MIT Mystery Hunt Puzzle Index: Full Index

10000 puzzles

1, 2, 3 crossword

A crossword variant in which 1, 2, or 3 letters may be written into each square. There are variations of this variant:

Crushword is a variant with no upper limit on the number of letters, though some sources use this name for the 1, 2, 3.
Variogram forms in the NPL are also one or more.
The jumping crossword allows 0 or 1 letters.
Double-or-nothing allows 0 or 2.

When only a few squares contain multiple letters and the entries in those squares are related somehow, it is instead a rebus crossword.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2005 Reflecting Pool
MIT Mystery Hunt 2010 Message From Above
MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 Crushed Petals
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Flower Power

17th items

MIT Mystery Hunt 2011 A Representative Sampling

1-dimensional cellular automata

MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 The Next Generation

25-pair color code

MIT Mystery Hunt 2009 Crossed Wires
MIT Mystery Hunt 2010 Woofers and Tweeters
MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Sometime After Midnight

26-skiddoo puzzle

See alphagram

3-D modeling

MIT Mystery Hunt 2011 Mario Clash
MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 Eek!
MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Eclectic Spatial Geometry
MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 Cut and Tape
MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 Hole Wizard
MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 Triangular Intrigue
MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 Some Assembly Required (SAR)
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Whirlwind
MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Some Assembly Required

3SAT (boolean satisfiability problem)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 SAT III

42 Essential 3rd Act Twists

This Dresden Codak comic

MIT Mystery Hunt 2015 Loony Playhouse Actors

52-skiddoo puzzle

See alphagram

5-bit binary alphabet

See binary/biliteral/Baconian cipher

5D Chess with Multiverse Time Travel

This sounds like something made up for Mystery Hunt but apparently it is a real game you can play.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 5D Barred Diagramless with Multiverse Time Travel

69 Love Songs

(album by The Magnetic Fields)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2011 Counting the Ways

7 Little Words (online word game)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 7 Little Dropquotes

7 Wonders (board game)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 Marvels of the Ancient World

7x7 crossword puzzles. The 7xwords project began based on the idea that there are 312 grid patterns for a 7x7 crossword following the standard American rules that there must not be unchecked letters or two letter words, and that the grids must be connected and rotationally symmetric. This is exactly enough to publish six puzzles a week for a 52-week year.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 49ers

“88 Lines About 44 Women”

MIT Mystery Hunt 2002 Cross Breeding

8-ball (pool game)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 All the Right Angles

A=1, B=2, ...

(In the 2004 hunt only, this commonly includes using mod 26 to reduce larger numbers)

A1Z26

See A=1, B=2, ...

abacus

MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Blind Calculation

ABBA

MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 Four-Part Harmony

Absolut vodka

MIT Mystery Hunt 2008 Frontal Lobotomy

academic regalia

MIT Mystery Hunt 2004 Infirmary

accounting

MIT Mystery Hunt 2007 Earnings Call
MIT Mystery Hunt 2011 Wall Street Meta
MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 Growth and Fixed Costs
MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 Harsh Financial Scrutiny

achievements in video games

MIT Mystery Hunt 2009 Console-Nation Prizes
MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 A Puzzle with the Answer DRIVE MY CAR

A Chorus Line

MIT Mystery Hunt 2008 Police Lineup

ACME's Have You Tried document

This document which provides a bunch of strategies for breaking into an unknown puzzle.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2010 Making Connections
MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 Yeah, But it Didn't Work!

acronyms

MIT Mystery Hunt 2008 Instant Replay
MIT Mystery Hunt 2009 The Satellite of Love
MIT Mystery Hunt 2010 Endgame
MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 What The...
MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Go the F*** To Sleep

actors playing famous people

MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 The Obligatory G&S Puzzle

adages

See proverbial sayings

Ada programming language

MIT Mystery Hunt 1999 Prague

A Day in the Life

(an MIT photo-blogging project)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2010 One Day at a Time

adding "in bed" to fortunes

It's a common joke to add the words "in bed" to the end of the fortune from a fortune cookie to give it a new meaning often charged with sexual innuendo.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Fortune Cookies

Adventure (Atari 2600 game)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2001 Here Thar Be Dragons

Adventure Time (animated program)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Mathematical!

Advice Animal meme

MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Exhibit of Colors

AES cipher

MIT Mystery Hunt 2015 Read Between the Lines

Aesop's fables

MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Lessons Learned from Porcine Construction
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Turning Æsop's Tables; a new translation

aged photos

MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 The Olden Age of Cinema

airline codes

MIT Mystery Hunt 2007 Now That's High Finance
MIT Mystery Hunt 2009 Astro Traffic Control
MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 Getting There is Half the Fun

airline travel

MIT Mystery Hunt 2000 Oh, to be in DC
MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 Getting There is Half the Fun
MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Travels with Charlie
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Icarus Away!

airplane call signs

MIT Mystery Hunt 2009 I Can Haz Zyzzlburger?

airplane tail art

MIT Mystery Hunt 2007 Now That's High Finance
MIT Mystery Hunt 2009 I Can Haz Zyzzlburger?
MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 Getting There is Half the Fun

airport codes

(IATA unless otherwise specified)

Akari puzzle

The standard form of this puzzle consists of a grid where some cells are initially blacked in, and some of those contain numbers. To solve it, place lights (which illuminate all squares in a horizontal or vertical line from the light to the next black square or the edge of the puzzle) in some cells so that every square is illuminated by at least one light, no light is illuminated by another light, and the number of lights orthogonally adjacent to each number matches the number.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2007 Puzzle Editing
MIT Mystery Hunt 2010 Lighten Up (variant)
MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 A Puzzle with the Answer I WANT TO HOLD YOUR HAND
MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 Deploy
MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Schematics
MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 World's Largest Logic Puzzle
MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Cure the Werewolf's Woe
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Akari

Aksharapalli number system

System of numbers used in old texts from India, commonly for numbering pages of a text, using certain syllables (in the script of the text) to indicate each number.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 To Numbers and Back Again

Albanian language

MIT Mystery Hunt 2003 The Hall of Chess
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Le Chiffre Indéchiffrable

album covers

MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Stakeout
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Dance Party
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Mosaic
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 The Puzzle Keeps Turning Upside Down and We Can't Figure Out Why

album titles

MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Alexei Lewis

Alchemist sculpture

Public art in front of the MIT Student Center, the top half of a man composed of letters, numbers, and symbols.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 Campus Art from Z to A
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Heart of the Park
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Don't Get Eaten

alchemy symbols

MIT Mystery Hunt 2003 Mixed Drink
MIT Mystery Hunt 2003 Biological Garden
MIT Mystery Hunt 2007 The Central Science
MIT Mystery Hunt 2011 Drafting Table
MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 Do You Want A
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 The Wizard's Escape
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Don't Get Eaten

alcoholic beverages

For more specific puzzles, see beer, cocktails, and whiskey.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 I Know Who I Want to Take Me Home

alethiometer (golden compass from His Dark Materials)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Compass and Straightedge

algorithmic complexity

MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Complexity Evaluation

Alice in Wonderland

MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 Mock Turtle Meta
MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 A Mad Cocktail Party
MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 A Curious INCIDENCE

aliens

MIT Mystery Hunt 2009 The Buzz-Cut Man in a Leather Jacket
MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 The Revenge of Yuki Nagato Episode 00

alignments (Dungeons and Dragons)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Morale Compass
MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Gears
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Monsters

All About Steve

MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Crowning Achievement

Allied Occupation puzzle

See Fillomino puzzle

alliteration

MIT Mystery Hunt 2008 The Goodwin Manuscript
MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 Fill in the ______
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 ⊥IWPE: Pistol (Event #4)🔫

allowable sequences

Allowable sequences are sequences of pemutations of a set of elements. The change from one permutation in the sequence to the next consists of reversing one or more disjoint portions of the permutation. Some allowable sequences can be "realized" by arranging their elements as points on a plane. The permutations then correspond to projections of the points onto a plane in a certain direction in which the projections of the points are all distinct, and the sequence corresponds to all these projections as the direction is rotated through 180 degrees.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Realize It

All-Star Games

MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 Round Tripper

alphabet books

MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 L is for Library
MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 My First ABC

alphabetic ordering

That is, assign the first letter alphabetically in a word a 1, the second letter a 2, and so forth.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 Venntersections
MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 How To find a Component

alphabetic sequences

MIT Mystery Hunt 1999 Copenhagen
MIT Mystery Hunt 2004 Calmness Before the Storm
MIT Mystery Hunt 2011 Question Mark
MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 Behave
MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 Good Neighbors
MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 The Despondent Dynast
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Tic Tac Toe
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Najaf to...

Alphabet Song

MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 Now I Know My ABCs

Alphabet Soup (Penny Press)

See alphagram

alphabet subsets

MIT Mystery Hunt 1994 5
MIT Mystery Hunt 2003 Round 5 Meta
MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 Any Old Puzzle
MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 Spell Casting
MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 Sooner or Later
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 The Hermit Crab

the alphabet

MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Billie Barker

alphablock

The standard form of this puzzle consists of a square grid with a letter or group of letters in each cell. To solve it, spell words, phrases, or names reading left to right across the grid by taking one cell from each column. Each cell is used once. The items formed are members of some set or category, except for one answer which identifies the category.

MIT Mystery Hunt 1994 12
MIT Mystery Hunt 2008 Department Store
MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Excalibur
MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 Don't Cross an Alpha Bitch!
MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Rotten Little Scamps

Alphacipher

The standard form of this puzzle type is a list of words, along with their values in a cipher which applies a different value from 1 to 26 to each letter of the alphabet, and adds up the values of the letters in each word. It's similar to an alphametic but there's no interaction of place value, and usually the whole alphabet is used. In the version called letter weights, only a portion of teh alphabet is used.

MIT Mystery Hunt 1994 22
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Gaia

alphacode

See Alphacipher

alphagram

In the standard version of this puzzle type, there is a grid which has 26 rows and an odd number of columns (typically 11 or 13) and all the cells except the center column are pre-filled with letters. The solver must fill the letters A through Z into the empty cells so that each row contains a word of some minimum length in a group of consecutive letters. Sometimes (as in a Double Alphabet Soup or 52-skiddoo) there are two columns each to be filled with the alphabet).

MIT Mystery Hunt 2015 It's Play Time
MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 Half and Half

alphametics (encoded arithmetic)

These puzzles are essentially solved arithmetic problems (often long division or multiplication with all the partial products written out), with the entire problem encoded into letters with a simple substitution cipher. Sometimes the key (what 0123456789 encodes into) spells a final answer. A variant sometimes seen uses stars or blanks to indicate unknown digits.

Alpha Sleuth

This puzzle type consists of a criss-cross-style grid with some letters pre-filled. There are exactly 26 unfilled spaces which need to be filled in using every letter of the alphabet once, forming words that have something in common. Some unfilled spaces have a number. A set of numbered spaces (possibly with repeats) below the grid uses the letters in the numbered grid spaces as a key, producing a final answer word or phrase.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Alpha Sleuth

Altered Beast (video game)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Zeus

Alternate Corners puzzle

In this puzzle, you must draw a closed loop through every cell in a grid going only in orthogonal directions. Some cells are marked with a circle and the path must always turn in these cells. The path always turns exactly once between two circles.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Halloween Town/Valentine's Day Town Meta

alt tags

MIT Mystery Hunt 2004 Hand Across the Water

Alvin and the Chipmunks

MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 Indecipherable

“The Amazing Race”

MIT Mystery Hunt 2003 Whoa-I Know Subtraction
MIT Mystery Hunt 2009 Timecop

American Film Institute's top 100 movies lists

MIT Mystery Hunt 2010 The Zyzzlvarian Holovid Institute
MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Twelve! Eleven!

American Girl dolls

MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 American Icons

America (the Book): A Citizen's Guide to Democracy Inaction

MIT Mystery Hunt 2006 Land that I Love

amino acids

MIT Mystery Hunt 1996 1C
MIT Mystery Hunt 2000 Round 2 Meta Hint
MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 BLAST from the Past
MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 Life Braid
MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 Pestered
MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Quaternary Structure
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 The IMO Shortlist
MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Bridge Building
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Body Language

Among Us (game)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Teach Us, Amelia Bedelia

Anacrostic puzzle

See double crostic

anagrams

analogies

MIT Mystery Hunt 2000 Round 3 Meta Hint
MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 Set Theory
MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Analogy Farm
MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 Locked In

anaquote

A puzzle in which a text has all the spaces and punctuation removed and is then broken into three-letter groups (trigrams) and usually the trigrams are alphabetized. You are typically given the enumeration (lengths of words in the answer). This puzzle is called anaquote in the NPL, or anaquip, etc. when the text is something other than a quotation. See also vertical anaquote.

anatomy

MIT Mystery Hunt 2009 Fantastic Voyage
MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 You've Got Some Nerve
MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 Dammit, Jim
MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 Temperance

_ and _ phrases

MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 Down the Rabbit Hole 2: Super Magic Samurai Robot Ninja Police Force: Electric Boogaloo
MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 A Bunch of Ripoffs
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Goldilocks
MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Cemetery Boys
MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Sometime After Midnight
MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Fruit Around
MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 The Salt-N-Pepa Diner
MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Crack Some Crypts

Android apps

MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 Spot the Dog

Android version code-names

MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Just Desserts

Angband (Rogue-like game)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2006 Trophy Room

angelic hierarchy

MIT Mystery Hunt 2011 Holiness Meta

“Angel” (TV show)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2005 This Puzzle Sucks

Anglers logic puzzle

In the standard variety of this puzzle type, a grid is given with fish in several squares and numbers representing fishermen (anglers) appear outside the grid on all edges. You are to draw nonoverlapping paths from each angler to a fish using only orthogonal steps, and covering exactly as many grid cells (including the one with the fish) as the number at that angler. The numbers sum to the number of grid cells, so every cell must be used.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 The Cafe

angles

MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Broken Wheel

Anglo-American telegraph code

MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 ANDARAC

Anglo-Saxon language

MIT Mystery Hunt 2001 The Chimera

Anguished English

(a.k.a. Anguish Languish; heavily distorted homophones of sentences)

MIT Mystery Hunt 1994 27
MIT Mystery Hunt 1995 25: Attic
MIT Mystery Hunt 2002 Poor Constitution
MIT Mystery Hunt 2003 Paranoia
MIT Mystery Hunt 2007 Team Dynamics
MIT Mystery Hunt 2009 I Can Haz Zyzzlburger?
MIT Mystery Hunt 2011 Heard but Not Seen
MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Pass da Pasta
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Relay Event
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Could You Restate That?

Animal Crossing: New Horizons

MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Fish Hybridization
MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Izzy's Art Gallery

animals

Animals on the Underground web site

MIT Mystery Hunt 2009 Friends in Noble England

Animal, Vegetable, or Mineral

MIT Mystery Hunt 2004 The Jeweled Fowl
MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 Twosquare

The Animaniacs

MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 World's Longest Diagramless

anime

MIT Mystery Hunt 2003 Whoa-I Know Kiaido
MIT Mystery Hunt 2004 Shogun Trivia (Meta)
MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 You Should Be Listening
MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 The Revenge of Yuki Nagato Episode 00
MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 Puzzle Extravaganza
MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Movie Marathon
MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Folded Cards
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Aphrodite's Plutonic Affection Connection

answer given for completing task

(These puzzles do not clue their answers; you get the answer after doing something the puzzle somehow asks you to do. See also creative tasks and intermediate tasks)

antipodes

Antipodes are positions on the Earth which are directly opposite one another.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 A Puzzle with the Answer YOUKILIS

Anti-Set game

A game played with the Set deck in which players alternately add cards from their deck to their hands, while avoiding collecting cards forming a set.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Make a Winning Hand

antonyms

apocalypse dates

MIT Mystery Hunt 2015 Hunt-Life 3 Confirmed!

Apollo space missions

MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 A Triangular Space

apples

MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Peak Adventure

Apples to Apples game

MIT Mystery Hunt 2009 The Apples in Stereo

Arabic language

MIT Mystery Hunt 1996 5A
MIT Mystery Hunt 2011 English Expectations
MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Symphony from the Old World
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Old West Revue
MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Book of Fixed Stars

Aramaic script

MIT Mystery Hunt 2004 Turning Japanese

archers

MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Chairiot Races

archery

MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Phoenix (Firebird)

archipelagos

MIT Mystery Hunt 2005 World Tour
MIT Mystery Hunt 2009 Island Warfare

area codes

MIT Mystery Hunt 1994 10
MIT Mystery Hunt 2009 Calling You from My Cell

Arimaa

MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 Zugzwaang

arithmetic square

Place a different number from 1 to N in each box so that the given operations evaluate to the given result. The operations are carried out left to right and top to bottom, ignoring the usual order of operations (PEMDAS).

MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Flamingo

Arrested Development (band and TV show)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2007 The Stunted Growth Puzzle

arrow ring puzzle

See yajilin

Ars Goetia

MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 The Devil's in the Details

art

MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 The Thomas Crown Scare
MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 The White House or Bust!
MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 The Scenic Route
MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 Sleeping Gypsy Dream Fragment
MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 Master Pieces
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 The Storykeeper Bookshop
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Ox (Bull)
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 ⊥IWPE: Bonus Class
MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Izzy's Art Gallery

Artist's Block

See Spiral Galaxies puzzle

arukone

See Number Link puzzle

arXiv academic paper preprints

MIT Mystery Hunt 2015 Practice in Theory
MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 Crackpot or Snackpot?

ascending and descending letters

MIT Mystery Hunt 2009 Track Meet
MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 Obstacle Training (Meta)
MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Divine the Rule of Kings
MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Communicating with the Aliens

ASCII

Usually this just means the encoding of the letters and symbols you can type directly on keyboards corresponding to values 32-126, or even just to the letters, but sometimes the control characters in 0-31 also get involved (possibly using their names or functions). In some cases 7 or 8 bit binary encoding may be involved.

ASCII art

MIT Mystery Hunt 1999 Nairobi
MIT Mystery Hunt 2011 This SHOULD Be Easy...
MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 ASCII Characters
MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Bloom Filter
MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Comma and a Freaking Dot
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 People Wear Clothes
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 DNA

ashtamangala

MIT Mystery Hunt 2008 Witness 3 Meta

Assassin's Creed video games

MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Intelligence Collection

assembly puzzles

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

Fred Astaire

MIT Mystery Hunt 2009 Now is the Time on Kronos When We Dance

asterisks

MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Sheriff's Stars

asteroids

MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 Asteroids

astrology

MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 The Astrologer
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Final Runaround

astronauts

MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 Endymion Meta

astronomy

MIT Mystery Hunt 1982 Subclue #9
MIT Mystery Hunt 2001 Nyctophobia
MIT Mystery Hunt 2004 Trinity
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Gaia

Ataxx (video game)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2002 Battling the Gorgon

Atbash cipher

Atbash is a simple substitution cipher in which the first letter of the alphabet is replaced with the last, the second with the next-to-last, and so on. It can be used with any alphabet, but was originally used with the Hebrew alphabet; instances of it appear in the Hebrew Bible.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 The Leaning Tower of Sheshach
MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 Texts from Mom
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Penny Park Guide
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 A Process of Elimination

Athena (MIT computer system)

MIT Mystery Hunt 1995 13: Connecticut Suite (Meta)
MIT Mystery Hunt 1998 19.567 Thesis Preparation
MIT Mystery Hunt 1998 Roamin'
MIT Mystery Hunt 2003 Paranoia
MIT Mystery Hunt 2006 Some Trolleys Named Lust
MIT Mystery Hunt 2007 Logical Digits
MIT Mystery Hunt 2010 Computer Games
MIT Mystery Hunt 2015 Mythological Connections
MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 Executive Relationship Commandments

Atlantic City

MIT Mystery Hunt 2002 Buried Treasure

atmospheric layers

MIT Mystery Hunt 2009 Round 2 Meta

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!

audio file manipulation

MIT Mystery Hunt 2004 Rant
MIT Mystery Hunt 2009 --MESSAGE REDACTED--
MIT Mystery Hunt 2011 Pesky Bugs
MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 This Page Intentionally Left Blank
MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Pulse Pulse Wave Noise
MIT Mystery Hunt 2015 Time & Place
MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 Chromesthesia
MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 33 RPM
MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 Mix Tape
MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Hearing Test
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 best song ev-er!
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Extensive
MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Red Herring

augmented reality

MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 In Space, No One Can Hear You Sing
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Chairiot Races
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Roadtrip
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Green Tee

Australian English language

MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 Vocabulary quiz
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Peak Adventure
MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Cheers

authors

MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Complementary Copies
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Roadtrip
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Second Helpings

autokey cipher

MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 Keeping Records

Avatar

MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Harmony

Ave Maria cipher

MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 GRATIA PLENA

aviation

MIT Mystery Hunt 2007 Crash Course
MIT Mystery Hunt 2009 Astro Traffic Control

Aztec calendar

MIT Mystery Hunt 2004 Altar (Meta)
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Scheduling Conflicts

Aztec mythology

MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 It's Not a Well Written Quizbowl Packet But...

Aztec numerals

See Mayan/Aztec numerals

Baba is You

MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Divided is Us

Babylonian numerals

MIT Mystery Hunt 2004 A Scholarly Lesson

baby names database

The Social Security Administration in the United States has made available, from their database of every American born in about a century, a database that lets you look up the popularity of first names over time.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 Thank Heaven for Little Girls

Bach cantatas

MIT Mystery Hunt 2006 Sacred and Profane

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

background music

MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 IN SYNdiCation

backsolving

MIT Mystery Hunt 1996 The Impossible Tribar
MIT Mystery Hunt 2010 Round 3 Meta
MIT Mystery Hunt 2011 Meta testing!
MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 Piercing the Veil
MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 A Puzzle with the Answer WILLIAMS
MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 White Queen Meta
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Safari Adventure
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Twins
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Level One
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 ⊥IW.nano
MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Shortcuts

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

Back to the Future movies

MIT Mystery Hunt 2005 Lightning Strikes Twice

"Backwards" (Rascal Flatts song)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 Scattered and Absurd

backward talking

MIT Mystery Hunt 2015 Nina
MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Lost to Time

the (Kevin) Bacon game

Also known as Six Degrees of Separation, this is a game where you try to link actors to one another or specifically to Kevin Bacon using movies and/or TV shows actors appeared in together as links. The Bacon number is the number of links needed to get from any actor to Kevin Bacon, with Bacon himself having Bacon number 0 and those who appeared in his films having Bacon number 1.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2006 Hollow Man
MIT Mystery Hunt 2007 Round II Meta
MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 Intersecting Personalities
MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 Meet the Loremipsumstanis

badges

MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Badges, Badges, Badges

“The Bad Touch” (Bloodhound Gang song)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2007 Unscrambled Cable Porn

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

"The Ballad of Lydia Pinkham"

MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Efficacious

ballet

MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Torsion Twirl

ballroom dancing

MIT Mystery Hunt 2003 Ballroom

Bananagrams

Bananagrams is one of many fast-paced word-building games which all use the following general rules:

Each player draws some set number of tiles from a large supply at the start of the game.
At a signal, all players flip over their tiles and try to arrange them all into a legal Scrabble board. All letters must be used to form words, all the words must interlock into a single network, and all groups of adjacent tiles must form words reading left to right or top to bottom.
The first person who succeeds in doing this calls out some signal (like "Draw!") at which point each players draws two (or only one, in some games) more tiles from the supply.
All players rebuild their layouts to incorporate the new letters. You can rearrange the letters arbitrarily, but you are going to be faster if you can just add the tiles as a new word or extend an existing word.
The first player done calls out and more tiles are drawn.
Repeat until there are not enough tiles remaining for everybody to draw new tiles.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 My Socrates Note
MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Second-rate Tiles

bands

MIT Mystery Hunt 2003 Cockpit (original names)
MIT Mystery Hunt 2005 Ten Times a Minute (members)
MIT Mystery Hunt 2005 Red Meta (members)
MIT Mystery Hunt 2005 Red Star Meta (members)
MIT Mystery Hunt 2007 Large and in Charge (backup bands; __ & the ___s)
MIT Mystery Hunt 2010 Sorry I Love These Big Wrong Musical Numbers (names with numbers)
MIT Mystery Hunt 2011 Toto, I Have a Feeling We're Not in Kansas Anymore (names from movies)
MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 A Meta Puzzle
MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 Indie Audio Productions
MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 1! 2! 3! 4! 4649!
MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 Puppy Love
MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Swingin'

Barbie dolls

MIT Mystery Hunt 2004 Princess of South Africa
MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 Day 2 meta
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Model Scientists

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

base 20

Base 20 numbers are most commonly encountered in the Mayan numeral system.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2010 Counter Culture
MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Diced Turkey Hash

base 36

Sometimes seen as the ultimate number base since it uses all the standard numerals and letters as digits. Of course, it isn't, but it takes more creativity or care to write numbers in larger bases clearly.

