MIT Mystery Hunt Puzzle Index

Yes, an index. So we can find the puzzles that have previously been done on a topic.

What's in the Index?

All the Hunts from 1994-1997 and 1999-2023 are indexed. 1999 was re-indexed after the April 2013 archive update provided a lot of the missing information and solutions. Many thanks to Aaron Dinkin of Metaphysical Plant for helping get the 2011 puzzles added, and Seth Schoen of Codex for the 2012 puzzles, as well as all the people who have helped fill in gaps in the Mystery Hunt archive. The 1998 hunt is mostly missing from the archives, but some puzzles that we have some info about are indexed.

How do I access it?

In any of these ways:

See the complete index on one page (very long)
See the list of keywords (2292)
See the list of puzzles (3524)
See the list of puzzles sorted by title
See the list of categories (21)
See the list of hunts (30)
See the list of authors (947)

New Features

A bunch of stuff:

We got a little more info about the 1998 Hunt, and some fragmentary puzzles are listed in the index.
There are now synonyms! I still have a lot more synonyms to add, but it is now easy for me to do.
I have added some new categories as subdivisions of the Puzzle types category.
I have given all the crossword variants names, which you can find under the new Crosswords category.
The languages and invented languages keywords have changed. All the specific languages now have individual keywords within the Language category containing "language" or "conlang" in the keyword. The languages keyword still has certain special cases, and invented languages has puzzles which invented a one-off language used only in that puzzle.
Some things under the Language category were moved to the new Wordplay category.
Puzzles in the wordplay (other) keyword have been reindexed, in many cases moving them to more specific keywords that have been added more recently.
Some miscellaneous cleanup, including merging a few pairs of keywords which were really the same thing, now using synonyms.
I also encountered some puzzle types not represented in the index yet and listed them here.
The authors credited for puzzles in each Hunt appear at the end of the page for the Hunt.
Another new category, Puzzle Mechanics.

Keep sending feedback via those links on every page to let me know what's wrong, but hold off on suggesting synonyms or category suggestions for now.

What remains to be added?

The 1984, 1986, 1987 MIT Mystery Hunts - solutions available
The 1988, 1990, and (mostly) 1998 MIT Mystery Hunts - not in the archive.
Other old MIT Mystery Hunts - no solutions available currently

Future Development

I am considering adding other non-Mystery Hunt puzzle hunts to this index. To be eligible, a puzzle hunt should:

Have freely accessible archives of puzzles online
Have a web site at a stable URL for a period of time
Have solutions available online somewhere, or I have solutions for them I can post
Not be an ongoing event people are expected to still be solving (i.e., solvers are not still asked to keep solutions secret)

Old MUMS, CISRA, SUMS (one SUMS is missing), the Harvard hunt, DASH, BAPHL, the RIT CS hunts, Mark Halpin's Labor Day hunts, and the Googol Conglomerate game are candidates. PuzzleCrack fails on having a stable website; only 2007 and 2008 are up now, 2008 without solutions. Sekkrets, The Stone, Puzzle Boat, and Panda Magazine are not eligible because access is still limited to what you have solved/opened via a logged in account and/or paid for. TimeHunt and Retrocogitator are not eligible because the puzzles are not online. And there are a ton of other ones in recent years I haven't gotten around to considering.