MIT Mystery Hunt Puzzle Index: Category Index

MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 Sculptural Disassembly
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Goliath's Goof

arukone

See Number Link puzzle

assembly puzzles

audio crossword

A crossword puzzle in which the clues are spoken, and it's part of the puzzle to distinguish homophones within the clues.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Fret Not!

Back and Forth (puzzle type)

In the standard form of this puzzle, a grid is provided that has spaces for three letter groups to be entered on alternate sides of a central axis. The answers are six letters long, using two consecutive groups, and read in alternating directions, so that each answer begins with the last three letters of the previous answer, reversed. Standard crossword-like clues are provided.

MIT Mystery Hunt 1995 5: Attic

backswitch

A backswitch is a type of flat from the National Puzzlers' League. In this puzzle, the last letter of a word or phrase is changed and the remaining letters are reversed, resulting in another word or phrase.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 A Puzzle with the Answer LYNN

Bag puzzle

See Corral puzzle

Balance Loop logic puzzle

In this closed-loop-drawing puzzle, the loop passes through all the cells with circles. At white circles, the line travels the same number of cells on either side of the circle before turning, and at black circles, it travels a different number of cells on each side before turning. A number on the circle tells the sum of the straight segments on each side of the circle up to the next turn, even if the path goes through other circles before turning.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Dancing Triangles

balance puzzle

The standard form of this puzzle includes a set of two or more hanging beams marked off in equally spaced intervals, with weights and/or other beams hanging at some of the marked points. This structure, a bit like a mobile, is meant to balance by the torque rule - for each beam, the sum of (weight x distance to fulcrum) for all weights on one side of the fulcrum equals that sum for the other side, the fulcrum in this case being the point the beam hangs from. The beams themselves are weightless but convey the total weight of the weights they hold to the beam they hang from. The values of the weights must be filled in from a predetermined set, usually 1 to N where N is the number of weights.

MIT Mystery Hunt 1995 20: Art Gallery

barred crossword

The style of grid commonly used in variety cryptics where heavy bars rather than black squares separate words, but with straight clues (or other variants as indicated).
When this is combined with diagramless crossword it indicates a puzzle where there my be no given bars, but words may be entered consecutively with no breaks within the puzzle, and the puzle does not fit into another named type.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2004 IHS
MIT Mystery Hunt 2005 It's Still Not About the Bike
MIT Mystery Hunt 2010 Tower House
MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 High Rollers
MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 Gravitational Pull
MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 It's Not Easy
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Catenoid
MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Potions
MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Broken Wheel
MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 5D Barred Diagramless with Multiverse Time Travel

Battleships (puzzle)

The standard form of this puzzle consists of a grid with numeric clues outside the grid and possibly parts of the solution given inside the grid. You have to locate a fleet of ships (usually 1 of length 4, 2 of length 3, 3 of length 2, and 4 of length 1) in the grid, such that no two ships occupy adjacent cells (even diagonally) and the number of occupied cells in each row and column matches the given number. Givens may appear as a circle (length 1 ship), square (interior piece of a length 3 of longer ship), half-square-half-circle (end of a length 2 or longer ship), or wavy lines (no ship).

before and after

This is like the Wheel of Fortune category, where two phrases overlap by a common word. This is distinguished from word chains because here the parts are whole words or names and usually in short chains of 2 or 3 phrases (3 or 4 parts).

bigrams

MIT Mystery Hunt 1999 Phnom Penh
MIT Mystery Hunt 1999 Copenhagen
MIT Mystery Hunt 2002 MGM Grand (Red Meta) (repeated)
MIT Mystery Hunt 2003 Round 1 Meta
MIT Mystery Hunt 2003 Round 7 Meta
MIT Mystery Hunt 2004 Altar (Meta)
MIT Mystery Hunt 2004 Cardinal Rule's Chapel
MIT Mystery Hunt 2004 The French Armada (Meta)
MIT Mystery Hunt 2011 Meta testing!
MIT Mystery Hunt 2011 Minus Man Meta
MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 Behave
MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Clockwork Oran.ge
MIT Mystery Hunt 2015 Go At It!
MIT Mystery Hunt 2015 Back and Forth
MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 Bigram Battleships
MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 Get Her! Together!
MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Ornaments
MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Tough Enough
MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Clued Connections
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Infinite Corridor Simulator
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Infinite Corridor
MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Fruit Around
MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Once is Happenstance
MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Double Entendre
MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 A Crying Shamus
MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 My Fun Bow
MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 MATE's META
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Cubo
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Steam Library

black and white (logic puzzle)

In the standard form of this puzzle type, a grid is given with black circles in some squares and white circles in others, but mostly blank. To solve it you must fill in either a white circle or a black circle in each box so that all the white circles form a single orthogonally connected group, and the black circles also form such a group, and no 2x2 region is all the same color.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2015 Polyglot
MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Make Love or War

Black Box crosswords

Locate mirrors in the grid to make the sight lines connect as indicated, and then enter crossword answers along the sightlines.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2009 Space Ghosts, Coast to Coast

Black Box (game)

Black Box is a puzzle-like game where one player tries to determine the locations of hidden atoms in a grid by observing how the atoms reflect rays entering the box from various locations. It can also be solved as a puzzle, given a predetermined set of ray results.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Aria

black box (solver must figure out inner workings)

This differs from discover the hidden rules in that these puzzles are more interactive.

block-style crossword

This is the traditional type of grid for cryptic crosswords but applied to crosswords with straigfht cluing. Typically every other row and every other column has every other square blacked in, so that the letters in these lines are unchecked. Additional black squares separate the otherwise full rows and columns into words.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2006 Fusion
MIT Mystery Hunt 2007 Thinking Outside the Box
MIT Mystery Hunt 2007 When (Not) in Rome
MIT Mystery Hunt 2015 Hash
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Storybook Pals
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Pile of Tiles
MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Terminal
MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 How Come This Crossword Got No Grid One?

Bongard problems

Given two sets of items, what feature is shared by all the items in one set and none of the items in the other?

MIT Mystery Hunt 2011 Pattern Recognition

Bonza puzzles

Bonza is a puzzle app in which each puzzle consists of small segments (typically 2-4 letters) of a solved criss-cross puzzle which you have to reassemble like jigsaw pieces.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 Bits of Nomenclature, Zoned Appropriately
MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Protein

Bridges puzzle

See hashiwokakero

Building Blocks puzzle

See lettered dice

Bulls-Eye 20 Questions

In the standard form of this puzzle, a set of words are given in a set of concentric rings and there are a series of questions, often wordplay related, which can be answered with the given words.

MIT Mystery Hunt 1998 Extracurricular Activity Skeet Shooting Club
MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 Tree Rings

bullseye crossword

In this round crossword puzzle, all the words read in toward the center. Inner rings have fewer spaces and words starting in adjacent groups of outer spaces come together and share inner spaces.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 Novaldex 04-Z Cryogenic Power Generator

burr puzzles

These are physical puzzles where a set of solid pieces must be assembled so that the pieces interlock and form some tight shape (or alternatively, disassembled from that solved state). The traditional form consists of six 2x2x6 blocks with various cubes or other parts cut out of their middles, with a solution where two pieces run lengthwise along each of three perpendicular axes. Other forms of puzzles based on interlocking polycubes are sometimes included in this category.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2001 Papyrophobia
MIT Mystery Hunt 2011 Worthy of Picasso

calcudoku

See KenKen

cartoon rebuses

Cartoon rebuses are a type of puzzle made popular during the contest craze of the early 20th century and revived in Games Magazine. A single black and white comic-style scene conceals a name or phrase by breaking it up into parts which combine, phonetically, as in a rebus (but without subtraction) to form the answer phrase. Each part is depicted in the cartoon, possibly as a word in a dialogue, a letter on a shirt, a pictured object, or something strongly implied by the scene. These parts are hidden among other irrelevant bits to make a comic scene. A category and the enumeration of the letters in each word of the answer is given.

MIT Mystery Hunt 1995 34: Drawing Room
MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 What The...

Castawords puzzle

See lettered dice

catenoid crossword

A crossword based on a model of a catenoid. Effectively, when flattened, the puzzle is equivalent to a grid of squares which have been cut in half diagonally in alternate directions, with words reading in the rows and columns. You could think of it each square having two letters, but the squares alternate as to whether the letters are read in the same order both directions, or in opposite orders.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Catenoid

cathedral crossword

This was a unique crossword variant invented for this puzzle.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 How To Build Your Own Cathedral

Cave puzzle

See Corral puzzle

Cell Structure puzzle

See Nurikabe

charades

Any sort of cluing words by parts, such as automobile + domestic animal = floor covering (car + pet = carpet). It may or may not be phonetic. It may or may not include cluing by gestures as in the parlor game of this name.

