CONUNDRUM, NUMBER 26, YIELDS 6 UNIQUELY
MISCHIEVOUS SOLUTION. YOU ATTEMPT TO FIGURE EXACTLY WHAT IT COULD
BE. EXCAVATE NO FURTHER, FOR QUITE UNEXPECTEDLY, IT JUMPS OUT AT
YOU. WHAT YOU ARE LOOKING TO FIND IS THE 3RD WORD OF THE 28TH
LINE, 2ND COLUMN ON PAGE 178 OF OUR MIT COURSE BULLETIN FOR SCHOOL
YEAR 1994 AND 95. I FEEL BAD N
Another copy of the puzzle has more text that was cut off the one in the archives: N8 YNVCX M8 VBFWFVC NWHDHLXEL 0YQ 50HCY XZNCL LXMC L0C CBF C3N60F YHINWL! which decodes as [N]EGLECTING CHARACTERS, SO I WOULD JUST LIKE TO POINT OUT THAT 0 EQUALS ZERO!
The fact that this says number 26, but is puzzle 22, was acknowledged as an error in the puzzle.
The 1994-95 course bulletin can be found here (warning: 260 MB file) and when
you go to the place within it mentioned, you get the word
ENGINEERING.
All of these names were in the MIT Staff Directory in 1995. You
were to connect their offices on a map and each group forms a
letter. The solving team found the answer VIVACITY.
Identify the map shapes. The three names for each number have a
single letter common to all three.
The common letters spell the answer, ALEXANDER. The first countries in items 5 through 8 form an acrostic of ROPE, one of the hidden Clue weapons.
These sequences of words are Anguished English versions of the
initial lyrics from Christmas carols. The next word in each one is
needed.
The words in the blanks form a question, "What did you receive on
the last day of Christmas?" There are some variations in the
sequence in that Christmas carol, but the most popular version has
DRUMMERS which is confirmed by the meta.
This is a cryptic double-crostic, only with no acrostic in the
answers. Clue answers:
The quotation part spells this nonsensical phrase:
Moo, lost elk. O wonders awed! Was it organic, in ecstasy tied.
Deity sat scenic in a grot? I saw dew as red -- now dim as
brooklet - so loom.
This is almost a palindrome. To make it actually be a palindrome,
the words ORBS AMID would need to be inserted before the word
"wonders," so those words are the answer.
The answer to clue F is RED HERRING, but the numbers given for these letters are used in other clues and have cross-references in the grid to the other clues (for example, the first letter R is number 17, but 17 in the grid references clue C, where it is also found. Some of the letters from RED HERRING conflict with the letters from the other clue and the ones from the other clue are needed to spell the message properly. If you bring those letters down to the blanks for F, it spells RELIBRARYG, giving the hidden location LIBRARY.
This puzzle was missing from the packet in the archives at the time it was referenced in the 2023 Hunt as a missing puzzle. Given that we were told in the errata that 40 across was 7283, they took it to be a cross-number puzzle, but we now know it's a phonespell crossword.
The puzzle provided the entries as their phonespell numbers, but here are the clues presented as a crossword grid:
2567 32825 6678
7638 27662 2742
3837 24833 7264
3383287 6378537
32735 633
77287 647 27367
274737 623 7283
743 7464527 636
2237 828 337378
73787 737 22787
728 33288
7874737 7372433
5623 66337 4433
8743 77468 3836
6377 83687 5367
Here's the crossword solution:
ALMS FATAL MOST
POET AROMA ARIA
EVER CITED SANG
DETECTS NESTLES
EASEL NEE
SPATS NIP ARDOR
CRISES MAD SAVE
RID SIMILAR MEN
ACES TAT DESERT
PESTS PER CASTS
RAT DEBUT
STRIPES PERCHED
LOA* MODES HIDE
URGE PRINT EVEN
MESS TENTS LENS
The space with the * can be filled with either a D or F and fit the clues; the other part of the erratum for this puzzle says to call the author if you encounter such a problem. But apart from this one difficulty we can now follow the directions to tally up the occurrences of each of these letters and do the math: R-I C+U-G D+W-P M-V and we get 15-10 6+2-2 11+0-8 8-3 = 5 6 3 5 = JOEL if we choose the more common word STRIDES through the * (as opposed to 5 6 2 5 = jock or lock if it's an F).