MIT Mystery Hunt 1996 11B
MIT Mystery Hunt 1996 Endgame
MIT Mystery Hunt 2015 Pipe
MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Lists of Large Integers

base 5

The base 5 numeral system. This is sometimes used as a way of encoding the alphabet in two-character blocks, though since it has only 25 values, one letter must be left out.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2006 Syncopation
MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Plead the Fifth

baseball

bases other than ten

These puzzles use uncommon or many bases. See also:

BASIC programming language

MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Zed Rainbow

basketball

MIT Mystery Hunt 2007 Belle of the Ball
MIT Mystery Hunt 2011 Drafting Table
MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 March Madness
MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 New Bridge Art
MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 AKA
MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Rose Garden
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Zebra
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Basketball

Basque language

MIT Mystery Hunt 2003 The Hall of Chess

basslines

The low frequencies in music, which often exhibit simple repeating themes that support the song.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Bottom of the Top

bathrooms

MIT Mystery Hunt 2003 When Johnny Comes Marching Home

“Batman” (60s TV series)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2005 Evil Empire
MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 Fight Choreography

Battle Line (game)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2008 War Game

battles

MIT Mystery Hunt 2000 Primate Conflict
MIT Mystery Hunt 2004 Message from Axayacatl
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Human Cannonball

Battleship (board game)

MIT Mystery Hunt 1999 Ho Chi Minh City
MIT Mystery Hunt 2004 The Commodore's Final Voyage (Meta)
MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Battleship
MIT Mystery Hunt 2015 Smiling Vessel
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 That Sinking Feeling

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).

“Battlestar Galactica” (2000s TV show)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2009 The Spoilers of War

Baudot code

MIT Mystery Hunt 2004 Reminder's World
MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Open Secrets

beaches

MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Endless Practice

Beale cipher

See book code

Beanie Babies

MIT Mystery Hunt 1999 New Orleans
MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 Warm and Fuzzy
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Toy Chest

beatboxing

A style of vocal percussion which imitates the sound of drum machines, turntablism, and sometimes other instruments. It is commonly associated with hip-hop music.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 The Radio

The Beatles

MIT Mystery Hunt 1999 Manila
MIT Mystery Hunt 2004 The Old Man's Story
MIT Mystery Hunt 2004 Hand Across the Water
MIT Mystery Hunt 2005 Telephone Pictionary
MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 White Queen Meta
MIT Mystery Hunt 2015 The Misspelled Insects
MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 Rip Van Winkle Dream Fragment

Beaufort cipher

MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 Keeping Records
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 The Ringmaster

Bechdel-Wallace Test

Sometimes simply called the Bechdel test, it attempts in a very simple way to rate movies based on whether they have meaningful female characters. The test has three conditions: (1) The film has at least two female characters. (2) They speak to each other. (3) They talk about something other than a man.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 Girl Talk

beef grades

See USDA beef grades

beer

MIT Mystery Hunt 2003 First Round Puzzle
MIT Mystery Hunt 2004 A Toast to the Fallen Warriors
MIT Mystery Hunt 2008 Suds
MIT Mystery Hunt 2015 Welcome to Dead Waters
MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Cheers

beer pong

MIT Mystery Hunt 2015 Blub Blub Pub Trivia

bee waggle dance

A dance bees perform to indicate the location of a source of nectar to other bees.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2015 Follow the Bees!

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).

beheaded people

MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 Hopping Lock

Bejeweled (game)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2010 Hot Ice

Bell Labs

MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Pippi Långstrump/Pippi Longstocking

Ben & Jerry's ice cream

MIT Mystery Hunt 2004 Dead and Gone

Bengali language

MIT Mystery Hunt 2011 English Expectations
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Old West Revue
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Le Chiffre Indéchiffrable

Beowulf

MIT Mystery Hunt 2008 The Goodwin Manuscript

beverages

MIT Mystery Hunt 2006 No Silver Lining
MIT Mystery Hunt 2008 Dossier 5 Meta
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Refreshment Stand
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Beverage Blunders

Beyoncé

Also known as Beyoncé Knowles and Queen Bee

MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Bee Movies

Bhavacakra (Buddhist Wheel of Life)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 12-Step Program

Bhutasamkhya system of numbers

A system of writing numbers in Sanskrit using nouns associatd with the number, such as eye for two because a person has two eyes.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 To Numbers and Back Again

The Bible

MIT Mystery Hunt 1996 3C
MIT Mystery Hunt 2003 Whoa-I Know Eschatology
MIT Mystery Hunt 2004 The Lame Puzzle
MIT Mystery Hunt 2004 Hidden Passages
MIT Mystery Hunt 2004 Final Runaround
MIT Mystery Hunt 2006 Endgame
MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 The Maniacal Merchants
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Change Machine
MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Head for the Kitchen

bicycle racing

MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Climbfinder

bifid cipher

The bifid cipher is a cipher based on taking indexes into a 5x5 square of letters, but instead of turning the text into numbers, the numbers are read in a different order and converted back to letters through the square. The link explains in more detail.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Security Theater

“Big Bang Theory” (TV show)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2010 From the Earth to the Moon
MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 The TV Puzzle

“Big Brother” (reality TV show)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2003 Whoa-I Know Subtraction

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
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Battle Plans

Binairo

A binary determination logic puzzle. Given some 0s and 1s in a grid, fill every cell with 0 or 1 such that each row and column has as many 0s as 1s (or one off, for odd lengths), at most two consecutive cells in a row or column have the same number, and no two rows or columns are identical.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Yes or No?

binary

The base 2 numeral system, the basis of storing numbers in most computers. See also all forms of 5-bit binary alphabets and ASCII.

MIT Mystery Hunt 1982 Subclue #14
MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Substance Abuse
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Story
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Ox (Bull)
MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Diced Turkey Hash
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Snark Tank
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Reflections

binary/biliteral/Baconian cipher

This includes any 5-bit binary for letters in alphabetical order. The binary cipher usually goes from 00001 for A up to 11010 for Z. The Baconian cipher, named for Sir Francis Bacon, usually started at 00000 for A. Classically (because of old Latin rules) the Baconian cipher combined I and J as one letter and likewise for U and V. Modern implementations often ignore the IJ/UV pairing and just work as an off-by-one version of the binary cipher. Finally, either of these may be presented as a biliteral cipher, a simple form of steganography, which might involve writing letters or words in two different styles to encode the binary. The Baconian cipher was classically used in this way. It's up to you to figure out which variation is 0 and which is 1, but usually not hard to determine.

binary tree

MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 A Puzzle with the Answer NORWEGIAN WOOD
MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 SKI Trees
MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Flocks
MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 X Marks the 🍎
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Hydra

The Binding of Isaac: Repentance (video game)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Steam Library

The Binding of Isaac (roguelike video game)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Flooded Caves

bingo

MIT Mystery Hunt 2007 Envy event
MIT Mystery Hunt 2009 Medical Centaur
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Bingo
MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Win a Game of Bingo

binomial nomenclature

See scientific names for organisms

biological taxonomy

See scientific names for organisms

biological tissues

MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Tissues

bird calls

MIT Mystery Hunt 2009 Calling You from My Cell
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Birds
MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 People Watching

birds

MIT Mystery Hunt 1996 2C
MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 The Caucus Race Meta
MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 Birds of a Feather
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Birds
MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 People Watching
MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Conglomerate
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Corporate Change
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Extreme Hiking
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 The Linq

Birds of America

(John James Audubon book)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2011 Song of Birds

bitcoins

MIT Mystery Hunt 2015 Cryptochains

bitwise OR

MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Straight from the Horse's Mouth
MIT Mystery Hunt 2015 The Sun Will Come Out
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Analog Circuitry

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.

blackjack

MIT Mystery Hunt 2004 Rules of the Game (Meta)
MIT Mystery Hunt 2008 Witness 3 Meta
MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Casino Lobdell
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Bringing Down the House

blacklight

Because we can't see it directly, blacklight is a name applied to ultraviolet light. Certain substances are active in the ultraviolet, reflecting it in frequencies we can see.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Subterranean Secrets

"The Blacklist" (TV show)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 The Dogged Pursuit of Justice, AKA: Caught Red-Handed

Mr. Blackwell's Worst Dressed List

MIT Mystery Hunt 2002 Dressing Down

blank answer

MIT Mystery Hunt 2000 Facial Expression

blank puzzle

Blaseball

MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 The Mlystery Hunt, as Told By a Thief of the Bases

"Blessed Messiah and the Tower of Ai"

A song using Vocaloids for lyrics

MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 The Tower of Eye

blindness

(Puzzles where you have to do something blindfolded or in the dark.)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2001 The Braille Witch Project
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Tunnel of Love
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Pitch Black

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?

blogs

MIT Mystery Hunt 2005 Post Modern
MIT Mystery Hunt 2009 Geek Drama
MIT Mystery Hunt 2011 Stuff Nerd People Like

blood types

MIT Mystery Hunt 2001 Predator
MIT Mystery Hunt 2005 Pieces of Eight
MIT Mystery Hunt 2015 Spotted Tower Meta
MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Halloween Town/Thanksgiving Town Meta

Bloom filter

A Bloom filter is a compact data structure used for representing the members of a set.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Bloom Filter

Bluebikes

Bluebikes are an automated bicycle rental system in the greater Boston area. The bikes can be picked up and returned at numerous Bluebikes racks.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Royal Steeds

blueprints

MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 Prints

Blue Riband

A title given to the ship holding the record for the fastest crossing of the Atlantic Ocean

MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Casino Royale

Board Game Geek (web site)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 On Numbers and Games

Bob's Burgers (TV series)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 Boston Burgers
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Good Company

bodaburokku

See border block puzzle

body parts

MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 Cannery
MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Tissues

Humphrey Bogart

MIT Mystery Hunt 2002 The Joint of No Return

Boggle

MIT Mystery Hunt 1996 3A
MIT Mystery Hunt 2003 Bogots
MIT Mystery Hunt 2006 Sixteen Blocks
MIT Mystery Hunt 2007 DRUGGLE
MIT Mystery Hunt 2011 Zombies vs. Zombies Event
MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 A Set of Words
MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 The Contest
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 The Trebuchet
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Boggle Battle

James Bond movies

MIT Mystery Hunt 2005 Common Bonds
MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Uncommon Bonds

bones

MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 Temperance
MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 The Mad Scientist's Assistant
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 The Shala of Thermopylae

"Bones" (TV show)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 Temperance

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

book cipher

In the book cipher, a series of numbers are given which index into a known text to extract letters or words. The exact indexing mechanism varies, but it could involve pages, lines, words, and letters if the text has known pagination, or chapters/sections, words, and letters if the pagination is not known or consistent, or simply words and letters if the document is short.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 Hamiltonian Path

book code

A type of cipher where a book or other widely available text is used as a key, and the message is encoded as a series of numbers which are indexes into the text. Indexes may be single (word or letter counts in the entire text) or multiple (indexing first by page, then by word, or first by word, then by letter, etc.) This is sometimes called a Beale cipher, in reference to a famous one which used the U.S. Declaration of Independence as a key.

MIT Mystery Hunt 1996 Endgame
MIT Mystery Hunt 1998 19.567 Thesis Preparation
MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 1207 1370
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 The Wizard's Escape
MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 On Second Thought
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Turing Tar-pit
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 A Trip Down Memory Lane
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Halloween TV Guide

book covers

MIT Mystery Hunt 2009 Cover Girls
MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Sometime After Midnight

books

MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Completing the Story
MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 My Fun Bow

book series

MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Word Search of Babel

border block puzzle

In the standard form of this puzzle, you divide the grid into regions along grid lines. All points where three or four lines meet are marked with dots. Every region contains at least one cell with a number, all instances of the same number go into the same region, and all numbers in a region are the same.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 De Fence

Boston Marathon

MIT Mystery Hunt 2008 X Marks the Spot

Boston University

MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Terrier Parking

bourbon

MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 Top Shelf

David Bowie

MIT Mystery Hunt 2002 Hum a Few Bars

bowling

MIT Mystery Hunt 2005 Found in the Alley
MIT Mystery Hunt 2008 Frame of Reference
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Oil Paintings

boxing

MIT Mystery Hunt 2008 Witness 1 Meta

“The Brady Bunch”

MIT Mystery Hunt 2008 Witness 2 Meta
MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Laugh

Braille

This includes all forms of Braille. Some puzzles use only the common 26 symbols representing the alphabet. Others may use symbols representing punctuation, word parts, and sometimes whole words; this level-2 Braille is context-dependent and so generally requires knowing the word breaks and adjacent characters to interpret properly.

brain regions

MIT Mystery Hunt 2015 Encephalon

Bratz dolls

MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Toy Chest

Brazil

MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Cubo

breakable artifacts

This are tangible objects given to teams, but the team has to break the object given to get the real prize inside.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2004 Final Runaround
MIT Mystery Hunt 2006 Blue Steel
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Squee Squee

Breaking Bad

MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Baking Bread

bridge bidding conventions

MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Penny Park Convention Center
MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Opening Bids

bridge crossing puzzle

In this classic, some people are trying to cross a bridge, but it's dark, and they need to carry a flashlight to cross safely. The bridge is also weak and can support at most two people (and the flashlight) at once. Each person has a different maximum walking speed. Find the fastest way to get everyone across.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Text Adventure

bridge (game)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2002 Conventional Wisdom
MIT Mystery Hunt 2005 Parallel Universe
MIT Mystery Hunt 2011 Scrambling Attributes Yields Conundrum
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Penny Park Convention Center
MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Opening Bids

bridges

MIT Mystery Hunt 2010 Running in Circles
MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 Attention Span
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Penny Park Convention Center
MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Crooked Crossings

Bridges puzzle

See hashiwokakero

British and American English differences

MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 Betsy Johnson's Review
MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Sam's Your Uncle
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 ANDARAC
MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 This or That

British Columbia

MIT Mystery Hunt 2011 Flat Head

Broadway theaters

MIT Mystery Hunt 2011 Where's Antoinette?

brothers and sisters

MIT Mystery Hunt 2011 Hammer Time
MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 SparksNotes

B sides

MIT Mystery Hunt 2003 Studio
MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 Bumblebee Tune-a

“Buffy the Vampire Slayer”

MIT Mystery Hunt 2001 Slay You, Slay Me, Slaying Together (board game)
MIT Mystery Hunt 2005 This Puzzle Sucks

bughouse chess

MIT Mystery Hunt 2006 Table for Four

bugs

MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 The Ministry
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Spore Prints
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 A Radical Fishing Trip

building 16-56 floor code

The code is apparently 6 bit binary with 0=A, 1=B, ..., two characters per column, and boustrophedonic (direction of columns alternate). Codes above 25 are defined as various symbols, but not used here.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2003 Pop Quiz
MIT Mystery Hunt 2010 Passageway

building 2 mathematical models

(a display case on the first floor)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2011 Showcase
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Catenoid

building 56 murals

Four panels in MIT's building 56, each 6 squares wide and 8 squares tall, with some of the squares containing pictures or text.

MIT Mystery Hunt 1999 Barcelona
MIT Mystery Hunt 2010 Passageway

building 6C floor squares

MIT Mystery Hunt 2009 Crop Squares
MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 Floor Drawing 305

Building Blocks puzzle

See lettered dice

buildings

MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 I Can See for Miles

Bulgarian language

MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Symphony from the Old World
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 T (Counts) for Two

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

Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest

A tongue-in-cheek contest to write the worst possible opening sentences for novels, named for and inspired by the opening of Edward George Bulwer-Lytton's 1830 novel Paul Clifford which begins "It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents, except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness."

MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Bad Beginnings

Burman language

MIT Mystery Hunt 2003 The Hall of Chess

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

buses

MIT Mystery Hunt 2000 Round 4 Meta Hint

busy beaver Turing machines

MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Halting Problem

"but I hardly know her" jokes

MIT Mystery Hunt 2011 Charm School

butterflies

MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Popcorn

Button Men (game)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2009 Round 8 Puzzle Unlocking Mechanism
MIT Mystery Hunt 2009 Round 8 Meta

BuzzFeed

MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 Words Search

B vitamins

MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Pretty Good Chemistry

BWV numbers (Bach music catalog)

MIT Mystery Hunt 1999 Toronto

Cabin Pressure (BBC radio show)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 Cabin Fever

Caesar shifts

Nicolas Cage

MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 The Show Must Go On

calcudoku

See KenKen

calculatrivia

Long ago, back before the Internet made hard trivia easy and impossible trivia doable, Games magazine ran a series of contests which consisted of nothing but a zeries of trivia questions whose answers were all numbers and a complicated equation to plug all the numbers into.

MIT Mystery Hunt 1998 18.617 Number Theory
MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 Trivial Mathematics
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Exactly

calendars

MIT Mystery Hunt 1996 12A
MIT Mystery Hunt 2009 Console-Nation Prizes
MIT Mystery Hunt 2009 Malthusian Catastrophes
MIT Mystery Hunt 2010 Endgame
MIT Mystery Hunt 2010 Round 8 Meta
MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Indiana Jones Meta
MIT Mystery Hunt 2015 Time is Out of Joint
MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 All History is Local
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Enclosures
MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Personal Connections
MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Diary
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Scheduling Conflicts

call letters of TV or radio stations

MIT Mystery Hunt 1997 Elvis Travels to Peace Talks as Delegate of Switzerland!
MIT Mystery Hunt 1999 Tbilisi
MIT Mystery Hunt 2003 Dictionary
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Coast to Coaster
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 The Hermit Crab

Caltech

MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 The Best IT

Cambridge street cleaning schedule

MIT Mystery Hunt 2009 The Plutonian Transport Agency

Camelot (board game)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 It's Only a Model

Canadian Aboriginal syllabics

A writing system used to write all the Cree languages, Inuktitut, and which has at times been used to write other aboriginal languages. It features the unusual mechanism of rotating the glyph representing different initial consonants to represent different following vowels.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 Directions in Writing

cannabis

See marijuana

canonical hours

MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Divine Intervention

capitals of states or countries

MIT Mystery Hunt 1994 17
MIT Mystery Hunt 1995 12: Screening Room
MIT Mystery Hunt 2005 Orange Meta
MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 Travelogue
MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 Capital Punishment
MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Shah Raids
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Filming on Location
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Peak Adventure
MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Crewel
MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Fine Dining
MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Lost to Time
MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 We Made a Quiz Bowl Packet but Somewhere Things Went Horribly Wrong

CAPTCHAs

MIT Mystery Hunt 2009 Please Prove Your Humanity
MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 Checkpoint
MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Please Prove You Are Human

Care Bears

MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Toy Chest

caricatures

MIT Mystery Hunt 2005 On the Couch

car makes

MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Endless Practice

car models

MIT Mystery Hunt 2003 Garage
MIT Mystery Hunt 2005 Car Math Chameleon
MIT Mystery Hunt 2009 The Plutonian Transport Agency
MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 How Hard Can It Be?
MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 Road Trip
MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 AllSpark

Carnatic (South Indian Classical) music

MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 To Numbers and Back Again

Jim Carrey movies

MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 What Comes Next?

“Car Talk” (radio program)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2003 Dictionary

Cartesian coordinates

MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 Modern Cubism Artist
MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 Crosswalks
MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 Luminance Shift
MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 . . . Or Don't We?
MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 Pentoku
MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 4D Geo

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...

cartoons

MIT Mystery Hunt 1995 2: Screening Room
MIT Mystery Hunt 1999 Warrant 1.2
MIT Mystery Hunt 2004 Shogun Trivia (Meta)
MIT Mystery Hunt 2007 It Could Be Worse
MIT Mystery Hunt 2008 Character Witness
MIT Mystery Hunt 2008 Confession
MIT Mystery Hunt 2009 Nurse Charnel's Reports from the Sickbay of the U.S.S. Parkerstone
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Chairiot Races
MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Noise Apparatus

Cash Cab

(TV game show)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2010 The Cash Corridor

casinos

MIT Mystery Hunt 2005 LSEA
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Shade of Wealth

Castawords puzzle

See lettered dice

Castilian

See Spanish language (Castilian)

castrated animals

Did you know there are special names for castrated male animals?

MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Two Outs, Two Strikes, and...

Catalan language

MIT Mystery Hunt 2001 The Chimera
MIT Mystery Hunt 2005 Lost in Translation

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

Catholic mass

MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Another One Bites the Dust

cats

MIT Mystery Hunt 2004 A Sudden Downpour
MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 Curiouser and Curiouser
MIT Mystery Hunt 2015 The Cat's Meow
MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 No Sads!
MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Insider Trading
MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Cute Cats

Cats by Andrew Lloyd Webber

MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 Listicle
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 A Divine Comeowdy

Cats (movie)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Board Members

The Cat Who... mystery series

MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 The Case of the Missing Component

causal loop diagrams

Diagrams explaining the relationships of variables in complex systems

MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 Feedback Encounters of the CLD Kind

Cave puzzle

See Corral puzzle

celebrities' original names

MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 A Rose By Any Other
MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 Soul-searching
MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 Chromesthesia
MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Costume Change

celebrity baby names

MIT Mystery Hunt 2011 Photo Album

celebrity deaths

MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 In Memoriam

celebrity photos

Cell Structure puzzle

See Nurikabe

cemetery

MIT Mystery Hunt 2003 A Walk in the... Cemetery?

censored words

MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Dropped Quotes
MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 No Shirt
MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Go the F*** To Sleep
MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Redacted Recipes

census

The count of people living in a place at a given time

MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 A More 6 ∪ 28 ∪ 496 ∪ …

ceramics

MIT Mystery Hunt 1982 Subclue #12

cereal

MIT Mystery Hunt 1995 1: Kitchen
MIT Mystery Hunt 2005 The Mayor's Breakfast
MIT Mystery Hunt 2006 Get on with It
MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Lost to Time

changeovers

This is an NPL flat type. One letter in a word is changed and moved to a different position. This could be considered a deletion of one letter and addition of another in a different place.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2005 Grocery List

change ringing

MIT Mystery Hunt 2008 Method to the Madness

Chaocipher

MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Arbor Day Town/Bloomsday Town Meta

"The Chaos" (poem)

This poem by Gerard Nolst Trenité illustrates many of the spelling and pronunciation oddities of the English language.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Engelsche

Chaotic (conlang)

A language originally invented for the puzzle The Realm of Unspeakable Chaos and which has been further developed over other puzzles in later Mystery Hunts.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2001 The Realm of Unspeakable Chaos
MIT Mystery Hunt 2003 The Road Signs of Unspeakable Chaos
MIT Mystery Hunt 2008 Son of the Realm of Unspeakable Chaos
MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Grandson of the Realm of Unspeakable Chaos
MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Midterm of Unspeakable Chaos

characteristic polynomial

A polynomial whose roots are the eigenvalues of a given square matrix.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Tryst of Fate

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.

charities

MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Pay it Forward

“Charlie on the MTA”

MIT Mystery Hunt 2008 Let Me Tell You the Story

chatbots

MIT Mystery Hunt 2015 Shark Blood

chaturanga

Ancient Indian strategy game, thought to be the ancestor of modern chess and related games

MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 To Numbers and Back Again

cheat codes

MIT Mystery Hunt 2011 Unfair Cryptogram
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 A Cheat Code

checkers

MIT Mystery Hunt 2007 Spellcheckers
MIT Mystery Hunt 2009 Round 12 Meta
MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Turnary Reasoning
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Checkerboard

"Cheers" (TV show)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 Precipice

cheese

MIT Mystery Hunt 1995 30: Kitchen
MIT Mystery Hunt 1999 Stuttgart
MIT Mystery Hunt 2009 Sweet Cheeses!
MIT Mystery Hunt 2010 Sharp Senses
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 What Is the Moon Made Of?

Chef programming language

MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Turing Tar-pit

chemical elements

The standard elements on the periodic table: hydrogen, helium, etc.

chemical reactions

MIT Mystery Hunt 2004 Return to the Blue Lagoon

chemicals (particular molecules)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2002 It's All Green to Me
MIT Mystery Hunt 2005 Nonmetal Cure
MIT Mystery Hunt 2008 Train Station
MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 Feed Your Head
MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 Model Kit
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Love Connection
MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Pretty Good Chemistry

chemistry

MIT Mystery Hunt 1994 11
MIT Mystery Hunt 2000 Overanalysis
MIT Mystery Hunt 2000 Round 2 Meta Hint
MIT Mystery Hunt 2003 Mixed Drink
MIT Mystery Hunt 2004 Sage of the Arctic
MIT Mystery Hunt 2005 Par for the Course V
MIT Mystery Hunt 2010 Hot Ice
MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 Feed Your Head
MIT Mystery Hunt 2015 Bubbles
MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 Chemistry Experimentation
MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 Model Kit
MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Starbucks Lover
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Love Connection
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Balancing Act
MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Bridge Building
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Oil Prices
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Chemistry
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Another One Bites the Dust
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Modern Architecture

Cherokee language

MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 North Carolina Shopping List

Cherokee numerals

MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 North Carolina Shopping List

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

chess

Chess960

Chess variant in which the pieces on players home ranks are randomized at the start of the game. The number 960 represents the number of allowed arrangements.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Rretro Chess Puzzle

chess variants/fairy chess

MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 Charles Lutwidge Dodgson Meta
MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 The Lion and the Unicorn
MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Divine the Rule of Kings
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 A King's Best Friend

chewing gum

MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 Stick the Landing

children's books

MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Complementary Copies
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Back School To

Chinese brand names

MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Tikki Tikki Tembo

Chinese five elements

MIT Mystery Hunt 2003 Biological Garden
MIT Mystery Hunt 2009 Mary Ka-Ching's

Chinese language

See Mandarin Chinese language

Chinese mythology

MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 It's Not a Well Written Quizbowl Packet But...