Cheryl's Birthday problem

This is a kind of information deduction problem. Two people are each given incomplete information about some fact (in the original, the month and day of Cheryl's birth) and they make statements which progressively reveal more information to the other. Both the solver and the other character make deductions based on the idea that when one character does not know something, it means there are still two possibilities with all the information that character knows (including half the answer).

MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Ignorance
MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Strange Garnets

ClueKeeper

An online location-based puzzle hunt system hosted at cluekeeper.com and in the ClueKeeper app.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Satellite Swing
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Fortune Teller
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Jungle Cruise
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Green Tee

combo meals puzzle

In this puzzle type, there are several columns of words or phrases, and you have to match up multiple items, one from each column, to form a clue phrase, a set of things that go together somehow, etc.

MIT Mystery Hunt 1996 7C
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Deposit at the Word Bank

connect the dots

MIT Mystery Hunt 1995 7: Observatory
MIT Mystery Hunt 1997 Bill & Ted's Bogus Mystery Hunt
MIT Mystery Hunt 2007 I Need to Connect With You, Baby
MIT Mystery Hunt 2008 Picture Puzzle
MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 Ring Around the Music
MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 Up in the Air
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Ox (Bull)
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Inner Tube Adventure Float
MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Where the Wild Things Are

consonantcies

Puzzles where words share the same consonants in the same order, with any vowels.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2009 Round 1 Meta
MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 Disemvoweled
MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 Obedience Training (Meta)
MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 Zodiac Quest
MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 1, 2, 3
MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 Lesser Works
MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Radio Play
MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Clued Connections
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Peak Adventure
MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Watership Down
MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Synonym Toast
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Second Helpings

Corral puzzle

The standard form of this puzzle is a grid with numbers in some cells. A single closed loop is to be drawn along the edges of the grid so that all the numbers are inside the loop, and the number of squares in the row and column through each number, going up to the first part of the loop encountered in each direction, and counting the cell with the number once, equals the number. The instructions for Cave have you shade in the cells outside the loop, but with rules which make it functionally the same puzzle.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2008 Chimera
MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Portals
MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 Magic Mushrooms
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Cactus Ranch
MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Dancing Triangles
MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Flooded Caves

Country Road (puzzle type)

This Nikoli puzzle type has a grid broken into multiple rooms. Some rooms contain a number. You must draw a loop through the grid, entering and exiting each room once, and using the number of squares indicated in rooms with a number. Orthogonally adjacent cells in different rooms cannot both be unused.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 Laratel WF-15 Fusion Reactor

Creek puzzle

Creek is a Nikoli logic puzzle type. A grid contains circled numbers at some of its intersections. Blacken some squares so that of the 4 squares around each number, that number of squares are black, and so that the empty squares form a single orthogonally connected group.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Portals

criss-cross

In its standard form, this puzzle consists of a loosely interlocking grid and a list of words to be filled in. You must use logic and elimination to figure out where to place the words. A fill-in puzzle is one where the grid is dense like an American crossword. See also disconnected criss-cross and diagramless criss-cross. This category includes puzzles where the word list is clued rather than provided, but if the clues are associated with specific entries, this becomes a crossword puzzle instead.

cross-number puzzle

This is a crossword puzzle where the answers are numbers written with digits. These puzzles are usually full of cross-references and clues which limit their answers to certain subsets of integers, and usually follow the rule (as in many numerical puzzles) leading zeroes are not allowed.

MIT Mystery Hunt 1997 Two MIT Students Claim Elvis Was Their 6.001 TA!
MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 QED
MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Lost to Time

Cross Products (Cross Sums variant)

This is like a Cross Sums except the product of the digits in each entry is given, rather than the sum.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2008 Cursed
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Why The Romans Never Invented Logic Puzzles

cross-stitch crossword

In this crossword puzzle, answers are entered in an X shape (with the letter at the center of the X appearing twice in the answer).

MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Cross-stitched Words

Cross Sums

This is one of the most popular numerical puzzle types. In its standard form, a crossword-like grid has clues in the grid providing the sum of the digits to be entered in each entry. No zeroes are used and no entry contains any digit more than once.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2001 23
MIT Mystery Hunt 2003 Some Stars
MIT Mystery Hunt 2005 Express Yourself
MIT Mystery Hunt 2007 The Joy of Accountancy
MIT Mystery Hunt 2009 Cross Something-Or-Others (numerous variations)
MIT Mystery Hunt 2011 Technological Crisis at Shikakuro Farms (variant)
MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 The Signs They Are A-Changin’ (variant)
MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 Kroskuro
MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 Stackuro

crossword puzzles

The standard American-style crossword puzzle, occasionally with a more open-form grid than usual. See crossword variants for those where words are entered in unusual ways, and cryptic crosswords for puzzles with cryptic or British-style cluing.

Modern crossword puzzles sometimes include one of a number of tricks, and naturally these show up in hunts as well. Among these are the rebus crossword in which more than one letter is written into a few squares of the crossword, and deletion or letter change themes in which the theme entries are modified in some way to fit into the grid.

crosswords on the landscape

Using the shapes of buildings, paths, etc. as crossword grids.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 Hedgehogs and Flamingos
MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 Fun Sized
MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 It's Not Easy
MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 It's Not Normal
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Hockfield Court

crostic puzzle

See double crostic

crushword puzzle

See 1, 2, 3 crossword

cryptarithms

See alphametics (encoded arithmetic)

cryptic crossword clues

(cryptic crossword clues whose solutions do not go into a grid)

cryptic crosswords

The standard British-style crossword or cryptic crossword, where clues usually consist of a straight definition and a wordplay clue concatenated in either order. This category includes cryptic double-crostics and the like, but see cryptic crossword clues for puzzles where the clues stand alone and their answers do not go into some sort of grid. American cryptics are defined rigidly by a set of rules from British setter Ximenes, presented to American audiences by Stephen Sondheim in 1968, while British ones are often looser in applying these rules.

cryptograms

(all simple substitution ciphers, but see alphametic for cryptic math puzzles)

curved line nonogram

This is what it sounds like. It works much like a standard nonogram except the lines aren't straight. There are numbers on one side of each end of each line which tell the lengths of the consecutive groups of boxes on that side of the line which are shaded - but the boxes may have more or fewer than 4 sides!

MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Where the Wild Things Are

deficit sudoku

See udoku

deletions and insertions

Includes curtailments and beheadments, and some deletions of multiple letters. Note that an insertion is simply a deletion in reverse, and with some mechanisms it may be unclear which way to interpret such mechanics, so they are considered together here.

diagonalizing

(reading an answer from a series of words by reading the first letter of the first, second letter of the second, etc.)

diagramless criss-cross

There are two standard versions of this puzzle. In one, you're given one starting word in a big open grid, and you are given not only the word list but also the list of words that cross each word, in order. In the other, you're given the word list, and the grid is pre-filled with all occurrences of one or more letters which are frequent in the word list (sometimes rebus-style, with a word of two or more letters written into the pre-filled cells, though the other squares are normal).

MIT Mystery Hunt 2007 This Puzzle Has Been Formatted to Fit Your Screen
MIT Mystery Hunt 2015 Treasure Chest Meta
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Snack Bar
MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Personal Connections

diagramless crossword

A crossword puzzle for which the grid is not given. In the standard form, the American crossword standards are enforced rigidly; there are no unchecked letters or two-letter words and the grid has 180-degree rotational symmetry. Numbers are sequential in lexical order.

Dicey Words

See lettered dice

disconnected criss-cross

This puzzle contains multiple criss-cross grids with just two words in each. Some additional relationship is necessary to constrain which two words cross in each grid.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2002 Cross Breeding
MIT Mystery Hunt 2009 Teller's Window
MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 Now Let's Create Melodies
MIT Mystery Hunt 2015 The ___er of Men
MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 Missed Connections
MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 Crossing Your Arms
MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 Build

discover the hidden rules

In these puzzles there are rules, usually categorization or transformation rules on words or strings of letters, that you have to figure out from examples. black box (solver must figure out inner workings) has interactive puzzles of this sort.

domino puzzle

(divide the grid into a set of dominoes)

MIT Mystery Hunt 1996 10B
MIT Mystery Hunt 2005 Simple Unassuming Logic Puzzles

Dominosa

See domino puzzle

Dotty dilemma puzzle

See fences puzzle

double crostic

In the standard form of this puzzle, clue answers are written on a set of numbered blanks, then transferred into a grid where words (usually spelling a quotation) read only across, wrapping around the ends of rows. Normally, each number appears only once among the answers and the grid contains the letter of the clue which uses that number, so that you can also work from the grid back to the clues. The initial letters of the answers, in clue order, spell out the source of the quotation (sometimes abbreviated).

double-or-nothing crossword

A variant of the 1, 2, 3 crossword in which each square contains 0 or 2 letters.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 Emergency Deportation

double trouble crossword

See 1, 2, 3 crossword

drawing letters and numbers

(Any puzzle where the solution provides lines or a matrix of pixels that form letter and number shapes, or occasionally other characters.)

dropquotes

In the standard form of this puzzle, a grid is given with black squares to separate words (which otherwise wrap around the ends of rows), and the letters that go in each column are given, in alphabetized or scrambled order, above that column. The solution is a quotation (whose source is usually not given in the puzzle).