Find a transdeletion for each word which contains a silent letter.
The deleted letters don't spell anything, but the silent letters
spell THE BIG PULL. This is the final phrase that should be
transdeleted into another phrase, BLUE LIGHT (which also has
silent letters, but BLUE LIGHT is the answer).
The names of the artists (ignoring the windows and such
interspersed with them) spell READ FULL WORDS ONLY. In order to
solve this puzzle, overlay the diagram of the dining room on top
of the note, as shown by the highlighting in the archive copy of
this puzzle. The full words inside the piano, serving table,
dining table, china cabinet, and bar spell THE ANSWER OFFICERS IS
CORRECT, so the answer is OFFICERS.
The many unused letters spell out a long message which references
Mr. Mousebender from the Cheese Shop sketch. It reads, in full:
The esteemed gourmand Mister Mousebender provided an airtight
alibi for the delightful yet philandering Missus Peacock.
Unfortunately, the burly and thoroughly unpleasant Mister Peacock
provided Mister Mousebender with a punch in the nose after hearing
of this.
From this text we get the hidden Clue suspect MRS. PEACOCK.
The spaces which were blank in the original grid are filled in by
cheese names to spell the answer, LAKE CHARLES, LOUISIANA.
Another puzzle on the video tape.
The errata page says this one was screwed up (the solution
document elaborating further to say the number of scenes got
reduced so that the puzzle no longer works). The solving team did
get the answer HOOKER, OK (a city in Oklahoma).
This is a following directions puzzle. The initial state is formed from a set of pieces that needed to be cut out, which are missing from the archive, but a copy of them is here. They are 12 pentagons that must be assembled into a dodecahedron.
Assembling the pieces is quite a challenge because the letters are drawn to allow various halves to interchange.
Here is an exploded view of the resulting dodecahedron.
Finally we can solve the following directions puzzle. The initial string (with breaks between the letters extracted from each face, and ignoring the typo "numbers" for "letters" in this instruction) are EGOPY CJLMU ABTUX AFGJR HJKPW EFIKV LOPUY BORST JTUWY FIJPX CFHVY JMOST
The answer was supposed to be IT'S A HOAX. I have an extra X but it basically worked. Also, PROFESSOR PLUM appears with an extra J at step 12, but this was a fakeout, and it's really supposed to have the extra letter, and we aren't supposed to eliminate him here. What we are supposed to eliminate is the BILLIARD ROOM that appears in initial letters in several steps.
The solutions for the Scrabble part of this puzzle are as
follows:
This gives the total score of 256. Now transfer these words into
the region of the 4 Battleships puzzles which is marked off as the
Scrabble board, and solve those puzzles.
The letters that lie on ships anagram to form the word REGULATION
(not UROGENITAL since the puzzle says the answer begins with a
consonant).
The answers to the cartoon rebuses are:
Put these into the grid in the spaces of appropriate lengths:
GEENADAVIS
LESMISERABLES
MACLAURINBUILDING
STARSANDSTRIPESFOREVER
BARCELONADRAGONS
WHOSAFRAIDOFVIRGINIAWOOLF
WILLIAMRANDOLPHHEARST
REESESPEANUTBUTTERCUPS
And ESCAROLE is spelled down the third column.
The clues are Ambrose Bierce (The Devil's Dictionary)
definitions of words. Answers (starting boxes):
Chain 1: Numerically Ascending
Chain 2: Numerically Descending
Chain 3: Numerically Ascending (Odd Numbers Only)
Chain 4: Numerically Descending (Even Numbers Only)
The grid is a variation on the Quote Square puzzle, where you
mark off letters in a row of boxes, one letter per box, but
instead of each word stretching across a row or column, the words
run around the loop in the directions and spacing indicated. When
you are done marking off all the letters, some boxes have one
letter remaining. These boxes must be read in the order the boxes
are arranged, row by row, left to right within each row, to spell
the answer, EFFINGHAM, ILLINOIS.
In addition, the initial grid contains the hidden Clue room
CONSERVATORY in the middle column of letters reading downward in
boxes 40 to 36.
This is a normal crossword, except the clues are written as a
cryptolist, and the three theme entries (all with the clue
OVERLAP) are portmanteaus with the word BALL shared between two
other words.