Chinese numerals

MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 Encoded
MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 Pictocryptolists

Chinese remainder theorem

MIT Mystery Hunt 2008 All Geared Up
MIT Mystery Hunt 2009 Round 9 Meta
MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Czar Cycle
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 One Size Fits All

Chinese zodiac/calendar

MIT Mystery Hunt 2006 A Pile of Pictures
MIT Mystery Hunt 2009 Mary Ka-Ching's
MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 March Madness
MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 20 Questions
MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 Tea Party Meta
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 The Trainer
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Bracketeering
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Dating Stars

chiptunes

Retro electronic music which mimics the sound of early home computer and video game audio systems.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Pulse Pulse Wave Noise

chocolate ingredients

MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 Incredible Edibles

choose your own adventure

MIT Mystery Hunt 2007 Choose Your Own Misadventure
MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Send Yourself Swanlumps
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Inner Tube Adventure Float

Chopped (cooking game show)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Spoiler Alert

Christ figures

MIT Mystery Hunt 2015 The ___er of Men

A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens

MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Halloween TV Guide

Christmas carols

MIT Mystery Hunt 1995 25: Attic
MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 Rhythms of the Season

Chromaphonoglyphics

MIT Mystery Hunt 2009 Brodie Electric

Chutes and Ladders

MIT Mystery Hunt 2008 Dossier 2 Meta
MIT Mystery Hunt 2011 The Higher They Climb, the Farther They Fall
MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Snakes and Ladders
MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 A Puzzle with the Answer AND I LOVE HER
MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 Scout
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Water Slides

Cinéman

MIT Mystery Hunt 2011 Vive la Différence

circular periodic table

MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 King Arthur Meta

Cirque du Soleil

MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 William S. Bergman's Review

cities

city address grids

Some cities, or parts of cities, have a rectangular grid of streets, with the street names in one or both directions being sequential numbers or letters, and often with the addresses matching cross-streets (so the addresses on a street between the intersections with 5th and 6th streets would be between 500 and 600). Although the distance between each pair of streets is not always the same, this provides opportunities to interpret the map as a Cartesian plane.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 I Left My Stomach in Salt Lake City

city and state names

MIT Mystery Hunt 1999 Madras
MIT Mystery Hunt 2009 Megrez Expedition
MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 Cookin’
MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 Local Shorts
MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 Opus Meta
MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 Trivia
MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Touring the Nation

city name changes

MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 The Chromosome of a Highly Colored Fish's Eye

Clabbers (anagram Scrabble)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 Stronghold Fire

cladograms

Diagrams depicting the evolutionary relationships of various organisms (clades)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 X Marks the 🍎

cliches

MIT Mystery Hunt 1994 9
MIT Mystery Hunt 2004 Collision in the Marketplace
MIT Mystery Hunt 2009 Picture Time
MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Albumistanumerophobia

clickbait links

MIT Mystery Hunt 2015 Captain Planet

Climbfinder (bicycle racing website)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Climbfinder

clocks

MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 April Fool's Day Town

cloning

MIT Mystery Hunt 2008 Character Witness

George Clooney

MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 How to Quadruple Your Money in Hollywood

clothing

MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 Covering Your Ass With Caution Tape
MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 On the A Line
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 People Wear Clothes

Clue (game)

Clue, called Cluedo in the UK, is a classic deduction board game

MIT Mystery Hunt 1995 40: Ballroom (Meta)
MIT Mystery Hunt 2002 D2: The Mighty Duck Konundrum
MIT Mystery Hunt 2007 The Usual Suspects
MIT Mystery Hunt 2008 Son of the Realm of Unspeakable Chaos
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Isle of Misfit Puzzles

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

Clue (movie)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2008 Cluesome

coats of arms

MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 The Nauseator

cocktails

MIT Mystery Hunt 2003 Cubicle
MIT Mystery Hunt 2009 Interstellar Basic Algebra
MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 Chaser
MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 Rescue the Chemist
MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 Special Delivery

Code 128

A kind of linear barcode

MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 Bark Ode

Codenames (game)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 Shift
MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Protection Plan
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Intelligence Collection

coins

MIT Mystery Hunt 1997 Senator Ridicules Proposed Elvis Coin: "Elvis is Not Dead Yet"
MIT Mystery Hunt 2004 The Money Changer
MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 De-Coins
MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Turn on a Dime
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Penny Park Guide
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Wishing Fountain
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Workshop

The Colbert Report

MIT Mystery Hunt 2011 The Word

Colemak keyboard

See keyboard

collective names for animals

MIT Mystery Hunt 2005 A Bunch of Boxes, a Collection of Clues
MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 Spades Meta
MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 Merriweather Post Pavilion
MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 Birds of a Feather
MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Nature Hike

college football bowl games

MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 A Message from Our Sponsors
MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Thanksgiving Town/New Year's Town Meta
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 The Midway
MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Fine Dining

college sports team nicknames

MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 Mad Dogs
MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 Elf/Dwarf Brawl

color blindness

MIT Mystery Hunt 2008 Son of the Realm of Unspeakable Chaos

color palettes in image files

MIT Mystery Hunt 1996 1B
MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 Encoded
MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 This Page Intentionally Left Blank
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Extensive
MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Red Herring
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Von Schweetz's Big Question

colors

color separations

colors of noise

MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Pitch Black

colors of the rainbow

MIT Mystery Hunt 2011 Dr. Wily's Fortress (Mega Man Supermeta)
MIT Mystery Hunt 2015 Optics Lab Meta
MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 Aborigine Dream Fragment
MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 Chromesthesia
MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 The Ministry
MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 The Typesetting Machine
MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 MATE's Team

col (saddle point between mountains)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2008 Sphere

combination locks

MIT Mystery Hunt 2015 Locks
MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Your Birthday Town

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

comedians

MIT Mystery Hunt 2007 Killing the Audience

comics

Commander Keen alphabet

MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Open Secrets

commercials

MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 See Spot Run

Commodore 64

MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 Assemble Me

common letters

The letters shared by two or more words or phrases. Unlike with letters in same positions, the positions the letters occur in are not considered.

MIT Mystery Hunt 1995 24: Study
MIT Mystery Hunt 2004 History Lesson (Meta)
MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 Ysera Meta
MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 Clueless
MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 iPod Submarine
MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Herschel Hayden
MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Strange Garnets
MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Construct Objects
MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 MATE's Team
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Shalom
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 A Rift in Hades

common meter for songs

MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Something in Common

Commonwealth Avenue Mall

Thee green space along Commonwealth Avenue in Boston, containing various statues

MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Street Smarts

The Communards (band)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2010 Endgame

communication

MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 I Can Hear You
MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 Running Mates
MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 Rescue the Linguist
MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 Under Control
MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 Recover the Hacking Core Memory
MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 Grand Finale
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 You Will Explode If You Stop Talking

Community Solar System (exhibit of the Museum of Science)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2002 Terrestrial Planets
MIT Mystery Hunt 2008 In Other Words

"Community" (TV Show)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 Introduction to Collegiate Notetaking
MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 The TV Puzzle

compass points

MIT Mystery Hunt 2004 South Carmacks
MIT Mystery Hunt 2006 Just Follow Directions
MIT Mystery Hunt 2007 I Bet I Look Good on the Dance Floor
MIT Mystery Hunt 2010 The Obligatory Dance Video Puzzle
MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 Panorama
MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Following the News
MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Cardinal Red
MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 The Dismal Dungeon
MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Morale Compass

completing the square

Completing the square is a mathematical concept used with polynomials. Given a polynomial such as x²+2x, you add a 1 to make it a square (in this case, (x+1)².

MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 You Complete Me

complex numbers

MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Just Index
MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Period of Wyrm

composers of music

MIT Mystery Hunt 1996 3B
MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Digging Up Music
MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 Compose Yourself
MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 Is that Even Music?
MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 Altered from the Original

computer architecture

MIT Mystery Hunt 2015 Nope!

computer parts

MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Fruit Around

Concept (board game)

A guessing game where one player provides clues to the answer by placing markers on some of the icons on a gameboard.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Frog

concept intersection

MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 Set Theory

concert posters

MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Long Strange Tour

concordances

MIT Mystery Hunt 2003 Don't Make Me Say This Twice
MIT Mystery Hunt 2003 Whoa-I Know Eschatology
MIT Mystery Hunt 2008 Ski Slopes

conlangs

See invented languages

Connect Four

MIT Mystery Hunt 2006 Connect Four
MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Halting Problem
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Colorful Connections

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
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 The Myriad Gamut of Hera

constellations

MIT Mystery Hunt 1994 15
MIT Mystery Hunt 2006 A Bunch of Dots
MIT Mystery Hunt 2009 Round 6 Meta
MIT Mystery Hunt 2011 Mario 3 Meta
MIT Mystery Hunt 2015 Be a Star!
MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 Star Search
MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 Ode to the Greeks
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Ox (Bull)
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 The Astrologer
MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Book of Fixed Stars
MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Reactivation
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Gaia

Constitution of the U.S.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2006 Revisions
MIT Mystery Hunt 2011 Unnatural Law

construction

MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 The Cat's Combobulation
MIT Mystery Hunt 2015 Write-it Build-it
MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 Covering Your Ass With Caution Tape

context-free grammars

A set of rules used to define a set of strings.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 No Context

contra dancing

MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Excalibur

Conway's Game of Life

See Life (cellular automaton)

Cookie Run Kingdom

MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Cheerful Ruler's Kingdom

cookies

MIT Mystery Hunt 1999 Dublin
MIT Mystery Hunt 2005 Cookie Monster
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Got Milk?
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Cheerful Ruler's Kingdom

cooking/bring us food

"Cooking with Dog" (YouTube show)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 Dog Food

corporations

MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 Pirates of the Tyrrhenian

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

Cosmic Encounter

MIT Mystery Hunt 2001 Cosmic Awareness

costumes

MIT Mystery Hunt 2006 Costume Ball
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Infinite Robot Parade

"Countdown" (British game show)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Houston, We Have Liftoff
MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 Effective Resource Management in High Stress Situations
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 A Collection of Conundrums and Riddles

counties

Counties are divisions of U.S. states. Louisiana called them parishes but collectively across the states we still call them counties.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 Opus Meta
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 The Castle
MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 My Fun Bow

counting shapes

MIT Mystery Hunt 2010 Counter Culture
MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 My Summer Vacation

countries

country codes (any variety)

country music

MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 Scattered and Absurd

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

The Court Jester (1955 film)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Potions

court settlements

MIT Mystery Hunt 2009 Showcases

covers (musical remakes)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2007 Got it Covered
MIT Mystery Hunt 2010 New and Improved

cowbell songs

MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 Behind the Music

cowboys

MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Thanksgiving Town/New Year's Town Meta

Cow Parade (civic art projects)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2007 Herd Mentality
MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 Raw Bar
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Until They Come Home

C programming language

MIT Mystery Hunt 1998 6.666 Arcane Programs

Cracked magazine

Cracked is online

MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Cut by Editorial

Craigslist

MIT Mystery Hunt 2004 All the Wrong Places

Crayola colors

MIT Mystery Hunt 2015 Tickle Me Pink
MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Harold an dthe Purple Crayon

creative tasks

(Build, write, or perform something, instead of solving a puzzle. Does not count those puzzles where you have to do some small thing at the end, but see answer given for completing task and intermediate tasks for those)

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

cribbage

MIT Mystery Hunt 2005 Peg O' My Heart

cricket

MIT Mystery Hunt 2009 The Sensitive Man Wearing a Cricketer's Uniform and a Celery Stalk on His Lapel
MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 My Cup Runneth Over
MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 Cabin Fever
MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 Tricky Wicket

cricket (darts game)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 Tricky Wicket

Criminal Minds (TV series)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Evildoers Wanted

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.

Croatian language

MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 T (Counts) for Two

crocheting

croquet

MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 Hedgehogs and Flamingos

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

MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Uncharted Territory

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

crosswordese

This refers to words which often appear in American-style crosswords, while being rare in typical English. Usually these are words which start and end with vowels, or have many vowels, as grids often require such words and there are far fewer of these than other patterns.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Filler Puzzle

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

crows

MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 Crow Facts

cruise lines

MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 Getting There is Half the Fun

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.

cryptocurrency

MIT Mystery Hunt 2015 Cryptochains

cryptograms

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

crystallography

MIT Mystery Hunt 2008 The Blue Carr Bungle

cube nets

The hexominoes which you can get by unfolding a cube along its edges into a flat shape.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 The Curious Cube
MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 Blocked Lines
MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Error: File "txtadv.py" not found

cultural houses within MIT's New House

The New House residence hall at MIT is divided into several different living groups. Some of these have no special symbolism, but some of them have particular themes (such as French House) and are referred to as cultural houses.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 New House

Cuneiform numerals

MIT Mystery Hunt 2004 A Scholarly Lesson

cures

MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Doctor's Orders

curling (sport)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 A Puzzle with the Answer A HARD DAY'S NIGHT

currencies

MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Wishing Fountain
MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Danni Dewey

currency ISO codes

MIT Mystery Hunt 2015 People and Places
MIT Mystery Hunt 2015 Finsey Gillhone
MIT Mystery Hunt 2015 Coins
MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Climate Change

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

cutting out shapes

(most, but not all, of these involve cutting out shapes to fold into 3-dimensional figures)

cycling

See bicycle racing

Cyrillic alphabet

MIT Mystery Hunt 2008 In Soviet Union, Death Defies You
MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Czar Cycle

Czech language

MIT Mystery Hunt 2011 English Expectations
MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Split Seven Ways

Daedric alphabet (Elder Scrolls)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Open Secrets

The Daily Show

MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Debate Quotes

Dai Shogi

MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Large-scale Anthropomorphism

Dance Dance Revolution

MIT Mystery Hunt 2004 Dingy, Dark Reality
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Nightclub Event

dances (names for)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2009 Puzzle Unlocking Mechanism

dancing

These puzzles also appear under their specific dance names, for example, square dancing, ballroom dancing, and swing dancing.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2003 Barn
MIT Mystery Hunt 2003 Ballroom
MIT Mystery Hunt 2006 Do Sa Do
MIT Mystery Hunt 2007 War Dances
MIT Mystery Hunt 2009 Now is the Time on Kronos When We Dance
MIT Mystery Hunt 2009 Where the Hell is Captain Blastoid?
MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 Lobster Quadrille
MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 Smart Moves
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Dance Party
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Torsion Twirl

Dancing Men cipher

MIT Mystery Hunt 2009 A Message in Space
MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Open Secrets
MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 Dancing Girls

Danish language

MIT Mystery Hunt 2011 English Expectations
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Fren Amis

Dante's circles of Hell

MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Sinners

Dante's Purgatorio

MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 A Divine Comeowdy

"Dare to Be Stupid" (Weird Al Yankovic song)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 It's So Obvious!

Dark Side of the Moon (Pink Floyd album)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Spaceopolis

DARPA Network Challenge

MIT Mystery Hunt 2010 Sightseeing

darts

MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Phoenix (Firebird)

database hacking

MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 The Day You Begin

data matrix

A kind of two-dimensional bar code

MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 Bark Ode

dating simulation

MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Love at 150 km/h

Da Vinci's Notebook (band)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2003 Paranoia

Dead & Company (band)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Long Strange Tour

dead or alive

MIT Mystery Hunt 2001 Necromancy

dead things

MIT Mystery Hunt 2015 Colorful Tower Meta

Deal or No Deal

MIT Mystery Hunt 2009 Showcases

Dear Sriracha (comic in The Oatmeal)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 Obsessive-Compulsive Dickishness

death metal

MIT Mystery Hunt 2004 True Unholy Puzzle

The Decemberists (band)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Revolting Developments

Decrypto (board game)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Spy Game

defecation

MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 Mass Aid

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.

Delphic maxims

A famous set of 147 moral principles from ancient Greece

MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Moral of the Story

"Dem Bones"

MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 The Shala of Thermopylae

demons

MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Hell's Kitchen

demonyms

The adjectives meaning from a certain place, such as French for France or Cypriot for Cyprus.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Where on Earth Is Carmen Suntigre?

Demotivators (parody of motivational posters)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 Sadness

“Desperate Housewives”

MIT Mystery Hunt 2010 Side by Side by Side
MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 The TV Puzzle

desserts

MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 Fruitless

detectives in fiction

See fictional detectives

The Devil's Dictionary

A book containing satirical definitions of words, written by Ambrose Bierce, first published in the early 20th century, collecting his newspaper columns from the late 19th century.

MIT Mystery Hunt 1995 35: Library
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 The Lexicographer Looks After His Own

/dev/joe's Mystery Hunt Index

This is for puzzles involving this web site. Because of course this site references itself. Self-reference is a favorite topic of Mystery Hunters. In 1996 they had a whole hunt about Godel, Escher, Bach which is all about self-reference.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 Haddock Walk
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Circus Circus

Dewey decimal system

MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 . . . Or Don't We?

D'Hondt allocation method

MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 The Hound of the Vast-Cur-Villes

diacritical marks

MIT Mystery Hunt 2006 Math is Hard!
MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Crow Facts 3000
MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 The Typesetting Machine

Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders

MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 The Voices in Your Head

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
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Island Hopping

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.

dialogues

MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Title of the Puzzle

Diceware

Diceware is a system for generating passphrases by rolling dice.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 The Lives of Π

Dicey Words

See lettered dice

diff files

diff is a classic Unix utility which compares two text files and outputs a report on their differences. There are different output formats available, but commonly seen are context diffs, which include information about the context of each difference in a way that allows the diff output to be used as a patch to convert one version of the file into the other.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 How to Run a Puzzlehunt

dimension added

(any puzzle that takes a standard puzzle type and adds more dimensions than it usually has)

The Dinner Party (art by Judy Chicago)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Chicago Loop

dinosaurs

MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 BLAST from the Past

Dinotopia footprint alphabet

MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Dinotopia

Diplomacy (game)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 Diplomatic Victory
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Disorder

directional letters

Typically, the initial letters of (N)orth, (E)ast, (W)est, and (S)outh, or the initial letters of (L)eft, (U)p, (R)ight, and (D)own.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Non-crossword
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 The Hermit Crab

dirty words

MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 The Sacred and the Mundane

disassembled objects

MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Restoration

disasters

MIT Mystery Hunt 2004 CQD

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.

Discworld

MIT Mystery Hunt 2010 Discword

diseases

MIT Mystery Hunt 2009 Medical Centaur
MIT Mystery Hunt 2011 Bio Man Meta
MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 We Are All Afraid to Die

Disney films

MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 The Circle of Life
MIT Mystery Hunt 2015 Montages
MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 Dancing Girls
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 High Noon Duel
MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 The Adventures of Pinocchio
MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Lost to Time

Disney princesses

MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 Dancing Girls
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Von Schweetz's Big Question

dissection (geometric)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2000 Hot Shots
MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Lost in Translation

divination methods

Forms of divination, such as numerology for divination based on numbers, or tasseography for divination using tea leaves

MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Pestle and Mortar

diving

MIT Mystery Hunt 2015 Spongebob

DNA, RNA

D'ni numerals

MIT Mystery Hunt 2006 Numeracy

DNS root servers

MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 Follow the Pipes
MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 King Arthur Dream Fragment

Dōbutsu shōgi

A small variant of shogi meant as a children's game

MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Strange Garnets

Doc McStuffins

A Disney Jr. cartoon about a girl who doctors the illnesses of her and her friends' toys.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 It Is What It Is

"Doctor Who"

MIT Mystery Hunt 2009 Round 12 mechanism for matching up puzzle parts
MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 Revisiting History
MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 A Puzzle with the Answer SULLIVAN

dog food

MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 Paddywhack

dog hybrids

MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 Half and Half

dogs

MIT Mystery Hunt 2004 Best Mate
MIT Mystery Hunt 2004 A Sudden Downpour
MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 Cross-Breeding
MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 Paddywhack
MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 The Show Must Go On!
MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 Half and Half
MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 Space Sounds TV
MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 Bark Ode
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Dog

dog shows

MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 Paddywhack
MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 Ribbons (Meta)
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Dog

Dominion (game)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 Sovereignty

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

Domino's Pizza

MIT Mystery Hunt 2004 Fair Trade

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 dactyls

MIT Mystery Hunt 2006 Counterintelligence

double letters

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

Dragonriders of Pern

MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Anne

The Dragon's Tomb (YouTube channel)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 New Rules

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.)

dream sequences

MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Just a Dream

Dresden Files books

MIT Mystery Hunt 2015 Wizardly Tales

dress-up

MIT Mystery Hunt 2007 America's Least Wanted
MIT Mystery Hunt 2009 Keep It Stylin', Stupid

Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog

MIT Mystery Hunt 2010 Dr Ox's Experiment

drill sizes

MIT Mystery Hunt 1994 1
MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 Hole Wizard

drinks

MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Fountain
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Inside Scoop

DropMix (music-mixing game)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Drop and Give Me Ten

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).

drugs

MIT Mystery Hunt 1999 Montevideo
MIT Mystery Hunt 2004 Locked In
MIT Mystery Hunt 2007 DRUGGLE
MIT Mystery Hunt 2010 For Whom the Bella Toils
MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 Sheila Sunshine's Review
MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 Feed Your Head

DTMF dialing tones

See Touch Tone dialing tones (DTMF)

dubbing videos with parody dialogue

MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Cone of Silence

Duck Konundrum

(see also following directions for similar non-Duck-Konundrum puzzles)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2000 The Duck Konundrum
MIT Mystery Hunt 2002 D2: The Mighty Duck Konundrum
MIT Mystery Hunt 2005 D3: The Fellowship of the Duck
MIT Mystery Hunt 2007 D4: Ducks Playing Poker
MIT Mystery Hunt 2009 The Amazing Juggling Troupe of Duckkon Undrum V
MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 The Duck Konundrum VI: Now with Way Way Way Way Way Too Much Pepper
MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 Ye Olde Seventhe Duck Konunnndrum: The Cones of Duckshire
MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 DK8: The Turducken Konundrum (Turkey)

"Dumb Ways to Die" (Melbourne train video)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Safety Training

Dungeons & Dragons

MIT Mystery Hunt 2003 Campaign Speeches
MIT Mystery Hunt 2011 Sufficiently Advanced Technology
MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 League of Legends & Lore
MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Insider Trading
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Bracketeering
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Triangles

Dungeons and Diagrams (logic puzzle)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Reactivation

Dutch language

MIT Mystery Hunt 1996 5A
MIT Mystery Hunt 2001 The Chimera
MIT Mystery Hunt 2005 Lost in Translation
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Le Chiffre Indéchiffrable
MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Trust Nobody
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 T (Counts) for Two

Robert Duvall

Actor

MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Hyena

DVD region numbers

MIT Mystery Hunt 2007 The Continental DiViDe

Dvorak keyboard

See keyboard

Dwarf Fortress

MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 Lost in Translation

Dwarf Fortress conlangs

The computer game Dwarf Fortress features four races (Dwarven, Elvish, Goblin, and Human) each with their own language invented for the game.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 Lost in Translation

dwarf planets

In 2006 Pluto was reclassified as a dwarf planet in light of the number of similar bodies which had been discovered in the outer reaches of the solar system. These other objects and Ceres, the only comparably large object from the asteroid belt, were added to this new classification.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Badges Badges Badges Badges Badges Badges Badges Badges Badges

Bob Dylan songs

MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Nobel Laureate

Easter dates

MIT Mystery Hunt 1996 12A

George Eastman plaque in building 6

MIT Mystery Hunt 2008 Wise Guys
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Rumpelstiltskin's Cottage

Easy as ABC puzzle

See End View puzzle

EBCDIC

MIT Mystery Hunt 2001 Eschatology
MIT Mystery Hunt 2004 Reminder's World
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 IO

Edel puzzle

See paint by numbers (logic puzzle)

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.

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

eggcorns

Eggcorns are words or phrases that come to exist when people mishear or misunderstand other phrases. Eggcorn is itself an eggcorn of "acorn." The same phenomenon is called a Mondegreen when it occurs in song lyrics.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 Picture an Acorn

EGOT

Acronym for Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony, the top awards in four different forms of entertainment, and specifically for people who have won one of each.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Board Members

Egyptian mythology

MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 It's Not a Well Written Quizbowl Packet But...