Dungeons and Diagrams (logic puzzle)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Reactivation

Easy as ABC puzzle

See End View puzzle

Edel puzzle

MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 MIT Meta
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Badges Badges Badges Badges Badges Badges Badges Badges Badges

edge matching puzzles

A variety of jigsaw puzzle where the pieces are all the same shape (usually square) and they are to be joined so as to match halves of small images which appear split across each edge, rather than a single large image. As such, it is really more of a combinatorial matching puzzle.

Einstein's puzzle

See logic puzzle based on elimination

End View puzzle

Also called Easy as ABC, this is a kind of Latin square puzzle in which each row is to be filled with the same set of different letters and some number of blank spaces. Outside the grid, clues indicate the first non-blank at that end of that row or column.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2005 Easy as ABC
MIT Mystery Hunt 2010 Sequencer
MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 Paint it Black
MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Hall of Archaeology

Equation Analysis Test (26 = L. in the A.)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2004 20000 = L. under the S.
MIT Mystery Hunt 2005 21 Equations to Solve
MIT Mystery Hunt 2006 All for One and One for All
MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 Screen Test
MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 A Tearable Puzzle

escape room

MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 The Wizard's Escape
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Escape! Hayden Library
MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 A Wrinkle in Time

Every Second Turn

See Alternate Corners puzzle

fake puzzle

MIT Mystery Hunt 1998 19.7 Cryptography

false negatives

A false negative is a word that begins with the letters that form a prefix which negates a word, for which the prefix letters may be removed to yield another word, but where the prefix is not actually a prefix and the words are actually unrelated. This is a specific puzzle type in the National Puzzlers' League (where it is generalized to other types of falseness) but the concept is used elsewhere as well. See also false comparatives.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 Opposites Are Not Downbeats

false plurals

A flat type from the NPL in which one word is modified into another by applying the transformation associated with the irregular plural of another word. For instance, MAN pluralizes to MEN, so any other A to E change might be considered a false plural based on this model.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Bundles

fences puzzle

In the standard form of this puzzle, a grid is presented as dots at the vertices, and some cells contain a number. You must draw a single closed loop along the lattice lines so that for each cell with a number, that number of its 4 sides are used in the loop.

Figure Logic puzzle

See cross-number puzzle

Fill-a-Pix

This is a logic puzzle very much like the Minesweeper game but all the clues you are going to get are provided initially, and spaces with clues may also contain mines (in which case they include themselves in their count). Puzzles without this self-counting behavior are classified under Minesweeper instead.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2010 Queasy Reaction
MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Where the Wild Things Are

fill-in puzzle

This is essentially a criss-cross puzzle with a list of words to be entered into a grid, but the grid is dense like an American-style crossword or variety cryptic with few or no unchecked letters.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2006 Pen Rose

Fillomino puzzle

The standard form of this puzzle consists of a grid where some cells initially have a number. To solve it, fill numbers into the remaining cells so that each orthogonally connected group of the same number consists of as many cells as that number. There may be zero, one, or more than one number given for each group. Also called Filliamond on triangular grids.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2007 Puzzle Editing
MIT Mystery Hunt 2011 Nik-holey
MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 Magic Mushrooms
MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Connect Four
MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Dancing Triangles
MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Hall of Archaeology
MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 World's Largest Logic Puzzle

find the differences

MIT Mystery Hunt 2005 Special Art Exhibition
MIT Mystery Hunt 2006 Counting Your Chickens...
MIT Mystery Hunt 2007 I Want Some Popcorn and Cotton Candy And . . .
MIT Mystery Hunt 2011 A Modern Palimpsest (a video find-the-differences puzzle)
MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 Highlights
MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 Campus Art from Z to A
MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 Spot the Dog
MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 A Trip to the Museum

find the list

(puzzles where a key step in the solution is to find a well-known list of items given the lengths or similar information)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2000 Lions and Tigers and Bears!
MIT Mystery Hunt 2002 Minor Inconsistencies
MIT Mystery Hunt 2003 Paranoia

Fit-In puzzle

See fill-in puzzle

flats (NPL puzzles)

These are verse puzzles where the answers are words with some sort of wordplay relationship, and they are missing from the verse (typically replaced by other all-caps words, the cue words, which, when necessary, explain which word goes where). The wordplay relationships which flats use can appear in other types of puzzles without the actual verse that makes the puzzle a flat. Many of the wordplay types can be found as their own keywords in the Wordplay category including backswitches, charades, consonantcies, deletions, false flats, heteronyms, homophones, letter banks, letter changes, letter shifts, palindromes, rebuses, reduplications, reversals, and spoonerisms.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2005 1-1=2
MIT Mystery Hunt 2011 Flat Head
MIT Mystery Hunt 2015 Flat Containers
MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 Something for Everyone
MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 Flattery Will Get You Nowhere

flower power puzzle

See petal puzzle

following directions

The original puzzle by this name is where you write some some string of letters and follow a complicated series of steps (such as moving the second consonant to the end) to transform it into something else. Some of these puzzles are essentially like this, but this is Mystery Hunt, so some are vastly more complicated. See also Duck Konundrum.

forms (word squares and others)

Forms are small crossword-like puzzles with grids in simple geometric shapes. Today, in English, these are almost exclusively found in the National Puzzlers' League, with the exception of common types like word squares.

framelinks

In the standard form of this puzzle, a block-style crossword grid has all the unchecked letters filled in. The letters that go into the intersections are given as a bank of letters.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2007 When (Not) in Rome

Fraternal Twins puzzle

In this word puzzle type, two copies of a snaking path are divided into six-letter sections. Words are entered one directly after the other along each path, and corresponding 6-letter segments have the same letters, but not in the same order.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

gattai

See samurai sudoku

German sausage puzzle

This puzzle type from the NPL consists of two sets of clues, one set cluing shorter words, and one cluing longer words which are anagrams of two consecutive shorter answers. In the standard NPL version, both clue lists are in order and you're told exactly which short clues each long clue corresponds to. The last long clue wraps around, combining the first and last short words.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Clued Connections

Going Too Far crossword

In this crossword variant, invented by Mike Shenk, some answers are too long for their spaces, but can be made to fit by writing a letter on a black square at the start or end of the word.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 How Far?

Gokigen Naname

See Slant puzzle

Grand Tour puzzle

See path puzzles

Griddlers

MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 Staggered Starts

gryptics crossword

In the standard gryptics puzzle, you are given a 5x5 grid to fill in intersecting words, most of them extending beyond one or both edges of the grid with additional non-intersecting letters. No defintions are given, but the non-intersecting letters are all given. As a crossword variant, no letters are given but the words are clued like in a crossword puzzle.

Mark Halpin's Labor Day puzzles

MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Trickster Tales

Hanayama disassembly puzzles

MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 Sculptural Disassembly

Hanjie

hashi

See hashiwokakero

hashiwokakero

The standard form of this puzzle consists of a set of circled numbers aligned to a grid (which is not otherwise given). To solve it, add some horizontal or vertical "bridges" between the circled numbers such that the number of bridges terminating at each number is the same as that number. At most two bridges may extend in each direction from a number, and bridges never intersect or jump over numbers.

heteromino (logic puzzle)

In this logic puzzle type, a grid is provided with some black squares. You must divide the white squares into groups of three (triominoes) so that two triominoes of the same shape and orientation do not touch orthogonally.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2008 A Mind-flexing Exercise
MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 The Runaround

hexaflexagons

hexagonal crossword

A crossword on a grid of hexagons where answers are entered in straight lines in three directions.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 A Regular Crossword
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Mars Rover

Heyawake

This puzzle consists of a grid with heavy outlines dividing it into a set of rectangular regions of various sizes. Some of the individual cells are to be shaded, such that no two adjacent cells are ever shaded, all the unshaded cells form a single orthogonally connected group, and in regions with a clue number, the number of shaded cells equals that number.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2007 Puzzle Editing
MIT Mystery Hunt 2011 Nik-holey
MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Portals
MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 Magic Mushrooms
MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Dancing Triangles

Hidato puzzle

A grid with some cells filled in with numbers is given. You must fill in the remaining cells so that each number from 1 to N is used once, and you can walk a path from 1 to N with orthogonal and diagonal steps. Numbrix is a variant on Hidato where diagonal steps are not allowed.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Dancing Triangles

hidden words

Generally, this puzzle type works like the hidden word style of cryptic crossword wordplay: Answers appear among consecutive letters of words in a phrase, ignoring word boundaries and punctuation, as WORD appears in new order.

