1992 MIT Mystery Hunt Solutions
The archive has the hunt
itself and no solutions.
In 2023 I received this scan
of a solved copy with typed-up notes appended which I
believe is from Eric Albert.
In
2024, F1000003 on Reddit wrote up nearly complete solutions
based on a backsolve from the known coin location, with help from
other Redditors.
This is a Brad Schaefer hunt. Things were a lot simpler back then;
we couldn't look things up on the internet, and people were solving
this alone or in small groups. The first page tells us the answers
to the 16 subclues should be placed in order, with a dash after
answer 2, commas after 5 and 14 and a period at the end, to form the
main clue telling where to find an Indian head penny.
- "The first subclue is the same as the first subclue from last
year's IAP Mystery Hunt." Note, the clue, not necessarily the
answer. That first clue in 1981 was Fort Washington Flagpole and
the answer was thought to be Room. Looking at the rest of the
answers here, Room probably works again.
- The clue is written phonetically in Linear B representing
English words. Ta we ni te (20) mi nu se (minus) si ka sa te e
ne (16), so the answer is 4.
- Using the same notation as in the main clue, this one says to
add/subtract the answers to clues 8 + 11 - 2 - 10. These clue
answers give 5 + 4 - 4 - 5 = 0.
- "The longitude of Hun Kal divided by four." This is a crater
on Mercury and it is a reference point defining the planet's
system of longitude. It is at 20 degrees west, so 5.
- This is a cryptarithm. Given BOY and GIRL are both prime
numbers, the solution is 457 + 9623 + 3501 = 13581, but we're
asked for the value of R, which is 2.
- 13 37 02
16 37 72 52 05
83 25 33 12 11
97 23 29
53 55 91 99 17
98 97 08
PRIMES in the previous clue was meant to be a hint. Read the
primes as bumps for Braille and it spells PART.
- This refers to a telephone keypad; Oh is zero. The key in that
position is #.
- "For Marjorie." This is the name of a sculpture
on the West Campus lawn. It's plausible there was a puzzle
or label there during the hunt and it's assumed that the answer
was 5.
- All the statements are false, so 0:
- The Sco does refer to Scorpius, but in 1930 when the IAU
was defining the system of constellations known today, they
decided this star more properly belonged in Libra and Gamma
Sco became Sigma Lib.
- Nope, Hyi refers to Hydrus, a completely different
constellation from Hydra, which is abbreviated Hya. V336 is
in Puppis, anyway.
- This refers to their
match in 1961. Fischer won game 5, though as the notes
that follow explain, game 5 was adjourned due to some
ceremonies conducted at the club club where the match was
being held, and was finished after game 6 had been played
out. Game 6, the 5th game finished, was a draw, but the
actual fifth game was a Fischer win.
- A hsüan-chi is a jade disc usually with three-fold
rotational symmetry. It may have one or more notches in each
of the three segments, but usually the same number in each,
not four total.
- The terminology is from the game tiddlywinks, and within
that game boondocking occurs after your wink lands on top of
(squops) an opponents wink, when you play your wink in such
a way as to send the opponent's wink far away. The term for
what is described in the clue is "lunch."
- "Big Sail" in numerology. The
Big Sail is another sculpture on the MIT campus. Whatever
you got there, you interpreted it in numerology to get the
answer 5.
- These days we can just plug
the given cube into a solver and get the answer is 4.
- "First digit typical biscuit cone." This refers to ceramics
terminology, in which biscuit is equivalent to bisque, or
unglazed firing. The cone numbering system uses leading zeroes
to distinguish, for example, 02 from 2. A typical biscuit cone
is in the range 06 to 04, so 0.
- The Turkish clue is just the number 3.
- "10000000." This is written in signed integer notation, in
which the first bit being 1 indicates a negative number, but the
rest being all zeroes means 0, and so it's a negative
zero. -0
- A line from a Whitman poem. The missing word is crystalline.
- Trolocials is an anagram of oscillator.
So the main clue is Room 4-052, part #505403-0, crystalline
oscillator. This agrees with the map of past coin
locations, which says the coin was in 4-052, the physics stock
room, and Hunters had to ask the stockroom attendant for part
number 505403-0, a crystal oscillator.
The part wasn't in the catalog, but the catalog numbers were in
this format. Also, crystalline oscillators weren't something the
stockroom normally carried, but the stockroom attendant had been
told to give a wooden box to whoever came asking for it, within
which was the coin.
The hunt was solved in about six hours by, Eric thinks, a team
from Phi Beta Epsilon. Brad was very surprised.