Eiffel Tower

Among the lesser known features of the Eiffel Tower is a layer where the names of 72 mostly French scientists are inscribed.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 The Laboratory

Einstein's puzzle

See logic puzzle based on elimination

elder futhark

See Futhorc

electoral college

MIT Mystery Hunt 2005 Divided We Stand
MIT Mystery Hunt 2007 Recounting Former Glories
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 A More 6 ∪ 28 ∪ 496 ∪ …
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Could You Restate That?

electrical engineering

(mostly analyzing circuit diagrams)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2003 Less Engineering, Dammit!
MIT Mystery Hunt 2003 Gnireenigne Lab
MIT Mystery Hunt 2004 Electric Soup
MIT Mystery Hunt 2006 Endgame
MIT Mystery Hunt 2006 The Quantum Menace
MIT Mystery Hunt 2007 Logical Digits
MIT Mystery Hunt 2008 Radio Waves
MIT Mystery Hunt 2010 Trance State
MIT Mystery Hunt 2011 Da Vinci's Workshop Meta
MIT Mystery Hunt 2011 Electronic Love
MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 Ben Bitdiddle Meta
MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 What Ben Bitdiddle Dropped (final runaround)

electric circuits

MIT Mystery Hunt 2004 Final Runaround
MIT Mystery Hunt 2015 The Resistance
MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 Starship Enterprise
MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Circuit

elimination tournament

MIT Mystery Hunt 2009 Genetic Struggle
MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 March Madness
MIT Mystery Hunt 2015 The Acerbic Sixteen
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Bracketeering
MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 How To Install a Handle
MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Dropypasta
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 The Champion
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Musical Scores

ellipse

MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 FOCUS!!

elliptic curves

MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Torsion Twirl

Elvis movies

MIT Mystery Hunt 1997 Languedoc Culture Attributes Modern Civilization to Elvis!

e-mail clients

MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Evolution

e-mail headers

MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Tech Support

embassies

MIT Mystery Hunt 2003 Abducted!
MIT Mystery Hunt 2006 Introductory Foreign Operations

emoji

emoticons

The classic smiley face :-) led to variants with other letters and symbols replacing parts of the face.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Express Yourself

emperors

MIT Mystery Hunt 2002 Land Grab

Encyclopedia Brown

MIT Mystery Hunt 2008 Let Me Tell You the Story
MIT Mystery Hunt 2011 The Baddest Man

Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences

MIT Mystery Hunt 2000 Everything Is Something
MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 20 Questions
MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 Cash Cab

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

Enigma cipher

MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Password Update (Marty Bishop meta)

Enneagram of Personality

A system of nine personality types

MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 ENNEAGRAM

Entertainment Weekly magazine

MIT Mystery Hunt 2005 On the Couch

enzymes

MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Nucleo Tide Pool

Epic Rap Battles of History

MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 Reaching for the Stars

episode titles

MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 The TV Puzzle
MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 Before and After Mash
MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 Modern Journalism
MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 Feedback Encounters of the CLD Kind
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Change Machine
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Channel Surfing

epithets

The descriptive words attached to the names of some people, especially rulers, such as great in Peter the Great or unready in Ethelred the Unready

MIT Mystery Hunt 2010 The Fallen
MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 Rulers
MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 What's in a Name?

eponyms (words made from people's names)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2002 That Which We Call a Rose

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

Ermahgerd! meme

MIT Mystery Hunt 2015 Graveyard Meta

errata

puzzles involving errata, not puzzles for which errata was issued

MIT Mystery Hunt 2015 Dory
MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Lost to Time

erroneous errata

The puzzle was correct, but an erratum was issued saying it was not.

MIT Mystery Hunt 1998 18.000 Remedial Mathematics

error messages

MIT Mystery Hunt 2001 A Satanic Message
MIT Mystery Hunt 2006 Badness 10000
MIT Mystery Hunt 2009 The Apples in Stereo
MIT Mystery Hunt 2015 Nope!

errors

MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 Crimes Against Cruciverbalism
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Hackin' the Beanstalk

Escape from Zyzzlvaria

MIT Mystery Hunt 2002 D2: The Mighty Duck Konundrum
MIT Mystery Hunt 2009 Theme and entire hunt structure
MIT Mystery Hunt 2009 Inner Meta-Meta
MIT Mystery Hunt 2010 Round 2 Meta
MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 DK8: The Turducken Konundrum (Turkey)

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

Escape This Podcast

MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 A Wrinkle in Time

esoteric programming languages

MIT Mystery Hunt 2002 Use of Gothicism Considered Harmful (various)
MIT Mystery Hunt 2004 What Do You Do With a Genteel Sailor? (Befunge)
MIT Mystery Hunt 2004 Who's There (Whitespace)
MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 This Page Intentionally Left Blank
MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 Callooh Callay, World!
MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 Sleeping Gypsy Meta (Piet)
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Befuddled (various)
MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Proof by Induction (Rockstar)
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Turing Tar-pit

Esperanto conlang

MIT Mystery Hunt 2001 The Chimera
MIT Mystery Hunt 2005 Lost in Translation
MIT Mystery Hunt 2011 English Expectations

estimation

MIT Mystery Hunt 2006 Physical Challenge
MIT Mystery Hunt 2011 Magnitude
MIT Mystery Hunt 2011 Katamari Supermeta

Estonian language

MIT Mystery Hunt 2003 The Hall of Chess
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 No, I Understand You Perfectly
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 An American in Paris

Etch a Sketch

MIT Mystery Hunt 2003 Whoa-I Know Drawing

etsy.com

MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Trochees, Etc.

etymology

MIT Mystery Hunt 1998 19.503 Advanced History
MIT Mystery Hunt 2006 Calumny Challenge
MIT Mystery Hunt 2008 Notes on a Century of English According to Merriam-Webster's 11th Collegiate Dictionary
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 The Shala of Thermopylae

Eurovision Song contest

MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Bitter Kittens Cross the Pond
MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 ❤️ & ☮️

Chris Evans

MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Chris Chros

even/odd letters

Taking every other letter of a word, i.e. only the letters in even positions or only the ones in odd positions. This can appear as an unusual cryptic crossword clue type, but these puzzles use it outside cryptic clues.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2011 Dr. Wily's Fortress (Mega Man Supermeta)
MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 Odd Voided

events

All teams come together for something that only happens once.

events staged multiple times

In the following events, teams interact with each other, but the event is staged multiple times as needed.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2001 It's a Bug-Eat-Bug World
MIT Mystery Hunt 2001 Slay You, Slay Me, Slaying Together
MIT Mystery Hunt 2004 The Answer Fits the Puzzle
MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Molasses Awareness Day Town
MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Your Birthday Town
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Weakest Carouselink
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Four Dead in Five Seconds
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 For Your Eyes Only

Every Second Turn

See Alternate Corners puzzle

evolutionary tree

MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Evolution

EXIF data

EXIF data is the metadata stored in JPEG images which can include information about the camera which took the image, when and where it was taken, a thumbnail of the image, and lots more.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 Sleeping Gypsy Dream Fragment
MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 THIS IS NOW A PUZZLE

experimental study group (ESG at MIT)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Eclectic Spatial Geometry

expired facts

Things that were true at one time, but which are no longer true.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2015 This Puzzle Has No Errata
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Unraveling the Mystery

explorers

MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Peak Adventure

ext2 filesystem

MIT Mystery Hunt 2015 Image

external publications and broadcasts

These puzzles make use of material that the constructing team got published, or aired on radio/television, somewhere outside the Mystery Hunt, then referenced in a puzzle.

extinct animals

MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Another One Bites the Dust

extra answers

These puzzles have more than one correct answer. You'll tend to find them in bunches because they occur in special rounds with unusual structures.

eye chart

MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Sightseeing

"The Eye of Argon" (short story)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 Argh

eye rhymes

Visually similar non-rhyming word pairs, like bear and hear.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 Bad Poetry
MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 First Contact Lens

fabrics

MIT Mystery Hunt 2015 Paper Jigsaw

Facebook

MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 MIT Confessions

factorization

MIT Mystery Hunt 2005 Ginormous
MIT Mystery Hunt 2006 Hey, Look, a Grid!
MIT Mystery Hunt 2007 Round VI Meta
MIT Mystery Hunt 2011 Another Small Collection of Immense Integers
MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 20 Questions
MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Halting Problem
MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 Replication
MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Lists of Large Integers
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Scan

Fact Sphere (Portal 2)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2015 Trivia Round

fairy tales

MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Sometime After Midnight

fake 404 page

MIT Mystery Hunt 2001 A Satanic Message

fake answer callback

MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Time Conundrum
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Unraveling the Mystery

fake puzzle

MIT Mystery Hunt 1998 19.7 Cryptography

fake solution link

MIT Mystery Hunt 2009 Resolutions

fake team

MIT Mystery Hunt 2010 Endgame

fake web site

MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 Haddock Walk

Fakoo

An alternative blind writing system to Braille, using 3x3 grids and patterns which resemble letters

MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Jigsaw Sudoku

Fallout 4 (video game)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 How I Spent My Pre/Post-Apocalyptic Vacation

Fallout: Las Vegas (video game)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Steam Library

false cognates

MIT Mystery Hunt 1999 Paris
MIT Mystery Hunt 2011 Interstellar Spaceship (Civilization Supermeta)
MIT Mystery Hunt 2015 Les Faux Amis Valent Rien
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Foreign Box Office
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 No, I Understand You Perfectly
MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Trust Nobody
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Fren Amis

false comparatives

These are akin to badge, badger: Words that look like they could be related by the comparative suffix -er, but aren't.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 For Better or For Worse

false friends

See false cognates

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

"Family Feud"

MIT Mystery Hunt 2015 Knowledge

family tree

MIT Mystery Hunt 2003 Whoa-I Know Genealogy
MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 Family Ties
MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 Mamma Mia
MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 Family Dinner
MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 No Sads!
MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 X Marks the 🍎
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Family Tree

famous captains

MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Moat-er Boats

famous duos

MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 Missed Connections
MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 It Takes Two

famous trips

MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 Trips

famous women

MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 American Icons

Farsi language

MIT Mystery Hunt 1996 5A
MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 Sounds Good to Me
MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Symphony from the Old World

fashion designers

MIT Mystery Hunt 2006 Blue Steel (floppy disk)
MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 On the A Line
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Bad Air Day

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

MIT Mystery Hunt 2004 Rules of the Game (Meta)
MIT Mystery Hunt 2004 Locked In

feast days for saints

MIT Mystery Hunt 2003 Chapel
MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 O Blessed Day
MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 GRATIA PLENA

federal congressional districts

MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Peripathetic
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Creatures from Outer Space
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 A More 6 ∪ 28 ∪ 496 ∪ …

Federal Reserve banks

MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Federal Reserve

FedEx tracking numbers

MIT Mystery Hunt 2005 Express Yourself

female scientists

MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Model Scientists

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.

FEN chess notation

Forsyth-Edwards Notation is a way of encoding a chess position into a short string. The board is described row by row, in lexical order (so starting from rank 8). White pieces are represented by their conventional capital letters, black pieces by the corresponding lower case letters, and numbers indicate consecutive runs of that many empty spaces. Slashes separate the rows. Additional symbols after the board indicate other aspects of the game state.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 A King's Best Friend

Fermat's Last Theorem

MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Halting Problem

Feynman diagrams

Feynman diagrams are representations of the interactions of subatomic particles.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2006 Surely You're Hexing
MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Text Adventure
MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Take Home Final (Physics 101 Meta)

fictional apes

MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 The Thin Pan

fictional archaeologists

MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Matchmaking

fictional birds

MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Flocks

fictional books

MIT Mystery Hunt 2004 Lawman
MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 Yo Dawg, I Herd You Like Puzzle Hunts

fictional cars

MIT Mystery Hunt 2010 Master of the World
MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 Satellite Navigation

fictional characters' love interests

MIT Mystery Hunt 2011 Mario 2 Meta
MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Valentine's Day Town/President's Day Town Meta

fictional characters who attended MIT

MIT Mystery Hunt 2005 Alma Mater

fictional curse words

MIT Mystery Hunt 2011 Expletive Deleted
MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 Cross Words

fictional definitions of words

MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 Eggsam

fictional detectives

MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 A Bunch of Ripoffs
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Second Helpings

fictional dogs

MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 Something for Everyone

fictional duels

MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 De Fence

fictional homes

MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Fake Estate

fictional objects

MIT Mystery Hunt 2011 Toad's List

fictional places

MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Folded Cards

fictional rodents

MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Dear Diary

fictional rooms

MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 Locked In

fictional secret organizations

MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 A Conspiracy Network

fictional steeds

MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Anne
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 The Cryptozoicologist

fictional train stations

MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 My Summer Vacation

fictional weapons

MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Excalibur

Figure Logic puzzle

See cross-number puzzle

figure skating

MIT Mystery Hunt 2008 In Soviet Union, Death Defies You
MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Synchronicity

file extensions

MIT Mystery Hunt 2009 Hyperextensions
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Extensive

file reconstruction

MIT Mystery Hunt 1996 Endgame
MIT Mystery Hunt 2003 A Problem with Printing
MIT Mystery Hunt 2009 Surgical Files
MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 Makefiles
MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 Encoded
MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 A Puzzle with the Answer CRONIN
MIT Mystery Hunt 2015 Image
MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 33 RPM
MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 Mix Tape
MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 How To Do Quality Reviews
MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Red Herring

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

Final Fantasy video games

MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 Safer Sephiroth

Financial Chinese

The characters normally used for writing numbers in Chinese are easy for a forger to manipulate by adding strokes to change the numbers into other numbers. To prevent this, another system of writing numbers is used in financial contexts which are more complicated and not easy to manipulate in this way.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2006 Numeracy

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

finite fields

MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Agricultural Operations

Finnish language

MIT Mystery Hunt 1999 Chihuahua
MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Split Seven Ways
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 No, I Understand You Perfectly
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Fren Amis

Fire Emblem games

MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Anna's Day at the Arena

Firefly (TV show)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2009 Zhongwen? That's a Terrible Space Cowboy Name!
MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 Blue Sun 6V4-178-B31 Trace Compression Block

fire stations

MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 City Placement

fireworks

MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Fireworks Show

first aid kit

MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 Safety First

first and last letters of words

MIT Mystery Hunt 2004 Campfire Stories
MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 Betsy Johnson Meta

first ladies

MIT Mystery Hunt 1998 12H.1 Historical Figures
MIT Mystery Hunt 2004 Girl
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Ladies First

firsts

First ___, as in first woman to swim the English Channel, first animal to orbit the Earth, etc.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 Motion Picture
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Ladies First

Fischer random chess

See Chess960

fish

MIT Mystery Hunt 2015 School of Fish Meta
MIT Mystery Hunt 2015 Night of the Living Kraken
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 The Midway
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Fish Hybridization
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 World Fisherman
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Catch and Release
MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Conglomerate
MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Pixel Art
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Steam Library
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 A Radical Fishing Trip

Fit-In puzzle

See fill-in puzzle

flags

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

flavors

MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Snack Bar
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Water Bottle
MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Eat Desserts on Main

Flesch-Kincaid grade level

(a measure of the "grade level" of a piece of writing)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2011 Fascinating Kids

floating point roundoff

MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Infinite Cryptogram
MIT Mystery Hunt 2015 The 10,000 Puzzle Pyramid

floods

MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 H2No

flower meanings

Historically, specific flower types and in particular giving one to someone carried specific meanings. These meaninsg have varied across cultures and over time, but whole books have been written about the subject.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Pluck the Petals

flower names

MIT Mystery Hunt 2011 Mario 2 Meta
MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 A Puzzle with the Answer CLEMENS
MIT Mystery Hunt 2015 Follow the Bees!
MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Bloom Filter
MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Pluck the Petals
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Asphodel

flower power puzzle

See petal puzzle

Fold-Ins (as in Mad Magazine)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2007 Wrath event
MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Get Smart (Meta)
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 First You Visit...

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.

following paths

MIT Mystery Hunt 2004 Mullions (Meta)
MIT Mystery Hunt 2009 Employment Assortment Assessment

fonts

MIT Mystery Hunt 2004 Far From Home
MIT Mystery Hunt 2008 The Deadly Hobby of Murder
MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 The Puzzle at the End of This Book
MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Flocks
MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Helvetica is Only an Okay Font
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 King's Ransom
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Ox (Bull)
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Sheriff's Stars
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Wanted: Gangs of Six
MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Eat Your Words
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 This Space Intentionally Left... Well, You Know

food groups

There are several ways of classifying food into different groups and recommendations for how many servings of each group makes a healthy diet. Typical groups include fruits, vegetables, meat/protein, dairy, breads/grains/cereals/starches, and fats/sugars/junk.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Product Placemat

foods

food tasting

MIT Mystery Hunt 2006 Russian Brunch
MIT Mystery Hunt 2010 Sharp Senses

football

football pool

A football pool is a gambling arrangement in which participants will buy squares in a 10x10 grid for a fixed price, typically initialing the squares they have bought. After the grid is filled, but before the game this pool is associated with begins, the organizer of the pool will randomly assign the ten digits to the rows and independently to the columns of the grid, one of these directions representing each team. The final digits of the final score (and in some pools, the score at the end of each quarter) will pay out the proceeds of the pool to the players who bought the corresponding squares.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Thanksgiving Town/New Year's Town Meta

former names

MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Form

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.

Formula 1 racing

MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Formula Deluxe

Fortran

MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 The Gibbous, Non-Euclidean Program

fortune cookies

MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Fortune Cookies

four horsemen of the apocalypse

MIT Mystery Hunt 2015 Atlantis Meta Meta

Four Quartets by T.S. Eliot

MIT Mystery Hunt 2011 Build Your Own Acrostic

fourteen-segment displays

The fourteen-segment display is the more advanced cousin to the more familiar seven-segment display. In this version, the horizontal bars are broken in half just as the vertical ones are, a new vertical bar is added in the middle, and four diagonal segments forming an X are added. This was an intermediate step between seven-segment displays and ones divided into individual pixels.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Display Case

fractals

MIT Mystery Hunt 2005 Maze
MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 In the Details
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Backlot
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Snowy Flow
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Simmons Hall
MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 The Legend
MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Period of Wyrm
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Jigsaw Slitherlink

“Fra Lippo Lippi” (Browning Poem)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2005 Where Was I?

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

fraternities

MIT Mystery Hunt 2007 Guest List

FreeCell (solitaire card game)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 Patience for the Bridge Builder

The Freedom Trail

MIT Mystery Hunt 2009 The Thin Red Line

free puzzle

MIT Mystery Hunt 2008 Abigail Freebie
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Rule of Three

French language

French Republican Calendar

MIT Mystery Hunt 2010 Round 8 Meta

frequency distributions

MIT Mystery Hunt 2008 Picture Store
MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 50/50
MIT Mystery Hunt 2015 Frequency Distribution Tank
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Random Hall

“Friends” (TV Show)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2003 Break Room
MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 The TV Puzzle
MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 Before and After Mash

frightening things

MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 Face Your Fears

Frogger (video game)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Look Before You Leap

Frontier Airlines

MIT Mystery Hunt 2009 I Can Haz Zyzzlburger?

fruits

MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Stuffing
MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Fruit Around
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 The Farm

Fruits Basket (anime)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Fruits Stickers

full moon names

See moon names from Farmers' Almanac

Funny Farm

The original Funny Farm is a game of graphical Word Association. Associated words are linked by a line, and all the words related to one that you have solved are indicated with boxes to be filled in. Due to there being many paths, you can sometimes get multiple clues to narrow down difficult words.

The first attempt to reproduce this in the Mystery Hunt was a puzzle called Funny Farm in 2011 that overloaded the Hunt server and had to be replaced by a backup puzzle.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Analogy Farm
MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Collage

Furbish conlang

The language spoken by the Furby toy

MIT Mystery Hunt 2007 UN-Speakable

fuse timing puzzle

In this classic, you have some fuses (the kind that are slow-burning cords like for setting off explosives) known to burn in given times, and you are to measure some other time, using tricks like burning a fuse from both ends.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Text Adventure

futhark

See Futhorc

Futhorc

The writing system used to write Anglo-Saxon language roughly from the 5th to 11th centuries, gradually being phased out in favor of the Latin alphabet. The Futhorc developed from an earlier, nearly identical writing system called the Elder Futhark, used primarily in Scandinavia, which dates back to the 2nd century AD, and which was later simplified to the Younger Futhark. These writing systems are what people usually refer to when they speak of "runes," and a runestone is simply a stone which was engraved with runes.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2008 Palimpsest
MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 Sleeping Beauty Dream Fragment

futoshiki

Futoshiki is a Latin square type puzzle in which inequality signs placed on the borders between cells tell which is greater than the other. THis is sometimes combined with sudoku, forming a puzzle called inequality sudoku or greater than sudoku.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Flamingo

Futurama alphabet

MIT Mystery Hunt 2000 Winds of Confusion
MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Open Secrets

gambling games

(see also specific games)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2011 Craps Man Meta

Game Genie

This was a cheat cartidge for various Nintendo video game consoles which allowed players to modify memory, etc.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Your Wish is My Command

Game of Life (cellular automaton)

See Life (cellular automaton)

Game of Thrones

MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 Crow Facts
MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 Housekeeping
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Dorm Row

games

game shows

MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Peak Adventure

game shows staged for solvers

MIT Mystery Hunt 2001 Kakorrhaphiophobia!
MIT Mystery Hunt 2002 Win Chris Morse's Money
MIT Mystery Hunt 2007 Greed event
MIT Mystery Hunt 2007 Gluttony event
MIT Mystery Hunt 2009 Intergalactic Pub Trivia event
MIT Mystery Hunt 2010 The Sarge Answers to General Ignorance event
MIT Mystery Hunt 2010 The Cash Corridor (Cash Cab)
MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Watch Your Back

game theory

MIT Mystery Hunt 2011 Games
MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 A Number of Games

"Gangnam Style"

MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Sages Style

Garbage Pail Kids

MIT Mystery Hunt 2007 You Don't Need No Stinkin' Cue Cards

The Garden of Earthly Delights

A triptych by Hieronymus Bosch

MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Delightful

garden-path sentences

Sentences using words with multiple meanings, in a way that the reader's initial expectation of the required meaning is most likely wrong.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Parsley Garden

Garfield

MIT Mystery Hunt 2011 The Cat's Meow

“Gashlycrumb Tinies”

MIT Mystery Hunt 2006 Wry, Ergo Dead
MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 Randolph Carter Dream Fragment
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Golden Wolf

gattai

See samurai sudoku

Gaussian primes

Complex numbers with integer parts which are prime within the set of such numbers

MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 Studies in Two-Factor Authentication

G-Code

MIT Mystery Hunt 2004 Sixty Degrees of Separation

gears

MIT Mystery Hunt 2008 All Geared Up
MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 How To Spell With Gears And Arrows
MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Gears

Gemcraft

(tower defense video game)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2010 Tower House

Gen Con

MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 A Most Congenial Odyssey

gendered names for animals

For example, hen or rooster for chicken.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Baby Shower Balloon

genealogy

MIT Mystery Hunt 2008 Family Affair
MIT Mystery Hunt 2011 The Sport of Princesses (of horses)

generals

MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 A Puzzle with the Answer EIGHT DAYS A WEEK

genes

MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 Life Braid
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Nucleo Tide Pool
MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Repetition and Variation

The Genius (Korean reality TV series)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Strange Garnets

geocaching

MIT Mystery Hunt 2009 Round 6 Puzzle Opening Mechanism
MIT Mystery Hunt 2009 Out Huntin'
MIT Mystery Hunt 2009 Round 6 Meta

geoguessr

A web game based on identifying locations from their Google street view photos, located at geoguessr.com.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 A Puzzle with the Answer GARCIAPARRA
MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 Middle of the Road

geomancy

MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 4D Geo

geometry

MIT Mystery Hunt 1999 Beirut
MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 X Marks the Spot
MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 Floor Drawing 305
MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Compass and Straightedge
MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Polyphony
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 FOCUS!!
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Squaring the Circle
MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Solve for Ewe
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Reflections

German compound words

MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Mosaics

German language

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

GetFit@MIT

MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 The Undiscovered Underground
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 People Mover

ghost leg

An Asian lottery system in which a number of prizes are distributed among as many people by means of a "ladder" diagram with one vertical line per person/prize and irregularly spacd horizontal rungs connecting two adjacent lines. The rungs are hidden and the prizes are assigned to the lines at one end, while people pick positions at the other end, and they determine who gets what by tracing a path through the lines.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Tikki Tikki Tembo
MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Conjuri's Request

ghosts

MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 The Graveyard

G.I. Joe

MIT Mystery Hunt 2008 Knots and Crosswords

Gilbert and Sullivan

MIT Mystery Hunt 2015 Topsy Turvy

Gilbert schema for Ulysses

A summary of connections between the various elements of the novel Ulysses provided by author James Joyce to his friend Stuart Gilbert and later published by Gilbert.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Schematics

“Gilmore Girls”

MIT Mystery Hunt 2008 Campsite

Girl Talk (musician)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 Monster Potatoes

git repository

MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Git Hub
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 How to Run a Puzzlehunt
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 The 10,000 Commit Git Repository

Glee (TV show)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Hap[p]y Days Are Here Again
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Happy Tunes

Gnommish alphabet (Artemis Fowl)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Open Secrets

Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid

MIT Mystery Hunt 1996 1C
MIT Mystery Hunt 1996 4B
MIT Mystery Hunt 1996 7B
MIT Mystery Hunt 1996 10C
MIT Mystery Hunt 1996 Gödel meta
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Text Adventure

Go Fish

MIT Mystery Hunt 2015 Go Fish!

go (game)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2000 Invincible
MIT Mystery Hunt 2004 Ritual Yell Ceremony
MIT Mystery Hunt 2005 Black to Play
MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 Go!