Hitori

The standard form of this puzzle consists of a grid initially filled in with a number in every cell. Some of these cells are to be shaded such that no two adjacent cells are shaded, all the unshaded cells form a single orthogonally connected group, and no two unshaded cells in the same row or column contain the same number.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2007 Puzzle Editing
MIT Mystery Hunt 2008 Witness 1 Meta
MIT Mystery Hunt 2011 Nik-holey
MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 Magic Mushrooms

homonyms

See homophones

homophones

Honeycomb crossword

The grid for this crossword uses hexagonal cells. Numbers appear in black cells and each answer is written in the six hexes around it, with the starting square and direction for each answer left to the solver to determine based on matching letters from adjacent words. There are two variations: In one, the grid is rectangular and the numbers lie in a rectangular lattice of cells. In the other, the grid is hexagonal and the rows of numbered cells are staggered so that every pair of adjacent words shares two letters. Old Dell magazines used to run both versions, calling the hexagonal-shaped grid Inner Circles.

MIT Mystery Hunt 1995 37: Angularium
MIT Mystery Hunt 2001 A Hex on You!
MIT Mystery Hunt 2002 Piles of Hexagons (variant)

Hotaru Beam puzzle

MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Schematics

impossible puzzles

MIT Mystery Hunt 1997 Bill & Ted's Bogus Mystery Hunt
MIT Mystery Hunt 1997 Runaround from Bogus Hunt
MIT Mystery Hunt 1997 Elvis Slips Through Wormhole; is Imprisoned in Alternate Reality!
MIT Mystery Hunt 2008 Endgame

Index Sums puzzle

See kakurasu

Inner Circles puzzle

See Honeycomb crossword

Islands in the Stream puzzle

See Nurikabe

jigsaw puzzles

(most of these are reconstructions of an image divided into rectangular pieces, rather than traditional jigsaw shapes)

jigsaw quote

The standard form of this puzzle consists of a 16x16 grid divided into 4x4 sections, into which a quote is to be written, with words wrapping around the ends of lines and black squares separating them. The letters to be filled in are provided, but the words and part-words within each 4x4 block are provided in sorted order, and the resulting groups are also provided in sorted order. Usually the different black squares in different sections distinguish most, but not all groups, and likewise the unique lengths of some letter strings within their groups allow some strings to be placed uniquely. Beyond that you have to figure out how to fit things so that they spell words.

MIT Mystery Hunt 1995 3: Conservatory

Jumble puzzle

This puzzle, which is syndicated in many newspapers, consists of a set of scrambled words and a row of boxes to enter each one in, some of them containing circles. The circled letters can themselves be anagrammed to form a final answer, usually a punny punch line to complete the joke caption for an accompanying cartoon image.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2008 Endgame
MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 Lets Get Ready to Jumble

jumping crossword

The jumping crossword is usually not a crossword in the conventional sense at all, since the word list is given. It's more like a criss-cross puzzle but with the extra rule that some squares will be left blank, with words simply reading across whichever letters are used (as opposed to a diagramless crossword where the unused squares mark word break). If there are black squares, they separate entries in the same row or column. In the original logic puzzle type jumping crossword, blank squares are not allowed to touch along an edge. But in Mystery Hunt we have generally had jumping crosswords that are clued like crosswords.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2003 A Pile of Letters
MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Mind the Gaps
MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Labyrinth
MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 It's Not Normal
MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Heavenly Bodice

kakurasu

Kakurasu is a grid-based logic puzzle. Given a grid and sums for each row and column, black some cells such that the values of the black cells add up to the given sums. A black cell in the first position in its row/column counts as 1 toward the sum; one in the second position counts as 2, and so on.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Extensive

Kakuro

See Cross Sums

KenKen

The standard form of this Latin square puzzle consists of a grid divided into a number of heavily outlined regions, each of which contains a small clue number and a mathematical operation. The grid is to be filled in with the numbers from 1 to N, not repeating a number within a row or column, such that the result of applying the operation in each region to the numbers filled into that region equals the clue number. IN some variants the operations may be omitted and only the numbers given.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2010 Holding Pattern
MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Agricultural Operations
MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 The Fire Swamp
MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 How To find a Component

keyed-order crossword

This crossword variant has a rectangular grid with winding marked paths on which some answers go, but you're not told which goes on each path nor in which direction it reads. Some (but not all) rows have clues for usually two words that are entered there, but they don't go in order; instead, numbers 1 to N in the cells tell which order to enter the letters in the row. Foggy calls this a Vine Garden, but I don't see any other use of the name.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 The Enchanted Garden

killer sudoku

Like regular sudoku but there are cages made of dashed lines around sections of a few cells with a clue giving the sum of the digits in the cage. Digits cannot repeat inside a cage.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 The Downtown Murders

knight's tour

As a purely mathematical puzzle, this is simply a challenge to cover each square of a grid once with a series of knight moves (as in chess). But more commonly this same sort of knight's tour occurs on a grid pre-filled with letters, so that words are spelled out along the path.

MIT Mystery Hunt 1994 28
MIT Mystery Hunt 2008 This Puzzle Needs a Title
MIT Mystery Hunt 2010 The Arena
MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Art Tours
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Chairiot Races
MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Board Members

kriss kross

See criss-cross

kurodoko

See kuromasu

kuromasu

A Nikoli puzzle type featuring a grid with circled numbers in some cells. The clues have the same meaning as in corral, each indicating the total number of squares, including itself, that you can see looking in the orthogonal directions up to the edge of the grid or the first wall. In this case, the walls are isolated black cells which cannot touch orthogonally. The white cells must remain a single orthogonally connected group. The English name for this puzzle, "where is black cells?" has bad grammar, and could describe dozens of puzzles, but is nevertheless the name used.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Reflective Screen
MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Tissues

labyrinth crossword

In this crossword variant, the grid is divided by heavy bars into a single long loop. Letters along the loop for a series or words which are clued in order, and the letters in each row (going through the heavy bars) form two words which are clued in order with the row they go into identified. Answer lengths are not given.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2003 Twists and Turns
MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Ice Cream Roll

laddergrams

A laddergram is a puzzle where sets of three words are clued. In the standard form, the sets are transdeletions and spaces on the left and right of the grid let you enter the dropped letters to form words reading down.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2015 The Accumulator
MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 Ladder Dogs

Latin squares

A Latin square is simply one where the same set of letters, numbers, or other symbols appear in each row and each column. A number of standard puzzle types (see End View, KenKen, skyscrapers, star battle, and sudoku) are based on forming a Latin square under additional constraints, and those puzzles are listed under those categories.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2000 Isn't It Romantic?
MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 Twosquare
MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 Roller Coaster
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 The Greatest Jigsaw

letter adjacency graphs

The letters in some text are nodes in a graph, and each pair of letters which occurs consecutively in that text is connected by an edge (directed or undirected). See also Namystics.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2004 Too Precious For Words
MIT Mystery Hunt 2005 Bouncy Bouncy
MIT Mystery Hunt 2008 At Sea
MIT Mystery Hunt 2009 Island Warfare
MIT Mystery Hunt 2010 Computer Games
MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Vertexillonomy (colors and land borders, not letters)
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Three Really Good Boys

letter banks

A letter bank is the set of letters that appears in a word, with all duplicates removed, especially when these letters are anagrammed to spell another word. This category includes puzzles where each letter is given or used only the first time it appears in some answer, even though this does not spell a word.

letter changes

(many variations are included here, but see also misspellings)

lettered dice

In the standard form of this puzzle, you are given a set of 4-letter words (containing, collectively, 24 different letters) which have been rolled using a set of 6-sided dice with different letters on each side. You have to determine which letters appear on each die.

MIT Mystery Hunt 1994 23
MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Too Many Toys
MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 I'll Tumble 4 Ya

letter links

What is the correct name for this puzzle type? It is the one where a list of related words must be discovered, where a set of boxes is given for each word, and between each pair of consecutive words in the list, all repeated letters are connected by lines.

MIT Mystery Hunt 1995 2: Screening Room
MIT Mystery Hunt 2007 Killing the Audience
MIT Mystery Hunt 2008 Common Thread
MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 Matchbox Twenty
MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 The Mad Scientist's Assistant

letter shifts

MIT Mystery Hunt 2003 Whoa-I Know Eschatology (in modification)
MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 Edge of your Seat FUN!
MIT Mystery Hunt 2015 The Wheels Go Round and Round
MIT Mystery Hunt 2015 Spotted Tower Meta
MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 Unfortunate Al
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Analog Circuitry

letters in same positions

liar logic puzzles (and self-referential statements, etc.)