Key:
KLHVPJESXRBIGAFYMTCNQOZUDW cipher
ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
NKSYGOMCLFABQTVEUJHRXDZIPW plain
Grid:
TIMS TECS SCAT
GNAW OVATE COLE
ITSA PILOT ETAL
FOOTBALLPEEN
SCHIZ SLAVE
HEN CAM IRATE
AMI GOODIE IRON
BASKETBALLPOINT
ASTI ORIOLE ASS
STILT ARS TET
SCORE PARIS
BASEBALLROOM
BAMA AROMA ANTE
AGER UNION TATA
TONS ELSE ALOT
One of the theme entries contains the hidden Clue room BALL ROOM.
The letters in the starred boxes (red above) are CTLTOLRPORG.
Translated back through the cipher key, they are HNINFITYFTE (the
implication is that we were supposed to fill in the entire
crossword enciphered). The instructions say to rearrange these to
spell the answer; that answer is NINETY-FIFTH.
This crossword variant has printer's devilry clues. Each clue has
a piece missing which usually spans multiple words, which is to be
filled in with the letters of the answer. In addition, part of
each clue defines the answer. Answers all 6 or 7 letters long and
are written into the grid around the corresponding number,
clockwise or counterclockwise and starting at a point for you to
determine.
Answers (removed letter)
Grid:
The numbered letters spell IT IS A NOUN. The instructions say to
eliminate all the duplicates among the removed letters and
rearrange to spell a word. The "noun" hint eliminates IRATELY and
TEARILY, leaving only REALITY as the answer.
The answer to clue 13 is the hidden Clue room LOUNGE.
This puzzle is in two parts.
A transcript of the video appears as "Butler Transcript" beginning on page 51 of the packet originally included in the archive. The very end of the packet gives instructions for solving it, but there is still more sleuthing to do. Each suspect can be seen to be allergic to a different allergen. The picture 38a isn't actually a picture of the butler's quarters; it is a picture of a mirror in which the butler's quarters can be seen. Note that the grand piano is mirrored from the proper shape. In the porn magazine, that's not an ad for TUMS; the S is backwards. It actually says SMUT.
MRS. WHITE was the guilty suspect and the answer to the puzzle,
and the Clue room HALL could be found by looking at the music
notes under the dead body in the picture, translating them using
the key in puzzle 14.
Every team who solved the puzzle received a correctly scaled
campus map. Such a map appears on the page immediately before the
butler transcript in the original archive packet.
As stated in the instructions, the path can only go straight or
make 90 degree turns. What's missing are further instructions. The
path you need is marked below.
This path is broken up into one and two digit numbers which
correspond to the blanks in puzzle 40. Translating via the letters
that go on those blanks gives:
| 4 |
36 |
12 |
23 |
38 |
30 |
29 |
32 |
17 |
14 |
4 |
19 |
12 |
2 |
25 |
32 |
31 |
32 |
5 |
24 |
6 |
22 |
18 |
5 |
30 |
25 |
3 |
32 |
17 |
14 |
7 |
22 |
21 |
22 |
30 |
| F |
O |
U |
R |
N |
I |
N |
E |
F |
O |
U |
R |
N |
I |
N |
E |
S |
E |
V |
E |
N |
O |
N |
E |
S |
E |
V |
E |
N |
4949717 was a phone number. Teams were supposed to get the digits
for the path from the metapuzzle. See the metapuzzle writeup,
below.
This puzzle is based on the hidden Clue items throughout the rest
of the hunt. The locations of those items are:
| Item |
Puzzle |
Location |
| Col. Mustard |
6 |
Initials of player names in batting order |
| Prof. Plum |
N/A |
N/A |
| Mr. Green |
15 |
Sample Namystic |
| Mrs. Peacock |
30 |
Message in unused word search letters |
| Miss Scarlet |
10 |
Hidden in 17th column of Mr. Boddy's
newsgroups |
| Mrs. White |
19 |
Answers to clues 4-11 |
| Knife |
17 |
Shape in middle of diagramless solution |
| Candlestick |
8 |
Possibly a stray path in maze - DLES is
there, at least |
| Revolver |
N/A |
N/A |
| Rope |
24 |
Initials of first countries in clues 5-8 |
| Lead Pipe |
3 |
Column 13 of solved grid |
| Wrench |
16 |
Line a of first division problem, using final
alphabetic code |
| Hall |
38 |
Musical notes under victim, translated by
code in puzzle 14 |
| Lounge |
37 |
Answer 13 |
| Dining Room |
N/A |
N/A |
| Kitchen |
22 |
Cipher key written in keyboard order, bottom
row |
| Ball Room |
36 |
Answer to 54 across |
| Conservatory |
35 |
Vertically in boxes 40 to 36 |
| Billiard Room |
32 |
Initial letters of several steps of the
following directions |
| Library |
26 |
Refill RED HERRING from other clues. |
| Study |
18 |
Initials of answers G-K |
The items not hidden in puzzles make up the solution to this
puzzle, as in the Clue board game. These are to be written on the
blanks, one letter per blank, not leaving gaps for spaces between
words. There also appears to be an erratum to add an extra blank
to the first set and renumber the others.