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

Goldberg variations

(musical compositions by Bach)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2015 Quodlibet

"The Gold Bug"

MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Open Secrets

golf

MIT Mystery Hunt 2007 Going Out Clubbing
MIT Mystery Hunt 2011 St Andrews Links Meta
MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 Missing Links

golf courses

MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 Missing Links
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Extreme Hiking

Good Will Hunting

MIT Mystery Hunt 2009 Good Will, Mystery Hunting

Google documents

MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 This Space Intentionally Left... Well, You Know

Google doodles

MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Sketchy Site

Google Maps user maps

MIT Mystery Hunt 2009 The Condescending Man Holding a Brightly Colored Parasol
MIT Mystery Hunt 2011 Everybody's Got to Be Somewhere
MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Crow Facts 3000

Google Street View

MIT Mystery Hunt 2011 Pointillisme
MIT Mystery Hunt 2011 Zelda Warp Zone
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 FOCUS!!
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Yonder
MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Whose Turn Is it Anyway?
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Moving Day

Google Translate Sings

MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Le Chiffre Indéchiffrable

googology

Googology is the study of enormous numbers, ones so big you can't write them out, and especially ones so big you can't even write the number in scientific notation, so towers of exponents or even more esoteric notations are required to write the numbers.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 identify, SORT, index, solve

Goosebumps books

MIT Mystery Hunt 2001 EEEEEEEEEEEEEK!!!
MIT Mystery Hunt 2015 Graveyard Meta
MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Send Yourself Swanlumps

Go programming language

MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 IO

goroawase

A form of Japanese wordplay in which numbers are represented by Japanese words which are homophones for part of all of names of the numbers.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 1! 2! 3! 4! 4649!

Gothic language

MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 How To Build Your Own Cathedral

governors

MIT Mystery Hunt 2004 Nomarchs
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 A More 6 ∪ 28 ∪ 496 ∪ …

Graffiti (Palm Pilot writing)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2001 EEEEEEEEEEEEEK!!!

Sue Grafton novels

Most commonly, this means the Kinsey Millhone alphabet mysteries starting with 1982's "A" is for Alibi.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2007 Squad Car
MIT Mystery Hunt 2015 Finsey Gillhone
MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 A Mysterious Event

grammar

MIT Mystery Hunt 2005 No Child Left Behind
MIT Mystery Hunt 2006 Handbook Fragment
MIT Mystery Hunt 2008 Escapism
MIT Mystery Hunt 2011 Part of Speech
MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 Twosquare

Grand Tour puzzle

See path puzzles

graph theory

MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Cubic
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Star Maps
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Complexity Evaluation
MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Wooded Path

grass

MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Touch Grass Challenge (IMPOSSIBLE!)

grawlixes

A grawlix is a sequence of punctuation marks used to replace a character's swearing, typically in speech balloons in comics.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2011 Expletive Deleted
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Zip it, Mr. Resetti!

Gray code

MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Mathematical!

Gray's Anatomy

MIT Mystery Hunt 2009 Fantastic Voyage

The Great British Bake Off

MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Magically Delicious

great circles

Great circles are the shortest paths between two points on Earth. Airplane flight paths are approximately great circles because this minimizes the distance flown.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 A Puzzle with the Answer YOUKILIS

The Great Dome

The dome atop building 10 which is a common target of pracks (hacks in MIT-ese) and is common depicted to represent MIT.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Diary

greater than sudoku

See futoshiki

greatest common factor

MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 The Runaround

Greek alphabet

MIT Mystery Hunt 2011 Payroll
MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Czar Cycle
MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 Venntersections
MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 Lost Skull
MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 Time Suck
MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 Message in a Bottle
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Clusters
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 The Myriad Gamut of Hera
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Greek Girl Squad
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Najaf to...

Greek language

MIT Mystery Hunt 2001 The Chimera
MIT Mystery Hunt 2005 King Philip
MIT Mystery Hunt 2005 Lost in Translation
MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 Ode to the Greeks
MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Split Seven Ways
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Old West Revue
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Clusters
MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Catenaverbozoa
MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Moral of the Story
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 The Myriad Gamut of Hera

Greek mythology

Green Eggs and Ham

MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 The Missing Piece Meets the Big O

Griddlers

See paint by numbers (logic puzzle)

Gringmuth notation

A method for denoting chess games as series of nonsense words based on assigning a syllable to each board square.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Radio Play

group theory

MIT Mystery Hunt 2015 Representative Characters
MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 Great Tits!

GROW web games

MIT Mystery Hunt 2010 Summonings

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.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 Staggered Starts

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2

MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 I AM GROOT

Guillotine (card game)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 A Killer Party

guitar playing

MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Fret Not!

guns

MIT Mystery Hunt 2007 Choose Your Weapon

gym badges (from Pokémon)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 The Scouts

gymnastics scoring

MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 A Routine Matter

hacking (MIT pranks)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2002 Pennybags Lives!
MIT Mystery Hunt 2008 Propaganda
MIT Mystery Hunt 2009 Your So-Called Second Life
MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Road Trip
MIT Mystery Hunt 2015 Mythological Connections
MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 The Scenic Route
MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 All History is Local
MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Art Tours
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 "Tech's Adventure" Walkthrough
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Green Building
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Building Hacks
MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Diary

Hades

The underworld of Greek myth

MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Charon

haiku

MIT Mystery Hunt 2007 Hell Hath No Rhyme Scheme
MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Crosscut

hairstyles

MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Too Many Toys

Hakka language

A language spoken by people in some parts of China and Taiwan.

MIT Mystery Hunt 1996 5A

Mark Halpin's Labor Day puzzles

MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Trickster Tales

Hamiltonian paths

MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 How To Make a Loop

Hamilton (musical)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 Hamiltonian Path

Hamming codes

A kind of error-correcting codes

MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Junky Logic

Hanabi (cooperative card game)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Clueless
MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Set Off Fireworks

Hanayama disassembly puzzles

MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 Sculptural Disassembly

hanging on for dear life

MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Don't Let Me Down

hangman

MIT Mystery Hunt 2010 Don't Let Me Down
MIT Mystery Hunt 2011 Execution Grounds
MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 Hang Ten
MIT Mystery Hunt 2015 Colorful Tower Meta
MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 Believe
MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Conjuri's Request

Hangul (Korean script)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 Directions in Writing
MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 XD VA GD KHT BD

Hanjie

See paint by numbers (logic puzzle)

Harry Potter

MIT Mystery Hunt 2002 Trophy Rater
MIT Mystery Hunt 2004 A Mud-Soled Lubber
MIT Mystery Hunt 2008 Escapism
MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 Encoded
MIT Mystery Hunt 2015 Wizardly Tales
MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 The Wizard meta
MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Hexed Adventure II: Hexed Again!
MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Split Seven Ways
MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Insider Trading
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Charming
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Magic 8-Ball
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Magic Words

Harvard

MIT Mystery Hunt 2002 Home Suite Home
MIT Mystery Hunt 2009 Round 6 Puzzle Opening Mechanism
MIT Mystery Hunt 2011 The Doors of Cambridge
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Harvard Ballooniversity

Harvard Sentences

(a set of sentences used to measure the quality of an audio signal)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2006 Sound Quality
MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Drive-Thru Dilemma

Harvard spectral classification

MIT Mystery Hunt 2009 Round 6 Meta

hash algorithms

MIT Mystery Hunt 2015 Cryptochains
MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 A Conspiracy Network
MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Folded Cards

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.

hat tricks (hockey)

In hockey, the feat of a single player scoring three goals in a game.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Ships in the Night

haunted places

MIT Mystery Hunt 2001 CPPC

Hayden elephant mural

This mural appears just outside Hayden Library at MIT. It shows several men trying to describe an elephant, and is perhaps a version of the parable of the blind men and an elephant, in which each man feels a different part of the elephant, describes it to the other blind men, and they argue over the true nature of the elephant because of the different perceptions of it they have had.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 The Ministry

Joseph Haydn

Classical composer

MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Tunnel of Love

Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft game

MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 Ysera Meta
MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 Ysera Dream Fragment

Hebrew alphabet

MIT Mystery Hunt 2011 Payroll

Hebrew gematria

MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 Encoded

Hebrew language

MIT Mystery Hunt 1999 Chihuahua
MIT Mystery Hunt 2004 Turning Japanese
MIT Mystery Hunt 2011 English Expectations
MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 Sounds Good to Me
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Old West Revue
MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Construct Objects

Hebrew numerals

MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Once is Happenstance
MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Head for the Kitchen

helpmate

A helpmate is a chess problem where both sides cooperate to achieve a checkmate.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2015 Watch Me Blow This!

Chris Hemsworth

MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Chris Chros

heraldry

MIT Mystery Hunt 2011 Charges
MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 Cruciform Heraldry
MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 A Vexing Puzzle
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Breakfast Menu
MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Shields

Here-There (MIT Media Lab art)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 Wanderer
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Modern Architecture

Hermes Conrad (Futurama character) "Sweet X of Y" phrases

MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 Luna Park

heroic couplets

MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Poetic Justice

Charlton Heston

MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 The Thin Pan

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 2015 Polyglot

heteronyms

Heteronyms are words that are spelled the same but have different pronunciations and meanings. They are the opposite of homophones, and are a subset of homographs (which are words with the same spelling and different meanings, but not necessarily different pronunciations).

MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Complaint Letter
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Stress Test
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Namesake

hexadecimal

The base 16 numeral system, very commonly used in computing as a way to write bytes in only two characters.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2005 Seven Days
MIT Mystery Hunt 2008 Cursed
MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 Tax... In... Space
MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 Apocalypse
MIT Mystery Hunt 2015 Image
MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Twisty Passages
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 A Bit of Light
MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Graffiti
MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 A Conspiracy Network
MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Pixel Art
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Flamingo
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 IO

hexaflexagons

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

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

hexagon dancing

Variation on square dancing for 6 couples arranged in a hexagon.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Everybody Dance Now

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 puzzle

A puzzle which is hidden inside another puzzle or in an unexpected place where solvers do not expect to find puzzles.

hidden tracks on albums

MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 The Sound of Silence

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.

hieroglyphics

MIT Mystery Hunt 2004 A Scholarly Lesson
MIT Mystery Hunt 2004 Nomarchs
MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Luxor
MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Clued Connections
MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 The 4500 Year Itch

High Fidelity (book)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2011 Favourites

high school CEEB codes

These codes are used to identify your high school when taking the SAT and in college applications.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 Senior Superlatives

highway numbers

MIT Mystery Hunt 1997 Shark Detaches Anchor; Elvis' Yacht Drifts Into Freak Tropical Iceberg!
MIT Mystery Hunt 2010 Sightseeing
MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Road Trip
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Fairly Thorough

hillside letters

These are giant letters commonly build on hillsides in the American west., visible in satellite maps and from the ground in the surrounding area.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Art of the game.such.fame!

hill words

Hill words have letters in alphabetical order up to a point, then in reverse alphabetical order for the rest of the word.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Wordplay

Hindi language

MIT Mystery Hunt 1999 Chihuahua
MIT Mystery Hunt 2005 Lost in Translation

Hindu mythology

MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 It's Not a Well Written Quizbowl Packet But...

hint requests

MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Water Bottle
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 How to Run a Puzzlehunt

hip-hop music

MIT Mystery Hunt 2004 No Accounting for Taste

hiragana

A script used for writing Japanese phonetically.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2004 Turning Japanese
MIT Mystery Hunt 2008 Kana Game
MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 Sounds Good to Me
MIT Mystery Hunt 2015 Even the Blossoming Flowers...
MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Lantern Festival
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Blind Calculation

Al Hirschfeld (caricatures with "Nina")

MIT Mystery Hunt 2002 The Line King

historical events

MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 Wandering Stars
MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 All History is Local
MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Poor Richard Goes to Sea
MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 H2No
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Revolting Developments

historical markers

These markers can be found in cities all over the world, and mark historic and sometimes not even all that historic places, perhaps providing a very brief explanation of the significance of the place.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 Stand
MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 The Tenebrous, Stygian Test of Knowledge
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Don't Know Much

"A History of the World in 100 Objects"

MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 Worldly Possessions

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

MIT Mystery Hunt 2009 The Combatant's Guide to Zyzzlvaria

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

hoaxes

MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 Everything You Read

hobbies

MIT Mystery Hunt 2008 The Deadly Hobby of Murder

The Hobbit

MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Subterranean Secrets

hockey players

MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 Formulating Teams

holidays

MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 O Blessed Day
MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Date and Thyme
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Scheduling Conflicts

"Hollywood Squares"

MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 Stage Select

Hollywood Walk of Fame

MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Something In Your I's

Sherlock Holmes stories

MIT Mystery Hunt 2008 Palimpsest
MIT Mystery Hunt 2010 Frritt-Flacc
MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 Watson 2.0's Review
MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 A Lemon Tree

Homestar Runner

MIT Mystery Hunt 2004 The Property of Ones
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Greek Girl Squad

home worlds

MIT Mystery Hunt 2009 Round 3 Meta

homonyms

See homophones

homophones

homophonic substitution cipher

Variation on a cryptogram in which multiple symbols can encode the same letter.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Picture Book

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)

hops (beer ingredient)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 A Night Out With Your Buds

horse racing

MIT Mystery Hunt 2005 Peach Winslow (Kentucky Derby)
MIT Mystery Hunt 2011 The Sport of Princesses (Thoroughbred genealogy)
MIT Mystery Hunt 2015 Ride 'Em In
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Carousel

Hotaru Beam puzzle

MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Schematics

hotels

MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Time for a Drink!

Hot Ones (YouTube show)

The show feature celebrities eating hot wings of varying hotness.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Cowboy Campfire

house of cards

MIT Mystery Hunt 2008 Witness 2 Meta
MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 Nothing But a House of Cards

House of Representatives

MIT Mystery Hunt 2008 Elmo's First Wife
MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 Let's Meet in the Middle
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 A More 6 ∪ 28 ∪ 496 ∪ …

“House” (TV show)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2010 Frritt-Flacc

How I Met Your Mother (TV series)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Wait for It

HTTP

MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Tech Support

Huffman coding

MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 Blowing Down the House
MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Evolution

huge numbers

MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 identify, SORT, index, solve
MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 Digital Display
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 1000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000001000000000000116
MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Lists of Large Integers

Hugo awards

MIT Mystery Hunt 2003 Second Game
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Chairiot Races

hull numbers of ships

MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Lost at Sea

Hundreds of Chinese Surnames

A classic Chinese text listing over 500 Chinese characters used as surnames, used to help children learn the Chinese characters.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Tikki Tikki Tembo

Hungarian language

MIT Mystery Hunt 2005 Lost in Translation

Hunt the Wumpus

MIT Mystery Hunt 2011 Making the Possible Impossible
MIT Mystery Hunt 2015 Say Cheese and Dive!

Hurrian mythology

MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 It's Not a Well Written Quizbowl Packet But...

hurricanes

MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Stratosphere

hybrid creatures

MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Tree Ring Circus

i before e except after c exceptions

MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Complaint Letter

I Can Has Cheezburger

MIT Mystery Hunt 2008 Little Rascals

ICD-10 codes for medical diagnoses

MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 I Can't Deal with These Endless Numbers

ice cream

MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Ice Cream Roll
MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Eat Desserts on Main

ice hockey

MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Zebra
MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Ships in the Night

Icelandic language

MIT Mystery Hunt 1999 Chihuahua
MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Rotten Little Scamps

Icelandic Yule Lads

MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Rotten Little Scamps

I Ching

MIT Mystery Hunt 2003 Stained Glass
MIT Mystery Hunt 2008 At the Beach

ID3 tags

MIT Mystery Hunt 2002 All Ages

identify text from stress pattern, prosody, or poetic meter

MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 Award-Winning Poetry
MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 Argh

idioms

MIT Mystery Hunt 2004 Collision in the Marketplace
MIT Mystery Hunt 2009 Picture Time
MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Interpret Perplexing Texts

"If I Had $1000000" (Barenaked Ladies song)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 15 Questions

Ig Nobel Prizes

MIT Mystery Hunt 2006 A Research Puzzle

IHTFP

IHTFP is an acronym for I Hate This F**king Place, coined at MIT decades ago, and often referenced by forming original backronyms for the five letters.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 Freshman Physics
MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 This Friggin' Puzzle
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 The Ringmaster

Ikea

MIT Mystery Hunt 2006 Math is Hard!

The Iliad

MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 The Champion

Illinois driver's license code

MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Fake IDs

Illuminati

MIT Mystery Hunt 2007 Round IX Meta

image classification

MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Deeply Confused

image manipulation

MIT Mystery Hunt 1998 19.2352 Web Word Puzzles
MIT Mystery Hunt 2015 Read Between the Lines
MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 The Shunned, Cyclopean Postcards
MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 A Message from Our Sponsors
MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 Chromesthesia
MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 Mix Tape
MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 Bark Ode
MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Deeply Confused
MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 GIF of the Magi
MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Watercolors

IMDB

The Internet Movie Database

MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Orangutan

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

Impractical Jokers (TV show)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 League of Their Own

The Improper Bostonian

MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 Local Coverage

Inception

MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 Limbo Meta
MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 A Tribute: 2010-2017
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Wanted: Gangs of Six

InChI (international chemical identifier)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Love Connection

Increasingly Verbose meme

In this meme, a simple statement is paired with a good drawing, and successive versions make the text increasingly wordy and the drawing progressively worse.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Successively More Abundant in Verbiage

Index Sums puzzle

See kakurasu

India

MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Ridin' Delhi

Indian numerals

MIT Mystery Hunt 2004 Fabrics Booty Meta

inequality sudoku

See futoshiki

The Infinite Corridor

MIT Mystery Hunt 2009 Supercollider
MIT Mystery Hunt 2010 The Cash Corridor
MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 A Puzzle with the Answer I WANT TO HOLD YOUR HAND
MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 Field Scribe
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Infinite Corridor Simulator
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Infinite Corridor

Infinity Train (cartoon)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Endless Practice

Infocom games

MIT Mystery Hunt 2002 A Superbrief Note
MIT Mystery Hunt 2004 Subterranean

infographics

These are pictorial representations of a set of data.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 New Bridge Art

information missing

Parts of these puzzles are missing from the archive. Please contact the current Mystery Hunt team if you have information to add.

Ingress glyph language

MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 Some Light Hacking

initials

MIT Mystery Hunt 1998 Freshman Year meta
MIT Mystery Hunt 2003 Job Performance Predictor
MIT Mystery Hunt 2009 Initial Reactions
MIT Mystery Hunt 2010 Confirmed Machine 925
MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 Initial Public Offering
MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 Initial Impressions
MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 Worrying Ziggurats
MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 It's A Long Story
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 The Midway
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Burton-Conner
MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Star Wars Cosplay
MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Cryptex

Inner Circles puzzle

See Honeycomb crossword

In-person interview

MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 Rats
MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 Bringing Stars Together

insects

See bugs

insult swordfighting

(from the Monkey Island games)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2011 Pirate Party Event

integer sequences

MIT Mystery Hunt 1996 4C
MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 Betsy Johnson Meta
MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 20 Questions
MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Integers and Sequence
MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 You Complete Me
MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Brain Freeze

Interactive Introduction to the Institute (i3) videos

MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 Irreverent Introduction to the IMDb

interleaved words

Two (or more) words are interleaved, keeping the letters of each word in order, to form a longer word or phrase. (This type of interleaving is called an interlock in the NPL, or an alternade if the interleaving strictly alternates words.) Alternatively, you may be given a nonsense string and have to separate it into interleaved words.

intermediate tasks

These puzzles do not directly clue their answers. They give you a task to complete, and when that is done, you are given another puzzle which does clue the answer. See also creative tasks and answer given for completing task.

International Linguistics Olympiad

MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Transcendental Algebra

International Math Olympiad (IMO)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 The IMO Shortlist
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 99% of Mystery Hunt Teams Cannot Solve This!

Internet RFCs

MIT Mystery Hunt 2011 This SHOULD Be Easy...
MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 Slash Fiction

internet top-level domains

MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 The Lost Dream
MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 International Holdings

intersections

MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 Crosswalks
MIT Mystery Hunt 2015 Funny Shapes
MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 Zelma & Frank

_ in the _ phrases

MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 Wolf in the Fold
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Sand Witches

Inuktitut language

The language of the Inuit

MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 Sounds Good to Me

Invader (street artist)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2011 Pointillisme

invented languages

These puzzles use languages invented specifically for that puzzle. See also Chaotic (conlang) for a language that has developed across multiple puzzles. See keyword containing "conlang" in the Language category for languages invented outside of puzzles which have been used in puzzles.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2003 Whoa-I Know Genealogy
MIT Mystery Hunt 2003 Whoa-I Know Shoe-Buckling
MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Direct Translation

inventions

MIT Mystery Hunt 1996 7C
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 The Laboratory
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Matchmaker

invisible ink

MIT Mystery Hunt 2004 Final Runaround
MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Get Smart (Meta)
MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Watch Your Back
MIT Mystery Hunt 2015 Treasure Chest Meta
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Nightclub Event

IPA (international phonetic alphabet)

Phonetic puzzles which are not strictly IPA are listed under phonetic puzzles

MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 Itinerant People of America
MIT Mystery Hunt 2015 Welcome to Dead Waters
MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 Joyful Songs

IP geolocation

MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 Trips

iPhone apps

MIT Mystery Hunt 2010 All-Purpose Device

iPod Submarine (party game)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 iPod Submarine

IQ tests

MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 A Trip Down Memory Lane

Iraqi Most Wanted playing cards

MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 The Dogged Pursuit of Justice, AKA: Caught Red-Handed

irish mythology

MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 It's Not a Well Written Quizbowl Packet But...

“Iron Chef: America”

MIT Mystery Hunt 2008 East Meets West

Irregular Webcomic!

MIT Mystery Hunt 2010 Stick Man

Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum

A famous museum in Boston, and the site of the greatest known property theft in history when 13 works of art were stolen in 1990.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Izzy's Art Gallery

I Saw You MIT

The web site isawyou.mit.edu, a "missed connections" web site just for the MIT community.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Missed Connections

ISBNs

MIT Mystery Hunt 2000 Division of Labor
MIT Mystery Hunt 2004 What Do You Do With a Genteel Sailor?
MIT Mystery Hunt 2011 Making the Possible Impossible
MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Numbers

isithuntyet.info

Web site which most of the year tells you NO with a countdown until the next MIT Mystery Hunt begins.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 itishuntyes

islands

MIT Mystery Hunt 2005 World Tour
MIT Mystery Hunt 2009 Island Warfare
MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 🔔🦇🦇🦇
MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 My Fun Bow

Islands in the Stream puzzle

See Nurikabe

isobars

MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 Gone with the Wind

isomorphic graphs

MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 Course 7E
MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Git Hub
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Horse
MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Conjuri's Request

Italian language

"It's the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine)"

MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 Apocalypse

Ivy League

MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Jack

"Jack and the Beanstalk"

MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Jack

Japanese language

Japanese mythology

MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 It's Not a Well Written Quizbowl Packet But...

Javanese numerals

MIT Mystery Hunt 2006 Numeracy

Java programs

MIT Mystery Hunt 2007 Blather

JavaScript

MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 Open and Shut Case

jazz

MIT Mystery Hunt 2004 Having Fun

"Jellicle Songs for Jellicle Cats" (song from Cats)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 Listicle

Jelly Belly jellybeans

MIT Mystery Hunt 1997 Santa Had Rough Toboggan Accident; Elvis Delivers Toys in His Stead!

Jenga

MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 Edge of your Seat FUN!

“Jeopardy!”