MIT Mystery Hunt 1994 21
MIT Mystery Hunt 1995 38: Butler's Quarters
MIT Mystery Hunt 2001 Endgame Logic Puzzle
MIT Mystery Hunt 2002 True and False
MIT Mystery Hunt 2003 Paranoia
MIT Mystery Hunt 2004 Final Runaround
MIT Mystery Hunt 2009 The Sexaholics of Truthteller Planet
MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 Diplomatic Victory
MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 Quest for the Truth
MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 Self-Referential Mania
MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 Murder at the Asylum
MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 True and False²
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Bingo
MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Strange Garnets

Light Up puzzle

See Akari puzzle

Link-a-Pix

Link-a-Pix is a puzzle type invented by Conceptis. A grid contains scattered numbers in various colors. Like numbers are to be connected using orthogonally connected paths which don't overlap, each as long as the number they connect, and colored the same as the numbers they connect, with the result forming a picture.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Transit Links

LITS puzzle

LITS is a Nikoli logic puzzle type. A grid is initially divided into several heavily outlined regions. Within each grid you must blacken 4 squares forming one of the tetromino shapes L, I, T, or S such that no 2x2 grid section is completely blackened (thus, the O tetromino is not allowed), all the tetrominoes form one orthogonally connected group, and no two tetrominoes of the same type touch along an edge.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Portals
MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 Changing Rooms
MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Dancing Triangles

logical deduction

logic puzzle based on elimination

This is the logic puzzle with wordy clues and usually the big grid used to keep track of which identifiers (names, pets, colors, whatever) can or cannot belong to each other. The grid may or may not be given.

Loop and Block puzzle

Shade some cells and draw a closed loop through the unshaded ones without clues. Each clue tells how many orthogonally adjacent cells share at edge with the clue cell. This is similar to yajilin except the clues are based on adjacency rather than cells pointed to by an arrow.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Dancing Triangles

Loop the loop puzzle

See fences puzzle

magnet logic puzzles

In the standard form of this puzzle, a grid is broken up into 2-cell regions, some of which are to be filled in with a + in one cell and a - in the other, so that the total number of +s and the total number of -s in each row and column equal the numbers given outside the grid, and two of the same symbol are never in orthogonally adjacent cells.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2008 Monopoles

mangled clues

In this puzzle type, a set of clues are given without spaces and with some of the words modified according to a rule you have to figure out. Then solve the clues. Typically, you will have to apply the rules again to the same or other clue answers, perhaps in reverse, to get a different set of answers. See also discover the hidden rules.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 Trubled Monicas
MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 Stick the Landing
MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Travel Planning
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Ladies First
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Altered Beasts
MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Trickster Tales
MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Everybody Must Get Rosetta Stoned
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Transformations

Marching Bands puzzle

In this crossword variant, clues are given for two or more words which are entered directly after one another in each row, without black spaces, and another set of clues are given for words entered similarly in concentric bands indicated by shading and a letter where each band starts. If the size of the grid is odd, the center square is usually black and, in that row only, the black square separates the two words written there.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2003 Ordering a Round
MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Marching Band
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Marching Band
MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 The Hobbit
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Football Team on the Marching Field

Masyu

In the standard form of this puzzle, a grid is provided with empty or filled circles in some cells. A single closed loop is to be drawn through some cells so that the loop passes through every circle, turning in each filled cell (but not turning just before or after the filled circle), and going straight through empty circles (but turning before and/or after the empty circle).

MIT Mystery Hunt 2007 Puzzle Editing
MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 Evil Influence
MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 Oyster Card
MIT Mystery Hunt 2015 Polyglot
MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 Sleeping Beauty Meta
MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Schematics
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 The Ferris of Them All
MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 How To Make the Right Move
MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Hall of Archaeology

matchmaker puzzle

This puzzle type consists of two columns of things with dots next to each, and stuff in the middle. When you pair up the things correctly and draw lines between the matches, the stuff in the middle crossed by the lines spells out an answer. Many variations are possible depending on the things matched and what is in the middle; it's also possible the uncrossed middle-things are used (especially if letters). Mike Selinker uses this name for this puzzle type in Puzzlecraft.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 1, 2, 3
MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 Cabin Fever
MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 A Twisted Theory
MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Connect the Dots
MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Restoration
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 A Triangular Space

math maze

Math maze is a path puzzle with Battleships-style clues that tell you how many squares in each row and column are part of the path. This makes it a relative of the snake puzzle but in math mazes only the head and tail are given and the path is allowed to visit squares adjacent to other parts of the path. The grid may have holes which divide rows and columns into parts; in this case clues apply to each part separately. Random Walk contains an example puzzle.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Random Walk

mazes

Minesweeper game

Classic video game made popular by its inclusion with Windows 3.1, often presented as a static puzzle with a fixed set of clues. You are to locate a set of mines in the grid, given clues which are not on mines themselves but tell how many of the 8 adjacent squares contain mines. A version where clue squares may contain mines (and count their own mine if they do) is called Fill-a-Pix.

minipuzzles

miracle sudoku

Miracle sudoku adds two constraints on top of normal sudoku: Two of the same number cannot be a king's move or knight's move apart, and consecutive numbers cannot be adjacent within a row or column.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 ★

mirror logic puzzles

In the standard form of this puzzle, you have to determine where to place two-sided mirrors at either or two diagonal directions in some cells, so that each pair of identical clues outside the grid is connected by a path of orthogonally connected cells through the grid which bends at (and only at) mirrors, in the directions which do not cross the mirrors. A path may use the same cell twice (either passing straight through an empty cell twice in different directions, or bouncing off both sides of the same mirror)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2005 Hall of Mirrors
MIT Mystery Hunt 2005 Reflecting Pool
MIT Mystery Hunt 2008 The Cult of Helios
MIT Mystery Hunt 2009 Space Ghosts, Coast to Coast
MIT Mystery Hunt 2010 Sequencer
MIT Mystery Hunt 2011 The Light World
MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 Sheila Sunshine Meta
MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 Mirrorball
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Bounce House
MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Reflective Screen

Mirror Universe puzzle

Mirror Universe is a variation on Spiral Galaxies in which you must divide the grid into symmetric regions, with the center of each region marked. In addition to the centers of rotational symmetry of the original puzzle, Mirror Universe also has regions with mirror symmetry. For these regions, some portion of the axis of symmetry is given.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Reflective Screen

misspellings

Mixed Doubles crossword

See Split Ends crossword

multidigit sums puzzle

In this puzzle type, you are to place digits in some cells so each row and column has the indicated set of digits. Clues given for rows and columns indicate the sum f the entries in the row or column, counting each group of adjacent digits as a multi-digit number.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Reflective Screen

multiple answers to logic puzzles

MIT Mystery Hunt 2005 Simple Unassuming Logic Puzzles
MIT Mystery Hunt 2007 Puzzle Editing
MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 A Quick Sudoku
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Fun With Sudoku

multiple crossword solutions

Crossword-like puzzles where the same clues and grid have multiple solutions, as opposed to Siamese Twins where there are two different clues for each space.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 Criss-Cross

Namystics

Namystics are a puzzle type similar to letter adjacency graphs in that the letters of a name are connected in order, but any enclosed regions are filled in, hiding some of the lines. This name for the puzzle was used in Games Magazine.

MIT Mystery Hunt 1995 15: Drawing Room
MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Ornaments

New York Times crosswords

MIT Mystery Hunt 2015 A Case of the Monday Crosswords
MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Sunday Dinner
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Back to Square One

non-intersecting crossword

A crossword puzzle where crossing words don't actually share the same letter. Another mechanic is used to make the puzzle actually solvable.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Diagramless Crossmusic
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 15×15

Nonograms

MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Portals
MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Hall of Archaeology

Norinori puzzle

Norinori is a Nikoli logic puzzle type. A grid is initially divided by heavy borders into a number of regions. Within each region, blacken two squares so that every black square shares an edge with exactly one other black square (not necessarily in the same region).

not alone (logic puzzle)

In the standard form of this puzzle type, you are given a grid in which some squares contain a white circle or a black circle. You are to fill in white or black circles in the empty squares so that nowhere does a white circle have black circles both on its immediate left and right, or both immediately above and below. A single circle "alone" on the edge of the grid is allowed. In addition, each row and each column has exactly half its circles black and half white.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 A Round at the Golf Course
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Tunnel of Love
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Dolphin
MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Numberlink

Number Link puzzle

In Number Link, a grid is given with two of each number. You have to connect the matching numbers with paths connecting squares orthogonally, so that no paths overlap. Generally, all the squares must be used.

number place

See sudoku

numbers associated with or in words

This is akin to associating 66 with Phillips, or 101 with dalmatians.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2005 Blue Star Meta
MIT Mystery Hunt 2007 Round VI Meta
MIT Mystery Hunt 2010 This is a Recording
MIT Mystery Hunt 2011 Execution Grounds
MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 Yo Dawg, I Herd You Like Puzzle Hunts
MIT Mystery Hunt 2015 Not All There
MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 Zodiac Quest
MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 Lesser Works
MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Arbor Day Town/Pi Day Town Meta
MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Too Many Secrets