Who?
| P |
R |
O |
F |
E |
S |
S | O |
R |
P |
L |
U |
M |
||
| 1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
8 |
9 |
10 |
11 |
12 |
13 |
14 |
15 |
What?
| R |
E |
V |
O |
L |
V |
E |
R |
||||
| 16 |
17 |
18 |
19 |
20 |
21 |
22 |
23 |
24 |
25 |
26 |
27 |
Where?
| D |
I |
N |
I |
N |
G |
R |
O |
O |
M |
||||
| 28 |
29 |
30 |
31 |
32 |
33 |
34 |
35 |
36 |
37 |
38 |
39 |
40 |
41 |
The first part of the metapuzzle is puzzle 13.
Each of the double-crostic clues is an anagram of the first word of the flavor text of one of the other puzzles in this hunt. (Note the erratum that makes clue C "exclaims" and reorders the numbers for clue Q.) The puzzle answers are the clue answers.
The space in MACK TRUCK, which is explicitly encoded in puzzle
17, gets put on a blank and becomes a space in the quotation
answer. There is no acrostic in the clue answers, or if there is,
we do not have the key to decipher it.
| # |
Clue |
Anagram |
Puzzle |
Answer |
| A |
DRAINAGE |
GARDENIA |
26 |
ORBSAMID |
| B |
ASCERTAIN |
CARTESIAN |
20 |
PENTOXIDE |
| C |
EXCLAIMS |
CLIMAXES |
15 |
FAVORITE |
| D |
ASPIRATE |
PARASITE |
25 |
DRUMMERS |
| E |
ALTERING |
INTEGRAL |
7 |
SUPERMAN |
| F |
PERTAINS |
PAINTERS |
34 |
ESCAROLE |
| G |
RELATION |
ORIENTAL |
23 |
VIVACITY |
| H |
RATIONALES |
SENATORIAL |
19 |
DEMONSOUND |
| I |
CLAIMERS |
MIRACLES |
2 |
SPARTATN |
| J |
IDEAS |
ASIDE |
9 |
36264 |
| K |
ASSISTANT |
SATANISTS |
28 |
BLUELIGHT |
| L |
EMIGRANTS |
MASTERING |
5 |
WITTICISM |
| M |
DECORATION |
COORDINATE |
17 |
MACK_TRUCK |
| N |
READIES |
DEARIES |
21 |
ROBOCOP |
| O |
SUPREME |
PRESUME |
16 |
WHIFFED |
| P |
PRETTINESS |
PERSISTENT |
33 |
REGULATION |
| Q |
ANCESTRAL |
LANCASTER |
12 |
LUAPTNIAS |
| R |
RAWNESS |
ANSWERS |
37 |
REALITY |
| S |
DESCRIPTION |
PREDICTIONS |
36 |
NINETYFIFTH |
| T |
CROUTONS |
CONTOURS |
32 |
ITSAHOAX |
The quotation then spells the message:
To advance, you must overlay US and MIT maps. Match east vertex of 34 with Pulaski, TN; SE corner of 2 with Rock Rapids, IA; and Point 66 to Bad Axe, MI. Read the MIT Gemini Public LEGIBLY for further instructions.
Some of the pages at the end of the original packet contain email
messages that appear to be printed from GEMINI@MIT.EDU. Apparently
there was some public mechanism to access these messages. There
are several of these, with names that differ by only a few
characters, and there may well have been even more but the solving
team had narrowed it to these.