MIT Mystery Hunt 1997 According to Mafiosi, Mole Only Wanted a Scarf from the King!
MIT Mystery Hunt 2007 What's Wrong?
MIT Mystery Hunt 2010 Mystery Hunt Puzzle 3000
MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 Watson 2.0 Meta
MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 Jeopardy!
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Questionable Answers

jersey numbers

MIT Mystery Hunt 2007 Shooting Stars
MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 Formulating Teams
MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 Special OPS
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Basketball

jewelry

MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 On the A Line

Jewish sabbath laws

MIT Mystery Hunt 2008 Eight Not-So-Deadly Sins

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

John Hodgman's hobo names list

MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 Itinerant People of America

JoJo's Bizarre Adventure (anime and manga series)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Heart of the Cards

jokes

MIT Mystery Hunt 2006 Punchline
MIT Mystery Hunt 2009 The Comedy Planet, Featuring Sid!
MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Funny Story
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Concierge Services

Jonathan Coulton

MIT Mystery Hunt 2009 --MESSAGE REDACTED--

Jotto

MIT Mystery Hunt 2001 Scientology
MIT Mystery Hunt 2006 Data Analysis

juggling

MIT Mystery Hunt 2011 Recombination

Julia sets

MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Rules of Order

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

justices of the Supreme Court

See Supreme Court justices

Just One (word-guessing game)

A cooperative word-guessing game in which one player must guess a word based on single-word clues provided by each other player.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Watership Down

“Kaiju Big Battel”

MIT Mystery Hunt 2002 Fight Club

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

kanji

The main script used for writing Japanese, based on traditional Chinese script.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2004 Turning Japanese
MIT Mystery Hunt 2008 Kana Game
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 A Radical Fishing Trip

karaoke

MIT Mystery Hunt 2008 Dream On
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 In Space, No One Can Hear You Sing

katakana

A script for writing Japanese phonetically.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2001 Gojira
MIT Mystery Hunt 2004 Turning Japanese

Keccak-256 hashes

MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 A Puzzle with the Answer CRONIN

Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes

MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 You Will Explode If You Stop Talking

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
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Flamingo

John F. Kennedy

MIT Mystery Hunt 2009 Croctograms

kennings

A kenning is a figurative way to say something using many words in place of a single noun from Old Norse/Icelandic and Old English poetry

MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 The Holy Cup of the Raven-God

Kenny's deaths on "South Park"

MIT Mystery Hunt 2009 Nurse Charnel's Reports from the Sickbay of the U.S.S. Parkerstone

kerning

Adjustment of the spacing between printed letters

MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 The Typesetting Machine

Key and Peele (Comedy Central show)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 Elf/Dwarf Brawl

keyboard

keyboard shift

Messages typed with the hands shifted left or right of the standard position

MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Shifting Times

keyboard shortcuts

MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Alternate Controls

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
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 A Trip Down Memory Lane

Killian Court names

See My copy of the Killian Court Names.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2002 Weird Science
MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Running for Office

Kingdom of Loathing

MIT Mystery Hunt 2007 Unsound Effects

The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters

MIT Mystery Hunt 2010 A Letter to the Prince of Kong

kings and queens

MIT Mystery Hunt 2007 The Art of Succeeding
MIT Mystery Hunt 2010 The Fallen
MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 Rulers

Stephen King

MIT Mystery Hunt 2007 Celebrity Scrabble™
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 King's Ransom

Kitten Academy

MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 No Sads!

Klingon (conlang)

A language invented for the Klingons of Star Trek, iniitally only a few words and phrases for Star Trek: The Motion Picture but expanded by Marc Okrand in 1985 into an entire language he published as a book The Klingon Language and which has since been used on screen, and to a very limited extent, in the real world.

MIT Mystery Hunt 1999 Warrant 2.2
MIT Mystery Hunt 2001 The Chimera

KLM houses

Miniature houses given out by Dutch airline KLM, which are models of real houses in the Netherlands.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Walking Tour

knights (British titles)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2008 This Puzzle Needs a Title
MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 Charles Lutwidge Dodgson's Review

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

knitting

See also crocheting and knitting patterns.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2003 Whoa-I Know Knitting
MIT Mystery Hunt 2008 Do You Know Where Your Needles Are?
MIT Mystery Hunt 2010 Quick Paws
MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Uncharted Territory
MIT Mystery Hunt 2015 Knit Square
MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 Worrying Ziggurats
MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 Arsenic
MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 Don't Look
MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Diplomatic Cables
MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Charlotte's Web

knitting patterns

MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 Arsenic

knot theory

MIT Mystery Hunt 2008 Knots and Crosswords
MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Slinking Slumber
MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 Please Remain Seated
MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 How To Make a Loop
MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Endless Knots

"The Knowledge" (London black cabs)

This is the course of study required to become a driver of a London "black cab", which consists of knowing how to get between any two points within six miles of Charing Cross, and being able to recite the whole route, essentially requiring memorizing the entire map of this region.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 The Tenebrous, Stygian Test of Knowledge

Konami code

Up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B, A, start, a code for activating Easter eggs in many video games.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 Gaming the System
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 FedEx

Korean language

MIT Mystery Hunt 1999 Chihuahua
MIT Mystery Hunt 2003 The Hall of Chess
MIT Mystery Hunt 2005 Lost in Translation
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Fountain Show
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Old West Revue
MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Fountain

kosher dietary laws

MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Head for the Kitchen

K-pop groups

Korean popular music

MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Fountain

kriss kross

See criss-cross

kropki

A Latin square puzzle in which circles appear on some of the boundaries between cells. A white circle indicates the numbers in those cells are consecutive. A black circle indicates one is twice the other. All possible circles are given, but the circle between 1 and 2 may be either black or white. Often combined with sudoku.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Flamingo

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

lakes

MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Maybe Not to Scale?

landmarks

MIT Mystery Hunt 2003 Attic
MIT Mystery Hunt 2004 South Carmacks
MIT Mystery Hunt 2007 Atlas Shrugged
MIT Mystery Hunt 2010 Around the World in 80 Days
MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 Slash Fiction
MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 Panorama
MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 Only Carmen Sandiego Explores Nigh Unstoppably
MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 Zelma & Frank
MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Art of the game.such.fame!
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 MGM Grand
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Too Tired to Travel
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Augmented Raility

The Language of Flowers: An Alphabet of Floral Emblems

MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Pluck the Petals

languages

These puzzles use a variety of languages where identifying the language is the idea of the puzzle, or the language content is missing and unknown. See also the language category for specific languages, writing systems, and related concepts.

MIT Mystery Hunt 1998 24.967 Comparative Linguistics
MIT Mystery Hunt 2010 Temptations (food words in various)
MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 Gibberish and More Gibberish (English translations from many languages)
MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 The Linguist meta
MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 Non-Local Anesthetic
MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 Self-Referential Mania
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Foreign Box Office
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Dog
MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 The Tower of Eye
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Ancient Mystery
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Presenting: Capitol Records Tour

Lao numerals

MIT Mystery Hunt 2006 Numeracy
MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 Pictocryptolists

Lapine (conlang from Watership Down)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Watership Down

lasers

MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 The Brainstorm

Last Week Tonight with John Oliver

News sature and political satire program on HBO

MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 First You Visit...

last words

The last words spoken by people before they died

MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Famous Last Letters

Las Vegas strip

MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Shade of Wealth

"La Terre vue du ciel" (photograph series by Yann Arthus-Bertrand)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 Up in the Air

LaTeX

MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 The Typesetting Machine

Latin language

Latin names of cities

Though they may be known by other names today, cities which were part of the Roman empire (thus, everything that was around in those days in most of Western and Southern Europe, England, the north coast of Africa, and Asia Minor) had names in Latin.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2008 Ecolocation

Latin phrases

MIT Mystery Hunt 2011 Timbales

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

Latke vs. Hamentaschen debates

MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 Provision

"La Vie Boheme"

Song from RENT

MIT Mystery Hunt 2015 A Toast

Learned League

MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 A League of Their Own
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 You Learn Something New Every Day

Stan Lee

Creator of many popular Marvel Comics characters

MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Flat Stanley

leetspeak

Method of writing where certain letters are replaced by numbers that resemble them, such as 0 for O and 2 for Z.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 Deploy
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 A Bit of Light

legal lingo

MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 You Took The Fifth

The Legend of Zelda

MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Wild West Recipes
MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 The Legend

legislative text

MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 Tax... In... Space

Lego

MIT Mystery Hunt 2004 Assembly Line
MIT Mystery Hunt 2009 Growth Involves Reconstructing Legos
MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 Master Pieces
MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 Tricks with Bricks
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 A Block Party
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Some Assembly Required

Les Clefs d'Or

The elite society of überconcierges

MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Time for a Drink!

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
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 What Comes Next?

“letter and word” phrases

MIT Mystery Hunt 1995 22: Lounge
MIT Mystery Hunt 2002 Drawing Conclusions I (Phonetic)
MIT Mystery Hunt 2005 Orange Star Meta
MIT Mystery Hunt 2007 Manual Transmission
MIT Mystery Hunt 2009 Well-Coordinated
MIT Mystery Hunt 2009 Medical Centaur
MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 Letter Head
MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Calling Bingo
MIT Mystery Hunt 2015 Treasure Chest Meta
MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 Mind Your Peas
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Refreshment Stand
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Green Tee
MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 The King

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 pairs that look like another letter

MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 Gravitational Pull
MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 Endymion Dream Fragment

letter shifts

These are restricted anagrams where only one letter changes position relative to the others.

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
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Field of Clovers

letters in alphabetical order

MIT Mystery Hunt 2002 Tax Puzzle
MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Order of Apparitions

letters in same positions

letters shared, adjacent words/squares

MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 Piercing the Veil
MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 Mirrorball
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Lil' Tykes Play Structure
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 The Trainer

letter weights puzzle

See Alphacipher

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

library catalog numbers

MIT Mystery Hunt 2003 Time's A-Wastin'
MIT Mystery Hunt 2004 Bookworm
MIT Mystery Hunt 2011 Literary Collection (LC classification system)
MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Numbers

Library of Babel

A web site that contains every possible book 1,312,000 characters long.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Word Search of Babel

license plates

MIT Mystery Hunt 2006 License to Kill
MIT Mystery Hunt 2010 Master of the World
MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Poetic License
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Hyena
MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Fine Dining

Life (cellular automaton)

MIT Mystery Hunt 1996 12C
MIT Mystery Hunt 2001 Helminthophobia
MIT Mystery Hunt 2006 Get on with It (also Life cereal, Life magazine, Hasbro's Game of Life)
MIT Mystery Hunt 2007 Creature Discomforts
MIT Mystery Hunt 2008 Tragedy
MIT Mystery Hunt 2011 The Eternal Struggle
MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Mind the Gaps
MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 New Year's Town/Patriots' Day Town Meta
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Escape from Life
MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Diagramless
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Intelligence Collection

The Life of Pi

MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Mr. Patel

Lights Out

A video game and its variants. The basic idea is there is a grid of clickable lights. Clicking one changes it from on to off or vice versa, but it also toggles the adjacent lights.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Conjuri's Request

Light Up puzzle

See Akari puzzle

Linear B script

A system for writing Greek that predates the Greek alphabet

MIT Mystery Hunt 1982 Subclue #2
MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Beaux Taurus

liner notes

The inserts accompanying albums which may contain lyrics, credits, and other material

MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Deep Conspiracy

linguistics

MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 Time Flies

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

Link's Awakening trading sequence

MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 A Round at the Golf Course

Linnaean binomial nomenclature

See scientific names for organisms

lions

MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Thanksgiving Town/New Year's Town Meta

lipograms

Text written deliberately to avoid using one or more letters, rather tha opposite of a pangram.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2005 Where Was I?
MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 The Great Gadsby
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Peak Adventure

Li Po poems

MIT Mystery Hunt 2003 Pavilion (BoPoMoFo)

lip reading

MIT Mystery Hunt 2004 Temple of Macuilxochitl

literary devices

MIT Mystery Hunt 2004 In a Manner of Speaking

literature

(All novels, stories, plays, children's books, etc., regardless of their literary value)

Lithuanian language

MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 T (Counts) for Two

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

lobby 10 Memorials

MIT Mystery Hunt 2004 Measure of Devotion

lobby 6 periodic table

Mural at one end of Lobby 6 at MIT featuring Mendeleev's original periodic table aurrounded by images of various scientists.

MIT Mystery Hunt 1999 Warrant 4.1

Lobby 6 "The Physical World" mural

Mural at one end of Lobby 6 at MIT giving a brief story of matter and energy aurrounded by images of various scientists

MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Mysterious Mechanics

lobby 7 Inscription

MIT Mystery Hunt 2000 Crosses at the Crossroad
MIT Mystery Hunt 2004 Measure of Devotion

logical deduction

logical operators

MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 Ben Bitdiddle's Review
MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 Thank Heaven for Little Girls
MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 False Prophets
MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 World's Largest Logic Puzzle

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.

Logo (programming language)

Logo is best known for turtle graphics, a method of drawing my moving and turning a "turtle" and raising or lowering its pen.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2011 Drafting Table
MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Turtle Power!
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Turtle
MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Reactivation

logos

Lojban (conlang)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Lojicomix

lolcats

MIT Mystery Hunt 2008 Little Rascals
MIT Mystery Hunt 2009 I Can Haz Zyzzlburger?
MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 Listicle

longitude and latitude

MIT Mystery Hunt 2004 Port of Call
MIT Mystery Hunt 2004 Gems Booty Meta
MIT Mystery Hunt 2008 Sphere
MIT Mystery Hunt 2010 Around the World in 80 Days
MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Terrier Parking
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Yonder
MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 4D Geo
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Cupid's Guide to Building Long-Distance Relationships

“Look Around You” (British TV show)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2010 Doctor of Thinkology

Looney Tunes

MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 Joyful Songs

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

Lord of the Rings

MIT Mystery Hunt 2004 Too Precious For Words
MIT Mystery Hunt 2005 D3: The Fellowship of the Duck
MIT Mystery Hunt 2011 Fellowship Meta
MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 Stronghold Fire

loss.jpg meme

MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Cheerful Ruler's Kingdom

Lost Cities (game)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2010 Expeditions

Lotería

A Mexican bingo-like game

MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Shade of Wealth

H. P. Lovecraft

MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 Randolph Carter Meta
MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 The Lurking Horror II: The Lurkening
MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Herbert West, Animator
MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 The Colour Out of Space

Lovecraft Letter (game)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Herbert West, Animator

Love Letter (game)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 The Masquerade Ball

Love Live! anime

MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Centerpieces

LSC movies

MIT Mystery Hunt 2005 Film Screening

luge

MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Love at 150 km/h

Macbeth

MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Witches' Hut
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 The Scottish Display
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 The Other Scottish Play

"MacGyver" (TV show)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 I Can Build Anything

machine code

MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 Assemble Me

MacOS voices

MIT Mystery Hunt 2008 Hearing Voices

MacOS X cat versions

The first several versions of MacOS X were identified by code names which were the names of the big cats - cheetah, puma, etc. Apple eventually ran out of big cats, even using multiple names for the same animal, before switching to other names.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Fruit Around

Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade

MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 A Tearable Puzzle

Mad Libs

MIT Mystery Hunt 2003 Mad Liberation
MIT Mystery Hunt 2006 Space Invaders
MIT Mystery Hunt 2008 Ski Slopes

Mad Men

MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Furious Fellows

magazine covers

MIT Mystery Hunt 1994 30
MIT Mystery Hunt 2006 Get on with It
MIT Mystery Hunt 2007 Round IV Meta
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Lion

magazine writing styles

MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 Modern Journalism

magic squares

MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 Twosquare
MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 W♄ite Magic
MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 A Puzzle with the Answer I WANT TO HOLD YOUR HAND

Magic: The Gathering

MIT Mystery Hunt 1995 18: Billiard Room
MIT Mystery Hunt 2006 Convocation
MIT Mystery Hunt 2009 I'm Your Magic Man
MIT Mystery Hunt 2011 Sufficiently Advanced Technology
MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 Piercing the Veil
MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Turnary Reasoning
MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Magic: The Tappening
MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 Blocks
MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 Your Rival
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Horse
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Musical Theatre Guild
MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Something Command
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 The Champion
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Queen Marchesa to g4

magic tricks

MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 Twosquare

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

Mah Jongg

MIT Mystery Hunt 2004 The Merchant's Courtyard
MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 The Despondent Dynast

Maindenhead grid

A system of alphanumeric coordinates for any spot of Earth.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Art of the game.such.fame!

"Major General's Song"

MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 General Knowledge

malapropisms

MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 First You Visit...

Malayalam language

MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Le Chiffre Indéchiffrable

Malay language

MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 So Smart
MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Split Seven Ways
MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 How Come This Crossword Got No Grid One?

M&Ms

MIT Mystery Hunt 2007 Bloodbath at the Rainbow Room

Mandarin Chinese language

"Chinese language" comes here because Mandarin is usually what people mean when they say Chinese, though there are other Chinese languages.

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

manner of death

MIT Mystery Hunt 2006 Wry, Ergo Dead
MIT Mystery Hunt 2010 For Whom the Bella Toils (drug overdoses)
MIT Mystery Hunt 2011 Life of the Party

Maori language

MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Le Chiffre Indéchiffrable

The Mapparium

MIT Mystery Hunt 2010 A Journey to the Center of the Earth

maps

marathon run in under 2 hours

This feat was performed by Kenyan runner Eliud Kipchoge on October 12, 2019 in Vienna, Austria, under controlled conditions, with different teams of pace runners to protect him frm the wind and other such assistance which makes if different from a standard race.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 My Fun Bow

Marble League 2020

MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Let's Get the Ball Rolling

marching band drill sheets

Instructions that tell performers in a marching band how to move in order to create the formations typically seen in halftime shows of college football games.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Football Team on the Marching Field

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

marijuana

MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 Potlines
MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Fine Dining

Mario Kart video games

MIT Mystery Hunt 2011 Mario Kart Event
MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Formula Deluxe

maritime signal flags

Usually, this means 26 specific flags used as an alphabet. But there are also numeral flags, repeaters used to copy another flag, so each ship need carry only one of each flag, and meanings for each single flag hoisted alone.

Markov models

MIT Mystery Hunt 2015 Shark Blood
MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 Crackpot or Snackpot?
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Food Court

Marvel alternate Earths

MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Harmony

Marvel Cinematic Universe

Series of superhero films and TV shows

MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Investigate Relics

Marvin the Martian

MIT Mystery Hunt 2009 Our Favorite Martian

mascots

MIT Mystery Hunt 2008 Give Me an M! Give me an A! . . . Give me a Y!
MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 Elf/Dwarf Brawl
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Jack
MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Fine Dining

mashups

MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 Monster Potatoes
MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 Girl Talk
MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 An Hunt MIT Mystery Puzzle
MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 Special Delivery
MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Complementary Copies
MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Activities Midway
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Hyena
MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Kid Start-up
MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Frankenstein's Music
MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Funny Face
MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Interpret Perplexing Texts
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 At the Late Night Picture Show

The Masked Singer

MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 In Space, No One Can Hear You Sing

Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs

MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Wolf

Massachusetts Avenue (street near MIT)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 State Dinners

mass extinction events

MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Another One Bites the Dust

Mastermind

MIT Mystery Hunt 2005 Change of Clothes
MIT Mystery Hunt 2007 Pride event
MIT Mystery Hunt 2010 Bulls and Cows
MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 Guess What I'm Thinking
MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 The Crafty Criminal
MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Connect Four
MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Tech Support
MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Hall of Archaeology

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
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 The Hermit Crab

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
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Matchmaker

math

mathematicians

MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Overloaded

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

Matoran alphabet (Bionicle)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Open Secrets

matrices

MIT Mystery Hunt 2006 Disarray
MIT Mystery Hunt 2009 Interstellar Basic Algebra

Walter Matthau roles

MIT Mystery Hunt 2008 Role-Playing Game

Mayan/Aztec numerals

MIT Mystery Hunt 2006 Numeracy
MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Diced Turkey Hash
MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Graffiti

Mayan mythology

MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 It's Not a Well Written Quizbowl Packet But...

Mayfield Handbook (writing reference)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2006 Handbook Fragment

mayors

MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 A More 6 ∪ 28 ∪ 496 ∪ …

mazes

McMaster-Carr catalog

MIT Mystery Hunt 2007 Manual Transmission

MD5 hashes

MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 A Puzzle with the Answer CRONIN
MIT Mystery Hunt 2015 Cryptochains

meat

MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 Fleshed Out
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Film
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Squee Squee

medical names for conditions

MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Doctor's Orders

medical operations

MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Operation

Mega Man video games

MIT Mystery Hunt 2011 Dr. Wily's Fortress (Mega Man Supermeta)
MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Circuitboard
MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 Stage Select
MIT Mystery Hunt 2015 Blue Bomber
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Sheep

memes

MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 lol
MIT Mystery Hunt 2015 Graveyard Meta
MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 Time Suck
MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 The Most Interesting Puzzle in the World
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 IV GUYS
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Dating Stars
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Cheerful Ruler's Kingdom

memory

MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 I'm Wet! I'm Hysterical and I'm Wet
MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Watch Your Back
MIT Mystery Hunt 2015 Goldfish Memory
MIT Mystery Hunt 2015 Perception
MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Broken Concentration
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 The Midway
MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Think Fast

mental disorders

MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 The Voices in Your Head

Merck index

MIT Mystery Hunt 1999 Montevideo

mergers and acquisitions

MIT Mystery Hunt 2009 And Now, a Word from Our Intergalactic Corporate Overlords

Merriam-Webster dictionaries

MIT Mystery Hunt 1998 19.39 Name Recognition
MIT Mystery Hunt 2002 Share and Share Alike
MIT Mystery Hunt 2008 Notes on a Century of English According to Merriam-Webster's 11th Collegiate Dictionary
MIT Mystery Hunt 2008 Ski Slopes
MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 Worrying Ziggurats
MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 Flattery Will Get You Nowhere

message encrypted multiple times

MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 Keeping Records

metapuzzle

The puzzle(s) at the end of almost every round, using the answers and/or other information collected from the puzzles to yield a final round answer.

meta solving

These are not the actual find-an-answer-for-the-round puzzles, but puzzles which give you sets of answers that you have to solve in the manner of metapuzzles.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2011 Meta testing!
MIT Mystery Hunt 2015 Finsey Gillhone
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Spaghetti Western
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Infinite Corridor Simulator
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Squee Squee
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 PClueRS
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Steam Library
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 The Hermit Crab

Met Gala

A major fashion event run annually as a fundraising gala for the Metropolitan Luseum of Art's Costume Institute in New York City

MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Quilting Squares

microdots

MIT Mystery Hunt 2009 Invasion of the Micronauts
MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 Magic Mushrooms
MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Tissues

microscope

MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Martin Luther King Jr. Day Town

Microsoft PowerPoint

MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Powerful Point

Middle Earth (Tolkien setting)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 Stronghold Fire

middle names

MIT Mystery Hunt 2015 Three's the Charm
MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 Puzzling is My Middle Name

Midnight Madness

1980 film featuring five teams of college students solving a drive-around puzzle hunt. This film is quite possibly the inspiration for both the MIT Mystery Hunt and "The Game".

MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Something In Your I's

midpoints

MIT Mystery Hunt 2015 I Know That's a Pisser Baby
MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 Middle of the Road
MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 How To Install a Handle
MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Make Love or War

Nightmare on Elm Street films

MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 Randolph Carter Meta

military pay grades

MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 A Puzzle with the Answer EIGHT DAYS A WEEK
MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 Above Your Pay Grade

military ranks

MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 Above Your Pay Grade
MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 Is There a Draft in Here?

MIME types

MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 Slash Fiction

Minecraft game

MIT Mystery Hunt 2015 Steve's Parable
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Arts and Crafts

minerals

MIT Mystery Hunt 2003 Geological Garden
MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Be Mine

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.

minimalist art

MIT Mystery Hunt 2015 Rectangles

minipuzzles

Minor League Baseball

MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Minor Details

minor planet numbers

Also known as asteroids, the thousands of small bodies in our solar system are cataloged and numbered.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 Time Suck

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
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Medusa's Lair

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

misheard lyrics

MIT Mystery Hunt 2015 Benny Lava

misquotes

Quotations which are commonly stated incorrectly.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Don't Feed the Trolls

misspellings

Miss Universe pageant

MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Bitter Kittens Cross the Pond

Mistborn series by Brandon Sanderson

MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Alloy of Words
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 I Write These Words in Stele

MIT a capella groups

MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 The Radio

The MIT Blackjack Team

A group of students and ex-students of MIT and other prestigious colleges who used card counting and other strategies to beat casinos at blackjack worldwide from about 1979 to 2000.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Bringing Down the House

MIT Board of Chaplains

MIT Mystery Hunt 2007 Manipulating the Masses

MIT brass rats

This refers to the designs on MIT class rings (which feature their mascot, the beaver).

MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 Rats
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 The Ringmaster

MIT building names

MIT Mystery Hunt 1998 4.666 Special Subject in Numerical Interpolation
MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 Snap Judgment
MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 Across the Hall

MIT building numbers and room numbers

MIT campus phone numbers

MIT Mystery Hunt 2004 Worship of Zacazontli
MIT Mystery Hunt 2004 Scriptor Ecclesiae
MIT Mystery Hunt 2005 Call Me

MIT classes

MIT Mystery Hunt 1998 Junior Year Requirements
MIT Mystery Hunt 2000 Pleasures of Poetry
MIT Mystery Hunt 2003 Classroom (Institvte of Diversified Obscurity)
MIT Mystery Hunt 2004 Life in First Class
MIT Mystery Hunt 2007 Course Load
MIT Mystery Hunt 2011 Basic Knowledge
MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 Freshman Physics
MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 You Will Not Go to Space Today
MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 Find Your Way Across
MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 Let's Get Physical!
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Charming
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Numbers

MIT class gifts

MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 Thanks

MIT course bulletin

MIT Mystery Hunt 1995 22: Lounge

MIT courses (departments/majors)

MIT Mystery Hunt 1998 Junior Year Requirements
MIT Mystery Hunt 2000 An MIT Dialog
MIT Mystery Hunt 2007 I Need to Connect With You, Baby
MIT Mystery Hunt 2009 Fantasy Magnoball League
MIT Mystery Hunt 2011 Song of Birds
MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 A Puzzle with the Answer I WANT TO HOLD YOUR HAND
MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 The Pernicious Revenge of Juno

MIT door inscriptions

MIT Mystery Hunt 1996 Bach Meta

MIT fire extinguisher numbers

MIT Mystery Hunt 1996 Gödel meta
MIT Mystery Hunt 2004 Mullions (Meta)
MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 What Ben Bitdiddle Dropped (final runaround)

MIThenge

MIThenge is an even that occurs each year when the sun aligns with the Infinite Corridor.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Indiana Jones Meta

MIT history mural in Kendall Station

MIT Mystery Hunt 2005 Tea Time

MIT homepage "Spotlight" images

MIT Mystery Hunt 2009 The Spotlight Dance

MIT ID cards

MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 Quest for the Truth

MIT Library Access Music Project

MIT Mystery Hunt 2005 Tune in, Rock Out

MIT Museum

MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 A Trip to the Museum

MIT Musical Theatre Guild

MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 Mamma Mia
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Musical Theatre Guild

MIT named rooms

MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 Prints

MIT Nerdopoly (edition of Monopoly game)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2002 Day Tripper

MIT OpenCourseWare

MIT Mystery Hunt 2005 Out in the Open

MIT people (staff, alumni, etc.)

MIT Mystery Hunt 1995 23: Connecticut Suite
MIT Mystery Hunt 2011 Song of Birds
MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 Rats
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 ⊥IW.nano

MIT professors

MIT Mystery Hunt 2003 Lounge (Geek Love)
MIT Mystery Hunt 2009 Fantasy Magnoball League
MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 Honey, I Shrunk the Hunt!

MIT public art

MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 The Scenic Route
MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 A Beauty Cold and Austere
MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Art Tours
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Chairiot Races

MIT student groups

MIT Mystery Hunt 2005 There Was a Young Man From Cambridge
MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Activities Midway

MIT theatrical productions

MIT Mystery Hunt 2007 Encore! Encore!

MIT theses

MIT Mystery Hunt 2004 Sankore

MIT tree numbers

MIT Mystery Hunt 2002 Nature Walk

MIT trivia

MIT Mystery Hunt 2004 20000 = L. under the S.
MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 Keeping Records
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 The Best IT

MIT Virtual Tours

MIT Mystery Hunt 2009 Supercollider

Mixed Doubles crossword

See Split Ends crossword

mixtures

MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 The Enchanted Garden

mnemonics

MIT Mystery Hunt 2008 Our Unfortunate Aunt Edith
MIT Mystery Hunt 2015 Memory Lane
MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 People Watching
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 A Trip Down Memory Lane

Mobius strip

MIT Mystery Hunt 2009 Welcome to Probistis Mu
MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 Strip Mind
MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 Message in a Bottle
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Slitheɹlᴉuʞs

Mohs scale of hardness

MIT Mystery Hunt 2003 Geological Garden
MIT Mystery Hunt 2008 The Blue Carr Bungle
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Baseball
MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 4D Geo

molecular models

MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 Model Kit

money

MIT Mystery Hunt 1994 3
MIT Mystery Hunt 2007 Now That's High Finance
MIT Mystery Hunt 2008 Let Me Tell You the Story
MIT Mystery Hunt 2015 People and Places
MIT Mystery Hunt 2015 Fill in the Blanks

Monopoly game

MIT Mystery Hunt 2002 Theme and structure of the entire hunt
MIT Mystery Hunt 2007 I Only Get a Measly $200?
MIT Mystery Hunt 2010 Around the World in 80 Days (Here and Now editions)
MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 How to Succeed in Real Estate Without Really Buying
MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 High Rollers
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 The Midway
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Pitch Black
MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 First You GO to...
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 The Hermit Crab

Monster Factory (YouTube series)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 Beast Workshop

monsters

MIT Mystery Hunt 2004 Campfire Stories
MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 The Puzzle at the End of This Book
MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Joke-O-Lantern
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Basketball
MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Where the Wild Things Are
MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Crow Facts 3000
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Monsters

month abbreviations

MIT Mystery Hunt 2005 Red Star Meta

months

MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Persephone

Monty Python

MIT Mystery Hunt 1995 30: Kitchen
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 What Is the Moon Made Of?

Mooninites advertising Aqua Teen Hunger Force

MIT Mystery Hunt 2009 Suspicious Material
MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 Endymion Dream Fragment

moon names from Farmers' Almanac

In the 1930s, the Maine Farmers' Almanac started labeling full moons with names supposedly derived from Native American traditions, and the Farmers' Almanac (a different publication) does so today. These names have become a feature of American folklore.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 Tea Party Meta
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 What a Mesh!

Moon-or-Sun puzzle

In this Nikoli puzzle, a grid is divided into regions, and some cells have moon or sun symbols. Draw a closed loop that enters and exits each region once. The loop must pass through all the suns and no moons, or all the moons and no suns, in each region, and it must alternate passing through suns in one region and moons in the next.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Dancing Triangles
MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Book of Fixed Stars

moons

MIT Mystery Hunt 2009 Round 9 Meta
MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Permuted
MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 The Hound of the Vast-Cur-Villes
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 What a Mesh!
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 What Is the Moon Made Of?

Moon type

A writing system for the blind using embossed, simplified letter shapes

MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 Endymion Meta
MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Small Steps

Morbius

MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 One of the Puzzles of All Time

Mornington Crescent

MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 World Series of Mornington Crescent
MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Riding the Tube

Morse code

The Most Interesting Man in the World

MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 The Most Interesting Puzzle in the World

mother sauces of French cuisine

MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 Family Dinner
MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Insider Trading

mountains

MIT Mystery Hunt 2008 Sphere
MIT Mystery Hunt 2011 Mountain Pass (Rocky Mountains ranges)
MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 Cartography
MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 Worldwide Contacts

movie or TV show remakes

MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 Bad Poetry
MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 Impostors

movie reviews

MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 Minority Report

movies

movie series

MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Ore Aft

MP3 metadata

MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 The Sound of Silence

MPAA certificates

Certificates issued by the Motion Picture Association of America, approving specific films with specific ratings

MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Rated G

Mr. Men

MIT Mystery Hunt 2005 Little People
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Mysterious Figures

MS Paint Adventures

MIT Mystery Hunt 2010 Edits
MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 Pestered

MTV Movie & TV awards

MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Make Love or War

MUDs (multi-user dungeons)

MIT Mystery Hunt 1994 2

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

multiple meanings of words

MIT Mystery Hunt 2009 Nesting Instinct
MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 Eight Digits

Muppets

MIT Mystery Hunt 2008 Muppet Theater
MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 The Rainbow Connection
MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 Now Let's Create Melodies
MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 The Puzzle at the End of This Book
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 New York's Seediest Street

The Muppet Show

MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Julia and Friends

the Muses

MIT Mystery Hunt 2011 Inspiration Meta

mushrooms

MIT Mystery Hunt 2011 Mario 1 Meta
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Popcorn
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Spore Prints

music adapted from classical music

MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 Altered from the Original

musical instruments

MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 A Puzzle with the Answer LOVE ME DO
MIT Mystery Hunt 2015 It's Play Time
MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Keeping Tabs
MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Playing A Round
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Football Team on the Marching Field

musical modes

The seven modes (Ionian, Dorian, Phyrgian, Lydian, Mixoltdian, Aeolian, and Locrian) correspond to starting scales on each of the seven notes A-G, are related to the familiar concepts of major and minor keys, and have names derived from ancient Greek music (and named for regions and subgroups of the ancient Greeks and their neighbors) which were reused in the development of western musical theory in medieval times.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 The Modest Minstrels
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Safe Mode

musicals

musicians

MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 Your Rival
MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Playing A Round
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Bobcat
MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Brain Freeze

music (identification from audio samples)

music (identification from clues or lyrics)

music (other)

MIT Mystery Hunt 1996 4A
MIT Mystery Hunt 1999 Athens
MIT Mystery Hunt 2000 Round 4 Meta (album titles)
MIT Mystery Hunt 2003 Morale Booster (song writing and performing)
MIT Mystery Hunt 2011 Crowd's Chant (relative major and minor keys)
MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 Crank It Up To 7
MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 The Puzzle Your Puzzle Could Smell Like
MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 Rhythms of the Season
MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 Matchbox Twenty
MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 Freak Out
MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 Nobody Likes Sad Songs

music (sheet music, transcriptions of notes, or solfege)

Tablature also falls under this category.

music videos

MIT Mystery Hunt 2002 I Want My Mystery Hunt Puzzle!
MIT Mystery Hunt 2007 I Love These 80
MIT Mystery Hunt 2008 Subservient Chicken Loves the '80s
MIT Mystery Hunt 2011 Amateur Hour
MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Sages Style
MIT Mystery Hunt 2015 Montages
MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Bee Movies
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Fountain Show
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Charisma
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Paris

mustaches

MIT Mystery Hunt 2015 Headshots

"My Brother, My Brother and Me" (podcast)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 Do You Want A

My Little Pony

MIT Mystery Hunt 2011 The Sport of Princesses
MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 Missing the Mark
MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 Fashionable Friends

Myspace

MIT Mystery Hunt 2007 Friends You Can Count On

Mystery Hunt

These puzzles are based on the concept of Mystery Hunt itself. See also:

MIT Mystery Hunt 2007 It Could Be Worse
MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 Yo Dawg, I Herd You Like Puzzle Hunts
MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Win a Game of Bingo

Mystery Hunt: refers to other puzzle in same hunt

This excludes the usual references associated with metapuzzles

Mystery Hunts of the past

Mystery Hunt team names

MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Too Many Seacrest
MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 Technical Program Committee Report
MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 DK8: The Turducken Konundrum (Turkey)
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Over 9,000: an Abbreviated Yet Awesome Tour Of Your First Equally Excellent Puzzle Mechanic

Mystery Science Theatre 3000

MIT Mystery Hunt 2001 Claustrophobia
MIT Mystery Hunt 2009 The Satellite of Love
MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Crow Facts 3000

“Mythbusters”

MIT Mystery Hunt 2010 Don't Tri This at Home

mythical beasts

MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Monty Minotaur's Magical Menagerie
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 The Wizard's Escape

nail polish colors

MIT Mystery Hunt 2001 Blood of the Creatures
MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 I Came Across a Japanese Rose Garden

nakshatras

27 segments of the orbit of the moon, used in Hindu astrology and religion

MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 To Numbers and Back Again

named symphonies

Most symphonies by classical composers are numbered in sequence for that composer, but some of them also have unique names.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Name That Tune

The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco

MIT Mystery Hunt 2008 Ecolocation

Name of the Year

MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 How To Install a Handle

namesakes

MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Stunt Doubles
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Look at What We Drew

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 and in the form they became known there, the letters are arranged in order in a circle, but you have to figure out where the alphabet starts to identify the word.

MIT Mystery Hunt 1995 15: Drawing Room
MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Ornaments
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Spore Prints

narrative charts

(as in this xkcd strip)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2011 Plotlines
MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 Potlines

NASCAR

MIT Mystery Hunt 2009 The Space Race

national anthems

MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Wynn

nationalities

MIT Mystery Hunt 2010 Temptations
MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 Can + Tab + Rig + Ian

national libraries

MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Presenting: Capitol Records Tour

national parks

MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 Cartography
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 In A Park

NATO alphabet

See phonetic alphabet

Nautical Almanac

MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Poor Richard Goes to Sea

Navajo code talk

MIT Mystery Hunt 2008 Talk to Me

navigation way points (fixes)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Travel Planning

NCAA basketball tournament

MIT Mystery Hunt 2007 Belle of the Ball
MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 March Madness
MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 Mad Dogs

nebulas

MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Reactivation

negative space

The space outside the subject of a picture, or letters, etc. Sometimes used intentionally to hide extra images. The FedEx logo famously features an arrow between the E and x.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 FedEx

neighborhoods

MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 Blocks and Blocks

Neko Atsume (game)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Endless Practice

Nendoroid figurines

MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Foundation's Collection

neologisms

MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Twitterati

Nepali language

MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Le Chiffre Indéchiffrable

nerdy pastimes

MIT Mystery Hunt 2011 Stuff Nerd People Like

Nethack (rogue-like game)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2006 Endgame

neural networks

MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Deeply Confused

neurons

MIT Mystery Hunt 2010 A Potential Problem
MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 You've Got Some Nerve

The Neverending Story

MIT Mystery Hunt 2010 Ad Infinitum

"Never Not Funny" (Jimmy Pardo podcast)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 Always Amusing

New England Aquarium

MIT Mystery Hunt 2015 Field Trip

New Jersey Turnpike

MIT Mystery Hunt 2008 Witness 4 Meta

New Orleans

MIT Mystery Hunt 2007 Crescent City Blues

newspapers

MIT Mystery Hunt 2009 The Elderly Gentleman Who Wants to Reverse the Polarity of the Neutron Flow

Isaac Newton's apple tree

Supposedly, an apple falling from a tree inspired Isaac Newton to develop his theory of gravity. Whether true or not, he did have an apple tree, and descendants of that tree have been planted in various universities and gardens aroiund the world.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 X Marks the 🍎

New York Times Connections game

See Only Connect (British TV game show)

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

NFPA 704 fire diamonds

MIT Mystery Hunt 2010 Hot Ice
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 The Hermit Crab

nicknames

MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 AKA
MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Playing Bootsie
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 It's a Clown Puzzle, Bro

nicknames for playing cards

MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 The Dogged Pursuit of Justice, AKA: Caught Red-Handed

nim

Nim is a mathematical game. The basic version has several piles of chips, and each player in turn picks any pile and removes one or more chips from that pile (including possibly taking the whole pile). There are many variations of the game and a whole area of mathematics based on finding the best strategies for these games.

MIT Mystery Hunt 1996 2B
MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 On Numbers and Games
MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Bubbly

ninepin bowling

MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 Rip Van Winkle Meta

Nintendo GameCube

MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Dolphin

Richard Nixon

MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Checkerboard

Nobel Prize

MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Pippi Långstrump/Pippi Longstocking
MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Everybody Must Get Rosetta Stoned
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Presenting: Capitol Records Tour

no four in a row (logic puzzle)

In this logic puzzle type, a grid is provided with black or white circles in some squares. (Also seen with Xs and Os instead of colored circles.) You have to fill circles in the empty squares so that nowhere is there a line of four circles of the same color horizontally, vertically, or diagonally.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2015 Polyglot

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

See paint by numbers (logic puzzle)

nonsense words

MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Soundtracks
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 At A Loss For Words

non-water floods

MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 H2No

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).

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

Norse mythology

MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 The Holy Cup of the Raven-God
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 It's Not a Well Written Quizbowl Packet But...

Norwegian language

MIT Mystery Hunt 2001 The Chimera
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Le Chiffre Indéchiffrable

No Such Thing as a Fish (podcast)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 ...FISH Puzzles

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 2015 Polyglot

notification sounds

MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Telephone

novelty architecture

Buildings built in unusual shapes, sometimes intentionally shaped like something else, but still usable as buildings.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Cupid's Guide to Building Long-Distance Relationships

NP-hard problems

MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 SAT III

NPR News

MIT Mystery Hunt 2011 Heard but Not Seen

nuclear reactions

MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Nuclear Words

nudity

MIT Mystery Hunt 2005 Keeping Abreast of the Issues
MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 The White House or Bust!

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.

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
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Toy Chest

number place

See sudoku

numbers

MIT Mystery Hunt 2010 Round 10 Meta
MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 Non-Local Anesthetic
MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 Wolf in the Fold
MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Twisty Passages
MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Christmas Town/Halloween Town Meta
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Exactly
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Sahara

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

number two

MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 Mass Aid

Numbrix

See Hidato puzzle

numerology

MIT Mystery Hunt 1982 Subclue #10

numeronyms

numeronyms can include any word that uses digits, but one common category is the shortened form of words like internationalization (as i18n) where the number indicates the number of omitted letters.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Balancing Act
MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Kubernetes

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
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Island Hopping

nursery rhymes

MIT Mystery Hunt 1994 27
MIT Mystery Hunt 2004 The Dirty Kid
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Lil' Tykes Play Structure

Nuruomino

See LITS puzzle

Nutrimatic

A web site featuring a powerful pattern-matching word list search tool and a very comprehensive list to search.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Nutraumatic

nutrition labels

MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Nutrition Facts

nyan cat

MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 Any Old Puzzle
MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 A Puzzle with the Answer CRONIN

obsolete technology

MIT Mystery Hunt 2011 Redundant Obsolescence (misc)
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Jukebox

occupations

MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Moat-er Boats

octal

The base 8 numeral system, sometimes used in computing.

MIT Mystery Hunt 1996 6A
MIT Mystery Hunt 2005 Pieces of Eight
MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 Eight Digits
MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Christmas Town/Halloween Town Meta
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Halloween TV Guide

OCTOGRAM

A puzzle game created by Jack Lance with 8-letter clues.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 ENNEAGRAM

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

Odia language

MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Le Chiffre Indéchiffrable

offline

(Events where team members are brought somewhere to solve puzzles without electronic assistance)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2006 Data Analysis
MIT Mystery Hunt 2007 Sloth event
MIT Mystery Hunt 2008 Case Study
MIT Mystery Hunt 2010 The Campus Canvas event

"_ of the _" phrases

MIT Mystery Hunt 2015 Denizen of the Deep
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Witches' Hut

Old English

MIT Mystery Hunt 2008 The Goodwin Manuscript

Old Spice

MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 The Puzzle Your Puzzle Could Smell Like

Olympic Games

MIT Mystery Hunt 2008 In Soviet Union, Death Defies You
MIT Mystery Hunt 2011 Cheaters Never Prosper
MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 Slay All Day
MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 Worldwide Contacts
MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Holi Town/Patriots' Day Town Meta
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Peak Adventure
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 In A Park
MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 The Last Olympian
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Najaf to...
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 We Are the Champions

Olympics

See Olympic Games

Omnibus podcast

A podcast by Ken Jennings and John Roderick

MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Change Machine

omnidirectional crossword

In this crossword variant, you're told where each word starts, but it can go in any of 4 or 8 directions. The directions may be given, clued, or for you to figure out from matching letters in clue answers.

MIT Mystery Hunt 1997 In Utopia, Nostradamus Predicts Bisexuality and Elvis Music!
MIT Mystery Hunt 2006 Pen Rose
MIT Mystery Hunt 2008 Safari Park
MIT Mystery Hunt 2015 Workshop Meta Meta
MIT Mystery Hunt 2015 A Thousand Words

On Beyond Zebra

MIT Mystery Hunt 2003 Guys'll Eat Ivy, Too
MIT Mystery Hunt 2009 On Beyond Zyzzlvaria
MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 I’ll Teach You

One.MIT

Artwork from MIT.nano containing the names of every known MIT affiliate from 1861 to 2020. This is accomplished by writing the names very, very, small. Duh! Available at onemit.mit.edu

MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 ⊥IW.nano

One Piece (manga)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2015 Speak of the Devil Fruit

one-time pad, Gronsfeld cipher, or Augustus cipher

MIT Mystery Hunt 1996 Gödel meta
MIT Mystery Hunt 2004 Two Timer
MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 Keeping Records
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 A Bit of Light

one time pad used multiple times

MIT Mystery Hunt 2004 Two Timer

“One Week” (Barenaked Ladies song)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2005 Seven Days

Only Connect (British TV game show)

This keyword almost always refers to the "wall" round of Only Connect: a 4x4 grid of words which you have to split into 4 sets of 4, each with a common theme. The game Connections on the New York Times web site is the same basic concept, but as a game you can play rather than a game contestants on TV are trying to solve for money.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Clued Connections
MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 The 4500 Year Itch
MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 My Fun Bow
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Connecting Connections
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Climbfinder

onomatopoeia

MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 🤔
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Ancient Mystery

open-source software

MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Kubernetes

Opera Game (1858 chess game)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 A Night at the Opera

Operation (game)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 The Cleric meta
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Operation

opponents

MIT Mystery Hunt 2011 Meta testing!

opposites

See antonyms

optimization problems

MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 SAT III
MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 Zodiac Quest

opus numbers

Classical composers often numbered their works in addition to given them names, so a particular work might be that composer's op. 5. These are called opus numbers.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 Is that Even Music?

ordered sets

ordering logic puzzles

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

The Order of the Stick (webcomic)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Wanted: Gangs of Six

ordinal numbers

First, second, third, fourth, etc.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Marathon

O'Reilly covers

MIT Mystery Hunt 2010 Shapeshifting

origami

MIT Mystery Hunt 1997 TA Elvis' End-of-Term Oral is Travesty, According to Students!
MIT Mystery Hunt 2003 Folderol
MIT Mystery Hunt 2004 The Commodore's Final Voyage (Meta)
MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 Cross-Pollination
MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 Wolf in the Fold
MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Mountains and Valleys
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Bear
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Slitheɹlᴉuʞs
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Arts and Crafts

_ or _ phrases

MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 The Hermit Crab

The Orville

MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Altered Transmissions

Oscars (Academy Awards)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2005 Purple Meta
MIT Mystery Hunt 2008 These Ain't No Underpants Gnomes
MIT Mystery Hunt 2010 Endgame
MIT Mystery Hunt 2010 TUO YRREJ PEEK
MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 Dressing Down
MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 A Puzzle with the Answer LOVE ME DO
MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 My Dinner With Big Boi

Othello (game)

MIT Mystery Hunt 1999 Helsinki
MIT Mystery Hunt 2011 You Shall Understand What Hath Befallen
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Reverse!

"over 9000" meme

MIT Mystery Hunt 2011 Magnitude

overlapping rings

MIT Mystery Hunt 2004 Nagano

overlays

oysters

MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 Another Puzzle with the Answer SULLIVAN

Ozark (TV series)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Landing Site

packing polyominoes

MIT Mystery Hunt 1999 Freetown
MIT Mystery Hunt 2009 The Professorial Fellow Playing the Spoons
MIT Mystery Hunt 2011 Worthy of Picasso (polycubes)
MIT Mystery Hunt 2011 N-tris
MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 Caterpillars
MIT Mystery Hunt 2015 Blue Bomber
MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Once Upon a Time in the Quest

paint by number (coloring book)

MIT Mystery Hunt 1995 20: Art Gallery
MIT Mystery Hunt 2010 Picture Puzzle 2
MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 A Puzzle with the Answer CAN'T BUY ME LOVE
MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Where the Wild Things Are

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.

paintings

MIT Mystery Hunt 2003 Art Gallery
MIT Mystery Hunt 2004 Interior Decorating
MIT Mystery Hunt 2005 Gallery Tour
MIT Mystery Hunt 2006 Paris Ante
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Gallery of Tomorrow
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Chromolume Drawing #305
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Oil Paintings

pairing up matching things

MIT Mystery Hunt 2005 Out of Sorts
MIT Mystery Hunt 2005 Purple Star Meta
MIT Mystery Hunt 2005 Odd Man Out
MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 Stage Lines
MIT Mystery Hunt 2015 Headshots
MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 Puzzling is My Middle Name
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Stress Test

pairs ( & )

MIT Mystery Hunt 2003 Whoa-I Know Drawing
MIT Mystery Hunt 2009 pluHarmony
MIT Mystery Hunt 2010 Woofers and Tweeters
MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 Pure and Simple

palindromes and palindromic sequences

Palm Pilot application

MIT Mystery Hunt 2003 Runaround

pancakes

MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Supporting Character Breakfast

pangrams

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

papel picado

A Mexican folk art in which tissue paper is cut into elaborate designs. They are used for many events in Mexico but are commonly seen during celebrations of the Day of the Dead.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Cemetery Boys

paper airplanes

MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Rhino

paper dolls

MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 American Icons
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Flat Stanley

paper shredder

MIT Mystery Hunt 2003 Shredded What?
MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 Obsessive-Compulsive Dickishness

paradoxes

MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Lojicomix

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?