Numbrix

See Hidato puzzle

Nurikabe

This is the most common "island" puzzle. In the standard form, a grid is provided with numbers in some cells. Some of the unnmubered squares are to be shaded so that the shaded squares form a single orthogonally connected group, and each orthogonally connected group of unshaded cells contains exactly one number, which is the size of that group.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2007 Puzzle Editing
MIT Mystery Hunt 2008 Chimera
MIT Mystery Hunt 2011 Nik-holey
MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 Blackout
MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Portals
MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 Magic Mushrooms
MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 The Lion and the Unicorn
MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Invisible Walls
MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Trickster Tales
MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 🔔🦇🦇🦇
MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Hall of Archaeology

Nuruomino

See LITS puzzle

odd man out

MIT Mystery Hunt 2003 Unprecedented Discovery
MIT Mystery Hunt 2004 The Parrrrty
MIT Mystery Hunt 2004 Lost in Translation
MIT Mystery Hunt 2005 Odd Man Out
MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 Road Trip
MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 Snap Story
MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 Recover the Pokémon Core Memory
MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 Is There a Draft in Here?
MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Conjuri's Request

ordering logic puzzles

(given a list of actions, put them in the only logically consistent order in which they could take place)

overlays

paint by numbers (logic puzzle)

In the standard form of this puzzle, a large empty grid is provided, along with a set of clue numbers on each row and each column. Some cells are to be shaded so that each row or column contains groups of shaded cells, separated by one or more blank cells, with the lengths of these groups matching the provided clue numbers, in order. There are common variants where cells may be shaded in different colors or half-shaded with triangles; in these variants, the different colors or triangles in each row are normally given in the clues, and the requirement of a blank cell between groups is waived if they are different types, or any types of triangles. In the standard form of this puzzle, a large empty grid is provided, along with a set of clue numbers on each row and each column. Some cells are to be shaded so that each row or column contains groups of shaded cells, separated by one or more blank cells, with the lengths of these groups matching the provided clue numbers, in order. There are common variants where cells may be shaded in different colors or half-shaded with triangles; in these variants, the different colors or triangles in each row are normally given in the clues, and the requirement of a blank cell between groups is waived if they are different types, or any types of triangles. Another variant allows oversized cells in the grid which cover multiple rows and/or columns, but count as one cell in the clues.

palindromes and palindromic sequences

MIT Mystery Hunt 1995 26: Sitting Room
MIT Mystery Hunt 1997 Sequined Elvis Cloak Enshrined in Smithsonian!
MIT Mystery Hunt 2006 Boston Meta
MIT Mystery Hunt 2007 For Gearheads Only
MIT Mystery Hunt 2009 Pimp Your Starcrafts
MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 Ben Bitdiddle Meta
MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Wordplay
MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 Day 4 Meta
MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 Upon Reflection
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Whirlwind
MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 The Missing Piece
MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Conglomerate

pangrams

A pangram is text that contains every letter of the alphabet.

paragraph puzzles

(as the term is used on Grey Labyrinth - you have to figure out the secret rule that determines what words or sentences are valid)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2006 Space Invaders
MIT Mystery Hunt 2008 What Incarnation of Palindrome are You?

pathfinder crossword

A crossword variant in which words may meander around the grid on orthogonally connected paths. Conventionally, each square is used in exactly two entries. The Pipe Dream crossword is a variation on this where additionally each edge between squares is crossed once, and the words can be colored red and black so each letter is part of one red and one black word.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2002 The Path of the Argo
MIT Mystery Hunt 2006 Pipe Dream
MIT Mystery Hunt 2011 Pipe Dream 2: Rapid Transit
MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Sage Advice
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 When All is Lost

path puzzles

There are many other standard puzzle types which are path puzzles, where the point of the puzzle is to determine a path through a grid from given clues. This puzzle type is used for ones that don't fit into any of the standard types. Grand Tour is a name for a basic path puzzle - parts of the path are given and you must draw a loop visiting each cell once; old USPCs called this Round Trip. Purenrupu (pure loop) is another basic path puzzle; in this one, there are some shaded squares and you must make a loop through eachunshaded cell.

MIT Mystery Hunt 1996 11C
MIT Mystery Hunt 2001 Numerology
MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 Build Your Own Sudoku
MIT Mystery Hunt 2015 Cube
MIT Mystery Hunt 2015 Ocean Meta Meta
MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 Roller Coaster
MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 A Learning Path
MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 Shoal Patrol
MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 Submarine Patrol
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Backlot

pentagram crosswords

7-letter words are entered along the lines of pentagons, one letter on each vertex and each line segment.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2009 Star-Crossed

Pentomino Minesweeper (logic puzzle)

This is a variation on the standard Minesweeper puzzle type where the mines are forced to lie in groups of 5 orthogonally connected mines, usually all different and without the groups touching, even diagonally.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 Blackout

petal puzzle

This crossword variant features a grid which is twisted into a flower shape, with all the words being the same length and entered from the outside inward, but some bending clockwise and some bending counterclockwise. It is equivalent to a crossword puzzle with a single stairstep diagonal which wraps around in both directions.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 Crushed Petals

phonetic letters and numbers (NV = envy or single letters)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2003 Shop
MIT Mystery Hunt 2006 Buenos Aires Meta
MIT Mystery Hunt 2009 Well-Coordinated
MIT Mystery Hunt 2010 Absolute Power
MIT Mystery Hunt 2011 Powder Monkey
MIT Mystery Hunt 2011 Payroll
MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Talk Like a Pirate Day Town
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 It's Easy, Cutie!

phonetic puzzles

(phonetic versions of puzzles commonly based on letters rather than sounds)

Pic-a-Pix

Picross

MIT Mystery Hunt 2003 Round 2 Meta

Pic-Tac-Toe

Pic-Tac-Toe is a puzzle type from the early days of Games Magazine in which a 3x3 grid of pictures is provided and you have to determine the common theme in each line of three pictures.

Pipe Dream crossword

See pathfinder crossword

Places, Please puzzle

See reverse word search

printer's devilry

(This is sort of the opposite of the hidden word type of Cryptic Crossword clue. Sentences that make a sort of half-sense are given; they make better sense when a word is inserted somewhere within the sentence, possibly changing word breaks and punctuation.)

MIT Mystery Hunt 1995 37: Angularium
MIT Mystery Hunt 1998 19.28 Quotation Puzzles
MIT Mystery Hunt 2005 Eoanthropus dawsoni
MIT Mystery Hunt 2008 Dossier 4 Meta
MIT Mystery Hunt 2009 pluHarmony
MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Loss by Compression
MIT Mystery Hunt 2015 Wait, What Did You Say?
MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 Travelogue
MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 The Robber
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Story
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 PClueRS
MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Completing the Story
MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 The Devil's in the Details

Proof of Quilt

See Shakashaka puzzle

Puns and Anagrams crossword

This crossword variant usually uses a standard American-style grid, but the clues are neither standard American-style nor British-style. Instead, each clue either clues the answer in a punny way, or contains an anagram of the answer within the clue (not segregated from the clue with an anagram indicator as in anagram cryptic crossword clues).

MIT Mystery Hunt 2008 Safari Park

Purenrupu

See path puzzles

Puzzled Pint

A monthly puzzle set with an intro puzzle that leads you to a specific pub, where you can find the rest of the puzzles at a pre-announced time. Each month's puzzle can be found in pubs in many cities around the world.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 Is There a Draft in Here?

puzzle relay

In a puzzle relay, a series of solvers each get a puzzle, but each puzzle except the first is not solvable without the previous puzzle's answer. Typically solvers can only communicate by passing answers to the next solver in line.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 A Puzzle with the Answer I WANT TO HOLD YOUR HAND

puzzles written by solving teams

MIT Mystery Hunt 1998 19.2837 Transformative Linguistics
MIT Mystery Hunt 1998 19.503 Advanced History
MIT Mystery Hunt 1998 5.198 Number Theory
MIT Mystery Hunt 2010 Film Screening event

quotation puzzle

See dropquotes

quotefalls

See dropquotes

quote square

In the standard form of this puzzle type, you get a grid with three letters in each square, with clues for words to be eliminated, one letter per box, in a row or column for you to determine, with the remaining letters (one per box) spelling a message.