The Gemini files are encoded using a simple code in which the
sums of each pair of consecutive numbers within a word are
alphabet indexes of the letters in the message. Punctuation is
provided. The files other than LEGIBLY encode various pieces of
literature, though they break off at some point into encoded text
of some sort. But the LEGIBLY file contains instructions (and no
additional encoded text):
Greetings from beyond the grave. It is I, Phillip Boddy, with some final words for you. The remaining puzzles form a chain that you must follow. Each node of this chain contains two puzzles: One whose answer is a location and one whose answer is a word or name (this is the keyword). Puzzle zero points to the first node in this chain. To follow the chain, go to the MIT location that corresponds with the location given by part one of the node. Look on the wall for the keyword given by part two of the node. When you find it, do two things: Write down the word that immediately follows the keyword because it is the pointer to the next node. Also write down all of the room numbers on the flat stretch of wall on which the keyword appears. Write down all of the digits (building and room). Do not count any room numbers that are across the hall from the keyword. Do not go around any corners or into any alcoves deeper than a door jamb. Do not go through any doors. After you get all of the numbers, go up one floor and proceed to the next node. First node is located on the zeroth floor, node two is on the first floor, and so forth.
Cleverly, this file does not contain the correspondence between
MIT locations and US map locations, so if somebody stumbled upon
this early, it would not be enough to get started on this
runaround. Puzzle 13's answer is needed (and that points here, so
if they have that, they will get this).
Note that this message says that the remaining puzzles form a chain. 20 of the 41 puzzles were used in puzzle 13's solution, and puzzle 13 got us here, leaving 20 other puzzles. Puzzle 38 provided a map to use in the overlay from puzzle 13's solution. Puzzle 0 is explicitly mentioned as the start of the chain. The other 18 puzzles form pairs based on the location given in the puzzle's title, and furthermore these locations are the 9 rooms in the Clue game.
Since this requires finding words that were posted on walls in 1995 and are almost certainly not there today (and for that matter, the room numbers and even the buildings might no longer be there), it would appear we cannot proceed farther. However, the solving team left some information about this part of the metapuzzle on page 3 of the packet that appears in the archive.
| Pointer |
Clue Room |
Location Puzzle |
Location |
Keyword Puzzle |
Keyword |
MIT Location |
| SUITE |
Lounge |
31 |
Hooker, OK |
22 |
ENGINEERING |
1-0xx |
| MATERIALS |
Dining Room |
8 |
Mt. Vernon, KY |
29 |
BLUE LIGHT |
20E-1xx |
| LEAD |
Study |
10 |
Erie, PA |
24 |
ALEXANDER |
? |
| RICH |
Kitchen |
30 |
Lake Charles, LA |
1 |
FIRE |
35-3xx |
| ALARM |
Billiard Room |
18 |
53140 (Kenosha, WI) |
6 |
DELIVERIES |
54-4xx |
| SHOULD |
Conservatory |
3 |
Longview, TX |
14 |
SHIQIANG |
9-5xx |
| AND |
Hall |
11 |
35768 (Hytop and Scottsboro, AL) |
27 |
JOEL |
see below |
| HE |
Library |
35 |
Effingham, IL |
4 |
EITHER |
16-7xx |
| THE |
Ballroom |
40 |
Prof. Plum, revolver, Dining Room |
39 |
4949717 |
Pay phone at intersection of buildings 8, 16,
26 |
Just as the double-crostic clues in puzzle 13 were anagrams of the first word of the flavor text to the puzzles they referenced, the pointer words (starting with SUITE from puzzle 0 and then taking the word that appeared on the wall after each answer at the locations they went to) are the first words (not anagrammed) of the flavor text of the puzzles that give location answers.
Here is a map of the US
with the relevant locations marked, and here
is the MIT map with the overlay. Note that the US map needs to be
flipped over to make the associations given in the double-crostic
answer work. (For this purpose, we have reconstructed an MIT map
to show Building 20 in its correct location, where the Stata
Center is today. There may be other differences, but they are not
relevant for the locations found so far.
All of the locations in this overlay agree with the buildings the solving team identified (the ones they highlighted; there also appears to be another attempt with different locations such as Johnson AC which are simply wrong), except one. The Hall answer seems to fall near the junction of buildings 34 and 36, but the solving team has written 33 here (and crossed it out, and did not highlight it). I'm not sure how they decided on Madison, but even if that is wrong, it is going to be somewhere in Alabama, somewhere near these buildings.