MIT Mystery Hunt 1994 3
MIT Mystery Hunt 1995 35: Library
MIT Mystery Hunt 2001 Another Dimension (Round 4 Meta)

Railroad Crossing puzzle

The standard form of this puzzle consists of a grid with the numbers 1 to N in some squares and crosses in some other squares. You must draw a path through all squares in the grid, going through the numbered stations in order and going straight at each station, and only crossing itself at the marked crosses.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2002 Sampler

Railroad Tracks puzzle

See Railroad Crossing puzzle

rebus

The most common kind of rebus is the one from the Concentration game show: A word or phrase is clued, often partially or completely phonetically, via a series of smaller words, with plus and minus signs indicating how to combine the parts; they are combined in order, so the material to be removed by a minus part must exist in the result of the operation immediately before the minus sign. Any manipulation of words involving both adding and subtracting parts is classified here; for ones where parts are only added, see charades.

rebus crossword

A crossword puzzle in which more than one letter is to be written into some spaces, the rebus squares. Usually all the rebus squares are the same sequence of letters, or they are related somehow. Usually there are only a few of these (less than 5%), though they are not necessarily limited to long theme entries; if many squares contain multiple letters and there's no theme to those squares, it is a 1, 2, 3 crossword. The letters in rebus squares are usually meant to be read the same way across and down, though there can be variants where they are read one way afross and another way down. This gimmick is usually not clued; solvers have to figure it out while solving.

reduplications

A word is repeated two or more times to form a longer word (like yo, yo-yo). In the NPL this is a flat type; the answer may be an arbitrary phrase, but the answer consists of the same sequence of letters repeated two or more times. A phonetic form of reduplication is called a Word Avalanche on Reddit.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2008 At the Canyon
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Not Again!

reverse word search

In this puzzle, you are given a mostly blank grid, a word list, and some clues to help you place the words. In the variant called Tanglewords, all the initial letters are given. In Places, Please, the words are all listed with the number of their starting cell.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2002 Adapted for Television
MIT Mystery Hunt 2005 New Zoo Revue
MIT Mystery Hunt 2007 Negative Ad Campaign
MIT Mystery Hunt 2009 Mos Eisley Spaceport
MIT Mystery Hunt 2010 Disappearing Act
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 The Balloon Merchant's Gambit

riddles

MIT Mystery Hunt 1998 Junior Lab
MIT Mystery Hunt 2015 Jack and Jill or Janet
MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Joke-O-Lantern
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Don't Get Eaten
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 For Your Eyes Only
MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Subterranean Secrets

riddle trails

MIT Mystery Hunt 2007 The Domino Theory
MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 Crow Facts
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 ✏️✉️➡️3️⃣5️⃣1️⃣➖6️⃣6️⃣6️⃣➖6️⃣6️⃣5️⃣5️⃣

Right Angles puzzle

A crossword variant where words may read in any of the four orthogonal directions, and each answer takes a 90-degree turn somewhere in the answer (for you to determine).

MIT Mystery Hunt 2003 That's Right
MIT Mystery Hunt 2008 Sharp Turns
MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 Blazing Trails
MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 All the Right Angles

River Crossing logic puzzles

This is for variations on the classic puzzle where a farmer is trying to cross a river with a wolf, a goat, and a basket of cabbages. He can't leave the wolf unattended with the goat, since it will eat the goat, nor can he leave the goat unattended with the cabbages, but his boat can only carry one of the three things besides himself. Even classically there are many variations on this.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2009 Our Crew is Replaceable. Your Package Isn't.

road rallye

A road rallye is a puzzle that takes place either on real roads or virtually, via a map, with a complicated series of instructions that may involve standing conditionals (from now on, if this ever happens, do that), different levels of instructions with a designated order of precedence for deciding what to do when different instructions conflict, and other trickery.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2008 Mystery Rallye
MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Whose Turn Is it Anyway?

rota-draw

Rota-draw is a puzzle type where you are give a disk containing a bunch of numbered image pieces. For each number there is a corresponding mark at the edge of the disk. When you trace the segments with the top of the page aligned to each numbered mark, the image pieces come together to form a picture.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Where the Wild Things Are

rotator logic puzzle

MIT Mystery Hunt 2008 A Mind-flexing Exercise
MIT Mystery Hunt 2010 Safecracking
MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 I Never Promised You a Rows Garden
MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Rose Garden
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Bouquet of Balloons
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Doing Some Gardening
MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Gears
MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Degeneration and Regeneration

Round Trip puzzle

See path puzzles

Rows Garden

This crossword variant contains a grid of triangular cells. The standard grid size has a broken row of 9 spaces at the top and bottom, and every other row contains 21 spaces. The triangles are shaded in groups of 6 into hexagons (roses or blooms) of three different colors, no two same-colored hexagons touching. Clues are given for one word in each short row and usually exactly two words across each long row, and for the 6-letter words in each bloom. You must determine both the starting point and direction for the blooms, as well as which word goes into each bloom. The bloom clues are sorted by bloom color, and usually alphabetically by answer within each color.

Rubik's Cube

MIT Mystery Hunt 1982 Subclue #11
MIT Mystery Hunt 2002 Cubology
MIT Mystery Hunt 2010 Directions
MIT Mystery Hunt 2011 Losing My Nerve
MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Cryptocube (Ernő Rubik meta)
MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 Covert Tops
MIT Mystery Hunt 2015 Cube
MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Curious and Determined

Rush Hour (sliding block puzzle)

Rush Hour is one of the classic sliding block puzzles.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Whale

samurai sudoku

Two or more Sudoku grids overlap, typically by one of the 3x3 regions. The numbers in the overlap must satisfy each Sudoku .

MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 Replication

scavenger hunt

Seeking Syren (logic puzzle)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2010 Seeking ~~Syren~~ Scotchy

sets

Seven Sages puzzle

Crossword variant in which all answers are seven letters long and must be entered around a numbered block in a direction and starting location which you must determine

MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Sage Advice

Shakashaka puzzle

A grid of white and black cells is given, with numbers in some black cells. You are to place triangles (half-squares which divide the square diagonally) in some white cells so that the remaining white areas form squarea and rectangles (orthogonal or tilted).

MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Boom Shakashaka!

Sheep and Wolves

Sheep and Wolves is a variant on Fences (Slither Link) invented by Dave Tuller. In addition to the usual numerical clues, you can get clues which are sheep (which must lie inside the fence) or wolves (which must lie outside).

MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 To Serve and Protect

shikaku

In the standard form of this puzzle, you must divide the given grid along the grid lines into rectangles so that each rectangle contains exactly one of the given numbers, which is the area of its rectangle.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2011 Technological Crisis at Shikakuro Farms (variant)
MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 Marking Territory
MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 Quilt by Association
MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 The Hound of the Vast-Cur-Villes

Siamese Twins puzzle

The standard form of this puzzle is a crossword with two identical grids and two clues at each number. You have to figure out which clue goes with which grid, i.e., which clues lead to words that interlock in the same crossword. This can be extended to crossword variants and more than two grids.

signal loop (logic puzzle)

In this logic puzzle type, a grid is provided with black or white circles in some cells. You must draw a loop through all the cells except the ones with black circles. The loop cannot turn on squares with white circles. In the variant Antisignal Loop, the loop avoids squares with white circles and turns in squares with black circles.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Ocean's Eleven Meta

skipping crossword

As opposed to the jumping crossword in which some spaces are left blank and answers skip over them in both directions, in this puzzle all the squares are filled, but answers only use some of the letters in each line and skip over others.

skyscrapers puzzle

In the standard form of this Latin square puzzle, you must fill in the numbers 1 to N in the cells of the NxN grid so that no number is repeated in a row or column. Additionally, if the numbers are taken as the heights of buildings, the numbers outside the grid tell how many buildings can be seen in that row or column from that side of the grid, where taller buildings hide shorter buildings that are behind them.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2005 Simple Unassuming Logic Puzzles
MIT Mystery Hunt 2007 Clash of the Titans
MIT Mystery Hunt 2009 Growth Involves Reconstructing Legos
MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 Magic Mushrooms
MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Hall of Archaeology
MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Reflective Screen

Slalom puzzle

See Slant puzzle

Slant puzzle

A Nikoli puzzle type. A grid is given with numbers at some intersections. The goal is to draw a diagonal line through each cell so that at each numbered intersection, that number of the diagonals meet there. The diagonals are also forbidden to form loops.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Tryst of Fate

slide puzzle

One of the standard puzzle types with this name is one like the 15 puzzle, where a set of square blocks are able to slide around in a frame which has a hole exactly as large as one of the pieces, and the object is to get the pieces into some sort of order. There are also similar puzzles (sometimes called sliding block puzzles) in which the hole may be two or more cells in size, and the blocks may be more than one cell also; in this type, often the object is to get one particular block to a particular location.

MIT Mystery Hunt 1996 6C
MIT Mystery Hunt 2008 Rotating Slider

sliding block puzzles

See also Rush Hour for a specific commercially published sliding block puzzle.

MIT Mystery Hunt 1994 2

Slither Link

See fences puzzle

snake puzzle

The standard form of the snake puzzle contains a single snake whose segments are numbered 1 to N, of which certain segments are filled in initially, including the head and tail. The snake cannot touch itself, even diagonally (only squares with consecutive numbers may be orthogonally adjacent, and only ones with numbers that differ by 2 may be diagonally adjacent). Clues indicating the number of snake segments in certain rows and columns are are given. Black squares indicating spaces the snake cannot pass through may be given.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2002 Sampler (variant)
MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 Let's Put on a Hit (spotted snake variant)
MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Portals
MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Snake (variation)
MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Dancing Triangles

Solitaire Dominoes

See domino puzzle

solitaire hangman puzzle

This is a hangman game designed for you to play without direct interaction by the word-chooser. The number of letters is given, and a pair of lookup tables provide a way for you to check whether and where in a word a particular letter appears, without spoiling yourself by seeing the results of nearby letters.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2007 Hang 'Em High

Some Assembly Required

In the standard form of this crossword variant, clues are given for two or more words that read across each row, without any black spaces between them, and for a set of snaky jigsaw pieces, where the clue for each piece is given but you must determine how to arrange the pieces to fill the grid.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2008 Picture Puzzle
MIT Mystery Hunt 2010 Picture Puzzle 2
MIT Mystery Hunt 2011 Build Your Own Acrostic (double-crostic variant)
MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Password Reminder (Meta) (variation)
MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 Changing Rooms
MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 Voltaik Bio-Electric Cell
MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Sage Advice
MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 How To Require Some More Assembly (Picture Puzzle 3)
MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Narnia Beeswax (variation)

something different crossword

A something different crossword looks like a standard American crossword puzzle but the grid is usually wide-open with few black squares, and the entries are usually contrived phrases (with equally contrived cluing). The NPL prints word square versions of these with no black squares at absurdly large sizes that would never allow a proper word square.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2015 Erraticism
MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Far Out
MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Alloy of Words

sound changes (phonetic letter changes)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2003 Making a List, Checking it Twice
MIT Mystery Hunt 2011 The Least You Could Do Is Phone Me
MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 Zodiac Quest
MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 I Knew Weird Al Yankovic, and You, Sir, Are No Weird Al Yankovic
MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Joke-O-Lantern
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 ⊥IWPE: Pistol (Event #4)🔫

Spaghetti (metapuzzle creation game)

Eric Berlin invented a game where someone picks a random set of words (which are not actually answers for a metapuzzle) and people invent metapuzzles to work with them.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Spaghetti Western

Spelling Bee (New York Times puzzle)

In the Spelling Bee puzzle presented by the New York Times you are given 7 letters in hexagons arranged in a hexagon shape reminiscent of a honeycomb. You are to form words using any of these letters, including repeating letters. You must use the middle letter.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Dispel theBees

spherical crossword

MIT Mystery Hunt 2011 Clues and Coordinates

Spiral Galaxies puzzle

A grid has some circles, which may be in the centers of cells, on the grid lines, or on the grid intersections. Divide the grid into regions so that each circle is in a separate region, all regions are rotationally symmetric, and each region has a circle at its center. Sometimes the circles are colored and you shade the regions in the resulting grid based on the circle colors.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Lantern Festival
MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Reflective Screen
MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Book of Fixed Stars

spiral puzzle

In the standard form of this crossword variant, a set of clues is given for words to be entered from 1 to 100 along the spiral, without skipping any spaces, and for another set of words to be entered from 100 to 1. Thus, the second set of answers is collectively a reversal of the first set of answers.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2002 The Spiral
MIT Mystery Hunt 2007 Spin Control
MIT Mystery Hunt 2010 This is a Recording
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Snake

spiroglyphics

Spiroglyphics are a kind of picture puzzle where you're given a region to fill in which is a narrow spiral. Sometimes the lines of the region are close to each other, sometimes closer to the lines of the adjacent sections of the spiral. When you fill it in, you reveal the hidden image based on which area of the page are more or less shaded.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Where the Wild Things Are

Split Decisions puzzle

This is the standard puzzle type where you have to fill in a criss-cross style grid with words you have to figure out on your own, based on bigram changes where both versions of the changed letters are given beside each other in the grid.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2006 Data Analysis
MIT Mystery Hunt 2009 Split Second Decisions
MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Send Yourself Swanlumps

Split Ends crossword

In this crossword variant, usually using a criss-cross or block-style grid, each clue is split into two pieces which are numbered separately, usually using each number from 1 to N once. The numbers in the grid don't follow any order; they are the sum of the numbers for the two halves of the answer. A variation called Mixed Doubles splits the clue halves into across and down sections.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 La Ronde

spoonergrams

See spoonerisms

spoonerisms

Named for a Reverend Spooner who tended to mix up words like this on accident, a spoonerism is the swapping of initial consonant sounds in the words of a phrase. Generally, if a word starts with a consonant cluster such as BL or STR, the entire cluster is swapped. Sometimes a small connective word in the phrase is unchanged, as in WHACK AND BLIGHT for BLACK AND WHITE. Sometimes the initial consonant sounds of three woirds are rotated among the three words. The NPL uses this as a flat type called a spoonergram.

MIT Mystery Hunt 1994 6
MIT Mystery Hunt 1999 Sao Paulo
MIT Mystery Hunt 2002 Passive Muzzle
MIT Mystery Hunt 2005 Gag Me
MIT Mystery Hunt 2015 Spittle Loon
MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 A Turn of Phrase
MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 Wolf in the Fold
MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Baking Bread

ssudoku

This variant of sudoku features regions which are larger than the size of the grid. They contain each digit once but also contain repeated digits. This compromises the "naked singles" solving strategy from regular sudoku.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 Equal Billing

Star Battle (logic puzzle)

The standard form of this puzzle works as follows: A square lattice is divided into irregular polyomino regions. Enter some stars so that each row, each column, and each region contains exactly two stars, and no two stars are adjacent, even diagonally.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 Equal Billing (variant combined with sudoku)
MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 Reaching for the Stars
MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 Changing Rooms
MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Battle of the Network Stars
MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Heavenly Bodice

starfish crossword

Original crossword variant where words are entered bending along two arms of a starfish.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2015 Starfish

Statue Park puzzle

Statue Park puzzles are an original invention of Palmer Mebane. A set of polyominoes are to be placed into a grid. They can touch at a corner but not along an edge. The unused space must form a single edge-connected unit. Black circles must be covered by polyominoes; white circles must not.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Portals
MIT Mystery Hunt 2015 Polyglot
MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Dancing Triangles

stereograms

Stereograms are pairs of images intended to be viewed one with the left eye and one with the right eye while focusing so that the two images appear to lie in the same space. Small differences in the images create the illusion that some parts are above or below other parts. In the 1990s there was a popular series of what are called autostereograms - single images with repeating patterns that create the same sort of illusion; this is what usually appears in puzzles.

MIT Mystery Hunt 1999 Warrant 1.3
MIT Mystery Hunt 2003 Whoa-I Have a Migraine
MIT Mystery Hunt 2008 Special Ops
MIT Mystery Hunt 2011 Mario Clash
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Chairiot Races

sudoku

In the standard form of this puzzle type, a 9x9 grid is divided into 3x3 sections with heavy bars. The grid is to be filled with the digits 1 to 9 (some initially provided) so that no number is repeated in a row, column, or outlined region. There are many popular variants on this puzzle type, including ones where the diagonals have to contain 1 to 9, ones where the regions are not square, ones where there are restrictions on which numbers can be adjacent, puzzles of different sizes, and many others. See specific variations:

sun and moon (logic puzzle)

In this logic puzzle type, a grid is provided with white or black circles in some squares. You must draw a loop through all the cells so that when the loop goes through two cells of the same color in a row, it doesn't turn between them, and when it goes through two different colored circles, it turns exactly once between them, The loop may turn on a circle.

Sym-a-Pix

MIT Mystery Hunt 2011 Zombies vs. Zombies Event
MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Lost in Translation

Takegaki

See fences puzzle

tanglewords puzzle

See reverse word search

tangrams

A classic puzzle consisting of 7 pieces, where the challenge is to form them into various shapes. The unit cell for these pieces is a 45-45 right triangle; two of the pieces consist of a single unit cell. One of the pieces is a square made of two unit cells, one is a triangle of two cells, one is a parallelogram of two cells, and the last two pieces are triangles made of 4 unit cells each.

Tapa

In the standard form of this puzzle, a grid is provided with one or more numbers in some cells. To solve it, shade some empty cells in an orthogonally connected group so that among the 8 cells orthogonally or diagonally adjacent to each numbered cell, the connected group(s) of shaded cells have the size(s) of the number(s) in that cells. (Like paint by numbers except the clues apply to these 8-cell rings instead of rows and columns.)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 Blackout
MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Portals

teamwork time

Teamwork Time was a feature introduced in the 2020 MIT Mystery Hunt, in which several puzzles required teammates to work together simultaneously from their own computers on interactive elements within the puzzle. Though the phrase may not be used in other hunts, when similar elements appear the puzzles are included here.

Tentai Show