So here's how the complete endgame works:
Note that, while the sequence of numbers breaks down into believable MIT room numbers (4-361, 2-233, 8-302, 9-321, 7-144, 19-122, 25-323, 13-2524, 6-221, 8-530, 25-332, 17-147, 2-221, 2-230), these buildings do not match the sequence of the runaround. So it much have been that these room numbers were on signs on those walls, and not, for instance, on doors to rooms.
The files other than LEGIBLY at the end of the packet are
probably all red herrings. They include:
Strangely, though, each one of these turns into gibberish part
way through. Here is an example:
PERMIT ME TO REPEAT, EMPHATICALLY, THAT MARLEY WAS AS DEAD AS A
DOORNADRJ ROWEVM ASREJFJED SKTPSKCF. QDJKGLK DKLR WSE SPGJSGE SJ E
SKEFOAS FDKJROAAA SEKJFIW DLKVNMF DFS, RJLJ RO S FKG RKJTP REJ
GJRIPE DRFJKSDSD SDK WE AWRS. DDFGKJASKL CK ROGJSDF SLWEKOV KD
REOKP RFGKDS SDL GREOGOI REJIG VE. FERK SD EO A TREIOJ SDKIP
ONHGKW ZJD GEOKV, EWRGJ QAWOI FJEIC D RIF TIJ GSIMU DIFMS PROKF
ERG. WFJ ASID JER H ERIOJPJXL RIJ RIASFD EDJZ FSA.
The frequency analysis on the gibberish shows a very weird
distribution, with the vast majority of the letters being those on
the home row of a QWERTY keyboard, so I think it is safe to say
that the gibberish is really meaningless, and was just typed by
banging on the keyboard.
The mechanism by which these files are encoded includes a degree
of freedom in each word, since each letter is the sum of two
consecutive numbers and there is one more number than there are
letters in the word. This degree of freedom is embodied by the
first number in each word's encoding, which is always between -25
and 25 (though later numbers, depending on the letters in the
word, do not necessarily maintain this pattern), and it is the
same sequence in each of the files:
19, -10, 11, -3, -13, -11, -24, -11, -6, 16, 25, 10, -6, -18, 12,
-15, 2, 25, 10, 13, -16, 3, -10, -14, 12, -21, 3, -22, -25, 13,
-17, 9, -8, -16, 13, -23, -4, 2, 21, -8, -15, 8, -4, 7, -15, 15,
-8, 1, -18, 17, -3, 7, -2, 23, 19, 4, -1, -17, 11, 8, -21, -5,
-11, -12, -1, -21, -12, -6, -1, 13, -17, -11, -23, 18, 9, 16, -3,
23, -3, 11, -20, 4, -4, 9, 5, -4, 4, 6, -1, -18, -11, 19, -10,
-17, 11, -10, -23, -1, 16, -2, -9, 10, -24, 15, 17, -5, -8, 24,
-8, -19, -17, 22, 1, 4, -15, -15, -22, 6, 21, 7, 17, 2, -16, -10,
-1, -19, 6, 1, -10, 16, 20, 2, -19, 23, 18, -25, 16, -14, -5, 3,
8, -15, 12, 25, 19, 22, 1, 9, 14, 3, -14, -7, -14, 8, 24, 25, -13,
17, -25, -19, 13, -17, -8, 6, -12, 19, -12, -12, 4, -5, 20, 16,
-15, 13, -10, -25, 16, -2, 15, 10, 5, 4, -15, -19, -19, -14, -21,
-17, -3, -6, -11, -10, -18, 14, 1
Does this encode a message? If so, I do not know what it is.
Finally, there are two other files at the end which are not in
the same format as the others. One of them is an X11 bitmap which
leads to this small icon of what I think represents somebody
losing their brain (original file here):
Maybe this icon appeared on the signs the teams were looking for
in the runaround?
The last bit is what appears to be an earlier version of the
runaround from puzzle 21. It includes some odd formatting commands
which seem to be the Andrew file format described here.
The runaround instructions are identical, except that the number
which is the difference between two room numbers where there is a
warp in the runaround path is just asterisks in this version. The
flavor text is different in several ways. And the instructions on
how to extract an answer at the end are missing.
It doesn't make any sense why this file is here.