Paris

MIT Mystery Hunt 2011 Pointillisme
MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 Slash Fiction

parity-check matrix

A kind of error-correcting code

MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Junky Logic

Parks and Recreation (TV show)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Obelisks of Sorrel Mountain

parts with unusual names

MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Things

party

(Puzzles where you have to get information at the traditional party, usually on Friday evening)

MIT Mystery Hunt 1999 Christchurch
MIT Mystery Hunt 2001 The Two Faces of Evil
MIT Mystery Hunt 2002 How to be a Millionaire
MIT Mystery Hunt 2003 That Mixer
MIT Mystery Hunt 2004 The Parrrrty
MIT Mystery Hunt 2005 Cocktail Party
MIT Mystery Hunt 2005 Special Art Exhibition
MIT Mystery Hunt 2006 Costume Ball
MIT Mystery Hunt 2007 Lust event
MIT Mystery Hunt 2008 Dream On
MIT Mystery Hunt 2009 Alien Mixer event
MIT Mystery Hunt 2011 Pirate Party Event
MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Casino Lobdell

Pascal's triangle

MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Permuted

pasta

MIT Mystery Hunt 2011 Cut and Paste
MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 Carb Pool
MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 Cooking a Recipe
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Relitasti

patents

MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 Blinkenlights
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 A Terrible Morning

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

patron saints

MIT Mystery Hunt 2003 Chapel
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Divine Intervention

Paul and Storm

MIT Mystery Hunt 2010 Production and Supply

I. M. Pei

MIT alumnus I. M. Pei is a world-renowned architect, and the designer of four buildings on MIT's campus.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Modern Architecture

pen names

MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Spy Game

Penrose tiles

MIT Mystery Hunt 2006 Pen Rose

Penrose triangle

This shape, also called the impossible tribar, is a kind of impossible object, one which can be depicted through tricks of perspective but cannot exist in the real world. It appears in some Escher artworks.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 Disorientation

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

pentominoes

MIT Mystery Hunt 2008 Dossier 7 Meta
MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 Pentoku
MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Concrete
MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Royal Steeds

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

Pentominous puzzle

Divide the grid into 5-cell regions. Two pentominoes of the same shape cannot share an edge, even if rotated or reflected. A cell with a letter in it must be part of that pentomino shape. A version with a triangular grid based on pentiamonds called pentiamondous exists.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Dancing Triangles

people executed by hanging

MIT Mystery Hunt 2010 Don't Let Me Down

Percy Jackson and the Olympians books

MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 The Gods Must Be Crazy
MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 The Last Olympian

periodic behavior

MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 Orbits

periodic table of the elements

One of the discoveries that greatly advanced the science of chemistry. Though others had tried since the early 1800s, the first really successful periodic table was developed by Dmitri Mendeleev in 1869. See also chemical elements for other puzzles related to the elements and specific periodic tables in circular periodic table, lobby 6 periodic table, and periodic table parodies.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2001 The Alchemist's Workshop
MIT Mystery Hunt 2005 Trivial Pursuit
MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 Okla-Holmes-a! Meta
MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 A Lemon Tree
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Whack-A-Mole
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Student Center
MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Pretty Good Chemistry
MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Baking Bread
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Follow the Directions

periodic table parodies

MIT Mystery Hunt 2003 Chemistry Lab
MIT Mystery Hunt 2009 The Fifth Element (and 35 More)
MIT Mystery Hunt 2010 Doctor of Thinkology

Perl

MIT Mystery Hunt 2002 A Nugget of Wisdom
MIT Mystery Hunt 2003 Whoa-I Know Knitting
MIT Mystery Hunt 2004 Who's There
MIT Mystery Hunt 2007 Blather

permutations

MIT Mystery Hunt 2006 Decode This
MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 Keeping Records
MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Golden Images
MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Permuted
MIT Mystery Hunt 2015 A Puzzle Consisting Entirely of Random Anagrams
MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 identify, SORT, index, solve
MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 The 10,000 Puzzle Tesseract
MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Cute Cats
MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 MATE's META
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Realize It

Persian language

See Farsi language

Persona video games

MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Anima Oratorio
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Heart of the Cards
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Aphrodite's Plutonic Affection Connection

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
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Flower Power

Peter's evil overlord list

MIT Mystery Hunt 2010 Dr Ox's Experiment

pets

MIT Mystery Hunt 2009 I'm Feeling a Little TwitterPetted
MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 America's Best Friends

PGP encryption

MIT Mystery Hunt 1996 Endgame
MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 Show Me the Proof

philosophers

MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 Thinking Caps

Phish (band)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Funkin'

phobias

MIT Mystery Hunt 2001 Phobophobia
MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 Face Your Fears

Phoenician alphabet

MIT Mystery Hunt 2008 Palimpsest

phone keypad

The telephone keypad differs from the keypad on a computer keyboard (which itself is derived from calculators and similar devices) in that the telephone has 1, 2, 3 in the top row while the computer has 7, 8, 9 in the top row.

MIT Mystery Hunt 1982 Subclue #7
MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 Cutting the Cord

phone phreaking

MIT Mystery Hunt 2011 Making the Possible Impossible
MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Drive-Thru Dilemma

phonespell (2 = A,B,C)

Classically, phonespell was used to provide words that encode to the correct phone number when the indicated keys are pressed. It was also for many years a puzzle where only the digits are provided and you have to decipher the message. In modern times (on devices without touchscreens) it's used in reverse and called T9: You press the keys for the letters in a word and the phone determines what word is the most common one spelled with those numbers (replacing multi-tap, an earlier method in which you pressed 2 once for A, twice for B, and three times for C).

MIT Mystery Hunt 1995 27: Hall
MIT Mystery Hunt 1998 Roamin'
MIT Mystery Hunt 2004 Worship of Zacazontli
MIT Mystery Hunt 2004 Rant
MIT Mystery Hunt 2004 Lost in the Boiler Rooms
MIT Mystery Hunt 2006 783658
MIT Mystery Hunt 2007 Cambridge Tea Party
MIT Mystery Hunt 2010 Round 4 Meta
MIT Mystery Hunt 2011 Famous Faces
MIT Mystery Hunt 2011 Redundant Obsolescence
MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 Phantom of the Operator Meta
MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 A Mad Cocktail Party
MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 Cutting the Cord
MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Lists of Large Integers

phonetic alphabet

These puzzles use the NATO phonetic alphabet (alpha, bravo, ...) or another similar standard code where a word is used to clearly communicate each letter through an audio channel. For the International Phonetic Alphabet used for phonetic transcription of speech, see IPA (international phonetic alphabet)

phonetic ambiguity

MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 Asymmetry

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)

phony Scrabble words

MIT Mystery Hunt 2000 Mumbo-Jumbo
MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Till You Make It
MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 Stronghold Fire
MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 The Case of the Dangerous Game

photomosaic

MIT Mystery Hunt 2002 Grounded for Life

Photoshop

MIT Mystery Hunt 2008 Picture Store

phrase structure grammar

MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 Time Flies

phrases with a set of words

pH tests

MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Science Event

phylogenetic trees

See cladograms

physical education (P.E.)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 Let's Get Physical!

physics

MIT Mystery Hunt 2004 Rhabdomancy Honkies
MIT Mystery Hunt 2006 Surely You're Hexing
MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Text Adventure
MIT Mystery Hunt 2015 Practice in Theory
MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 Student Simulator
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Drawing Board
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Courthouse

Pic-a-Pix

See paint by numbers (logic puzzle)

picking locks

MIT Mystery Hunt 2004 Final Runaround
MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 The Queen of Hearts
MIT Mystery Hunt 2015 Locks
MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Crack Some Crypts

Picross

See paint by numbers (logic puzzle)

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.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2003 Round 2 Meta

Pictionary

MIT Mystery Hunt 2005 Telephone Pictionary
MIT Mystery Hunt 2010 The Campus Canvas event
MIT Mystery Hunt 2015 Teamwork
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Supporting Character Breakfast
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 ⊥IWPE: Archery (Event #2)🏹

Piet programming language

MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 Sleeping Gypsy Meta
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Turing Tar-pit

pigeonhole principle

MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 Winning Conditions

Pig Latin

MIT Mystery Hunt 1998 Final Runaround
MIT Mystery Hunt 2000 The Duck Konundrum
MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 WAT?
MIT Mystery Hunt 2015 Eh?
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Pirate Ship
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Pig
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Analog Circuitry
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Attack of the Lobsters
MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Drive-Thru Dilemma

pigpen cipher

MIT Mystery Hunt 2005 Dirty Laundry
MIT Mystery Hunt 2008 Safari Park
MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Open Secrets
MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 Guess What I'm Thinking
MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 Vain Snowball
MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Running for Office
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Pig
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Paint
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Squee Squee
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 For Your Eyes Only
MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Lessons Learned from Porcine Construction
MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Graffiti
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Subplutonean IHTFP Blues

Pika (MIT residence)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Story

pinball

MIT Mystery Hunt 2008 Instant Replay
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Game to Be Themed Later

Chris Pine

MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Chris Chros

MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Uncharted Territory

pi (number)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2007 Cambridge Tea Party
MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Halting Problem
MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Arbor Day Town/Pi Day Town Meta
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Mr. Patel
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Pie Shop
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Infinite Corridor Simulator
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Infinite Corridor

Pipe Dream crossword

See pathfinder crossword

pips

The spots on standard dice and dominoes

MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Error: File "txtadv.py" not found

pirates

MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Harrah's

"The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything"

Song from Veggie Tales

MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Harrah's

Pixar films

MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 Precipice
MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 The Adventures of Pinocchio

pizza toppings

MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Spinning Tops

places north of other places

MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 We See Thee Rise

Places, Please puzzle

See reverse word search

places with the same name

MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 So Good They Named it Hull
MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 A Walk Around Town

planets

MIT Mystery Hunt 1982 Subclue #4
MIT Mystery Hunt 2009 Round 1 Meta
MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 Wandering Stars
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Ox (Bull)
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Heart of the Park
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Twins
MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Book of Fixed Stars
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Excalibur

The Planets by Gustav Holst

MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Mercury

plant hardiness zones

MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Return to Sender

plants

MIT Mystery Hunt 2009 The Condescending Man Holding a Brightly Colored Parasol
MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Exhibit of Colors
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Return to Sender

Plants vs. Zombies

MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Persephone

pastic recycling codes

See resin identification codes

plastics

MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 The Junk Pile

Playboy playmates

MIT Mystery Hunt 2005 Keeping Abreast of the Issues

Playfair square cipher

MIT Mystery Hunt 1997 Languedoc Culture Attributes Modern Civilization to Elvis!
MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 Behave
MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 Building Challenge
MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Have You Seen Me?
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Athletics
MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Altered Transmissions
MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Too Many Secrets
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 A Trip Down Memory Lane

playing cards

MIT Mystery Hunt 1999 Santiago
MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Uncharted Territory
MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 MIT Meta
MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 The Dogged Pursuit of Justice, AKA: Caught Red-Handed
MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 Quest for the Truth
MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 The Maniacal Merchants
MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 Marked Deck

playing cards code (assigning letters to specific cards)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2003 Whoa-I Know Prestidigitation
MIT Mystery Hunt 2004 Cards
MIT Mystery Hunt 2005 Dogs Playing Poker
MIT Mystery Hunt 2006 Gross Solitaire

PLU codes

MIT Mystery Hunt 1999 Warrant 4.3 (Vegetable Surprise)
MIT Mystery Hunt 2009 The Apples in Stereo
MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Apples Plus Bananas

poetry

MIT Mystery Hunt 1982 Subclue #15
MIT Mystery Hunt 2015 Stay Out of the Trench
MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Concrete
MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Keeping Tabs
MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Poetic License
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Lime Sand Season
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Poetic Justice

Pokémon

poker

MIT Mystery Hunt 2000 Secular Fun with Pentagrams
MIT Mystery Hunt 2005 Dogs Playing Poker
MIT Mystery Hunt 2008 Bad Beat Jackpot
MIT Mystery Hunt 2010 Card Tricks
MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 The Downtown Murders
MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Strange Garnets

polarization of light

MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 A Puzzle with the Answer WILLIAMS
MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Groundhog Day Town

Polcari's Italian Restaurant in Tech Square

MIT Mystery Hunt 2004 Temple of Macuilxochitl

police alphabet

See phonetic alphabet

The Police (band)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 Hum a Few (More) Bars

Polish language

MIT Mystery Hunt 2005 Lost in Translation
MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 The Leaning Tower of Sheshach
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 T (Counts) for Two
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Fren Amis

polyominoes

MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 The Lion and the Unicorn

Poor Richard's Almanack

An almanac published by Benjamin Franklin 1732-1758

MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 Unfortunate Al

popcorn

MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Popcorn

popes

MIT Mystery Hunt 2000 Round 1 Meta Hint
MIT Mystery Hunt 2004 Scriptor Ecclesiae

popup ads

MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 CLICK TO WIN!!!

Popy Chogokin robot toys

MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 The Unutterable, Antediluvian Robots in Disguise

porn

MIT Mystery Hunt 2005 Keeping Abreast of the Issues

portable electronic devices

MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Display Case

Portal (game)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2011 Endgame
MIT Mystery Hunt 2011 Puzzle Box
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Help I'm Trapped in a Computer

portmanteaus

A portmanteau is the combining of two words or phrases by taking part of each to make a new word or phrase. Commonly, the beginning of one word is welded onto the end of another word in a portmanteau.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Reading Comprehension
MIT Mystery Hunt 2015 Choose Your Language
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Who's That Pokémon?
MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 How To Install a Handle
MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Scicabulary
MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Mosaics

port scanning

MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Call and Response

Portuguese language

MIT Mystery Hunt 2000 Isn't It Romantic?
MIT Mystery Hunt 2005 Lost in Translation
MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Symphony from the Old World
MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Romance Languages
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Cubo
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Fren Amis

position players pitching

In baseball, normally a player is either a pitcher or a position player. Position players move around, but they usually don't pitch, so it is a notable event when they do.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 He's Out

postage stamps

MIT Mystery Hunt 2004 Lost in Translation

postal barcodes

MIT Mystery Hunt 1996 9C

Postscript

The printer language which is a full-fledged programming language, and sometimes abused because of it.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2002 Block Party
MIT Mystery Hunt 2002 Grape Clusterbomb
MIT Mystery Hunt 2002 Tax Puzzle
MIT Mystery Hunt 2002 Choice Hotels (Cyan Meta)
MIT Mystery Hunt 2003 A Problem with Printing
MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 Glazing Over
MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 What's in the Box? What's in the Box?!

pot

See marijuana

Power Grid (game)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 National Power Grid

Chris Pratt

MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Chris Chros

predictions

MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Matchmaker

prefixes

MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 The Gods Must Be Crazy
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 The Myriad Gamut of Hera

presidential also-rans

MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 Losers
MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 Voter Fraud
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Could You Restate That?

presidents

MIT Mystery Hunt 2003 Unprecedented Discovery
MIT Mystery Hunt 2005 In the House
MIT Mystery Hunt 2008 Witness 5 Meta
MIT Mystery Hunt 2010 Confirmed Machine 925
MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 Voter Fraud
MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Thanksgiving Town/President's Day Town Meta
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Ox (Bull)
MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 5D Barred Diagramless with Multiverse Time Travel
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 A More 6 ∪ 28 ∪ 496 ∪ …

The Price is Right

MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 Rescue the Economist

prime numbers

MIT Mystery Hunt 1982 Subclue #5
MIT Mystery Hunt 1982 Subclue #6
MIT Mystery Hunt 1998 19.503 Advanced History
MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Halting Problem
MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Permuted
MIT Mystery Hunt 2015 Pipe
MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 ASCII Characters
MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 Jackson Pollock
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Athletics
MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 How To Collide Particles
MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Lists of Large Integers
MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Apples Plus Bananas
MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Folded Cards
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 A More 6 ∪ 28 ∪ 496 ∪ …

Prince (musician)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 Heirplay

The Princess Bride

MIT Mystery Hunt 2008 Giant Game
MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 The Fire Swamp

printers

MIT Mystery Hunt 2015 Mythological Connections
MIT Mystery Hunt 2015 Finsey Gillhone

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

probability

MIT Mystery Hunt 2005 LSEA
MIT Mystery Hunt 2008 Bad Beat Jackpot
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Food Court
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Schrödinger's Maze

procedurally generated puzzles

MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Cafe Five
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Library of Images
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Unchained
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Infinite Corridor Simulator
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Make Your Own Word Search
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 5050 Matchups
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Reflections

produce PLU codes

MIT Mystery Hunt 1999 Warrant 4.3 (Vegetable Surprise)
MIT Mystery Hunt 2009 The Apples in Stereo

programming algorithms

MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Hackin' the Beanstalk

programming contests

MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Showcase

programming languages

(see also esoteric programming languages and perl)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2006 Badness 10000 (various)
MIT Mystery Hunt 2008 Tragedy (C)
MIT Mystery Hunt 2010 Shapeshifting (python)
MIT Mystery Hunt 2011 Efficiency (scheme)
MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Halting Problem
MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 Callooh Callay, World!
MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 Open and Shut Case
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Illiterate Programming
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 In C

Proof of Quilt

See Shakashaka puzzle

proofreading marks

MIT Mystery Hunt 2006 Editor

proteins

MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Quaternary Structure
MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Protein

proverbial sayings

MIT Mystery Hunt 1998 24.845 Circular Saws
MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 The Pernicious Revenge of Juno
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Inner Tube Adventure Float
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Wishing Fountain
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Pestle and Mortar

provinces, states, divisions of countries

Pset (MIT homework set)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 Student Simulator

PubMed (National Library of Medicine repository of papers)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Quaternary Structure

punch cards

MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 The Gibbous, Non-Euclidean Program

Punch Out!! (video game)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 He's Out

punctuation

MIT Mystery Hunt 2001 Crossword
MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Comma and a Freaking Dot
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Medusa's Lair

Punjabi language

MIT Mystery Hunt 2015 Benny Lava

puns

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

Purgatorio by Dante

See Dante's Purgatorio

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 in the Round

A round diagram has a circle in the middle and 4 rings divided into more spaces as you progress outward, with the outer ring numbered. Clue answers are entered radially at their numbers, but with the letters rearranged. You have to determine the order of the letters from the shared letters of nearby answers. Typically the outer ring spells a message.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2008 Pie in the Sky

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

$100,000 Pyramid

A long-running game show based on cluding words and categories to your partner.

MIT Mystery Hunt 1998 14.321 Pyramid Schemes

pyramid words

6-letter words that use one letter once, one letter twice, and one letter three times.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2005 The Food Pyramid
MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Wordplay

Python programming language

MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Space Modules
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 IO

QI (British game show)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2010 The Sarge Answers to General Ignorance event

QR code

MIT Mystery Hunt 2010 Queasy Reaction
MIT Mystery Hunt 2011 N-tris
MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 Snap Judgment
MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 ...fixes the wavy zigzag jumble
MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 Black and White
MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 Honey, I Shrunk the Hunt!
MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 Sports Radio
MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 Bark Ode
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Bingo
MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 How To Do Quality Reviews
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Scan

Quadrate (area in Mannheim, Germany)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Dampfwalze

“Quantum Leap” (TV show)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2003 Machine Room

quantum superposition

MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 Quantum Minesweeper
MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Quandle

quarks

MIT Mystery Hunt 2009 Invasion of the Micronauts

Queen Elizabeth's corgis

MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Family Tree

Questions (game)

MIT Mystery Hunt 1999 Charlotte Amalie

questions with two answers

MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 Who?

quilting

MIT Mystery Hunt 2011 Metrology
MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Uncharted Territory

quipu

Quipu was a native South American record keeping system in which numbers are recorded in a base-ten system using groups of knots in a string as the digits.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2015 Ropes

Quiz Bowl

MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 We Made a Quiz Bowl Packet but Somewhere Things Went Horribly Wrong
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 It's Not a Well Written Quizbowl Packet But...

Quora (web site)

Web site located at quora.com

MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 A Puzzle with the Answer NORWEGIAN WOOD

quotation puzzle

See dropquotes

quotations

MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 Endymion Meta
MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 Cabin Fever
MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 More Merry Wives: Beyond Windsor
MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 The Sound of Music
MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 No Shirt
MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 7 Little Dropquotes
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 High Noon Duel
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 The Show Must Go On

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)
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 A Process of Elimination

qwerty

See keyboard

QWOP

MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 The Prickly Pear

racetracks

MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Caressing

racing

MIT Mystery Hunt 2011 Mario Kart Event
MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Formula Deluxe

radio broadcasts (localized)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2004 Final Runaround
MIT Mystery Hunt 2008 Radio Waves
MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 Flee

Radiohead songs

MIT Mystery Hunt 2002 Body of Work

radio shows

MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Puzzle-Regarding Vehicle

radio stations

MIT Mystery Hunt 1997 Elvis Travels to Peace Talks as Delegate of Switzerland!
MIT Mystery Hunt 2003 Dictionary

rail fence cipher

The rail fence cipher, also called zigzag cipher, is a particular transposition cipher where a message is encoded by writing it in a zigzag pattern across the page, then reading the letters row by row.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Security Theater
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Deep Conspiracy

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 interlocking (switches and signals)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Our Fates are Interlocked

Railroad Tracks puzzle

See Railroad Crossing puzzle

rainbow

See colors of the rainbow

Rainbow Serpent

MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 Aborigine Dream Fragment

Srinivasa Ramanujan

MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 Cash Cab

Ramayana

An ancient Sanskrit epic, a key text of Hinduism

MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 To Numbers and Back Again

Ramsey numbers

MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Halting Problem

randomized elements

These puzzles feature elements which are randomized. In some cases understanding the randomization is part of solving the puzzle.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 50/50
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Do You Like Wordle?
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Triangles
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Mandalay Bay

John Ratzenberger characters

MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 Precipice

“The Raven” (Poe poem)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2001 Weird Poem

Razzie awards

MIT Mystery Hunt 2009 Warning: This Puzzle Contains Bad Language

"Real Housewives" (TV show)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 More Merry Wives: Beyond Windsor

Real Men of Genius (Bud Light ad campaign)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2011 Genius Test

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.

Red Dragon Inn board game

MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 A Pub Crawl

Red Light Green Light

A children's game in which players try to cross some distance while the person leading the game calls out or displays red light, requiring players to stop moving, or green light, lettign them move.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 The Runaround

redox reactions

Chemical reactions in which an element in one reactant is reduced, while an element in another reactant is oxidized. In this sense, "reduced" means the oxidation state or valence state is lowered, while "oxidized" means the oxidation state is increased. This type of reaction is associated with a transfer of electrons from the oxidized element to the reduced one.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Oil Prices

Redstone circuits

System for embedding logical circuits into Minecraft

MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Arts and Crafts

reduce, reuse, recycle

A tripartite slogan reminding us there are other ways to reduce waste besides recycling.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2010 Reduce, Recycle
MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 The Junk Pile

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!

Reese's Peanut Butter Cups

MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Fine Dining

Reese's Pieces

MIT Mystery Hunt 2007 Bloodbath at the Rainbow Room

regular expressions

Regular expressions are a technique for specifying a collection of strings using a syntax in which special characters allow matching any of certain characters or groups of characters. They were popularized by several Unix programs which allow you to find, select, and/or replace text using regular expressions.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 A Regular Crossword
MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Art of the game.such.fame!

rejection reasons

MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Folded Cards

remote solvers

MIT Mystery Hunt 2008 Nationwide Hunt
MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 Coming to a Location Near You
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Satellite Swing

Renaissance festivals

MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Welcome to the Festival

Renfield (game)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2001 It's a Bug-Eat-Bug World

repeated letters

repeated words

MIT Mystery Hunt 2015 Speak of the Devil Fruit

rescue and salvage ships

MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 The Captain

reserved words

Reserved words are the functional words of a programming language, which are "reserved" in the sense you cannot use them as names of variables or other objects.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Illiterate Programming

resin identification codes

Symbols commonly seen on plastic goods identifying them as one of seven broad classes of plastics: 1 PETE, 2 HDPE, 3 PVC, 4 LDPE, 5 PP, 6 PS, 7 other. The order was chosen based on perceived difficulty of recycling these varieties of plastics, with 1 being the easiest.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 The Junk Pile

resistor color code

MIT Mystery Hunt 2002 Resistance is Fuchsia
MIT Mystery Hunt 2005 Paint Store
MIT Mystery Hunt 2011 Da Vinci's Workshop Meta
MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 March Madness
MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Megamix
MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 I Came Across a Japanese Rose Garden
MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 Starship Enterprise
MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Ridin' Delhi
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 A Bit of Light
MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Restoration
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Inaugural Funky Stickperson Contest

The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

MIT Mystery Hunt 2010 IHOPE

restaurant menus

MIT Mystery Hunt 2003 The Price is Right
MIT Mystery Hunt 2011 Food for Thought
MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 The Cafe

restaurants

MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 I Left My Stomach in Salt Lake City
MIT Mystery Hunt 2015 Munchies
MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 The Cafe
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Planet Hollywood
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Too Tired to Travel

restricted solving

Any activity where teams are asked to solve a particular puzzle without use of some or all types of external references. This is done to make some puzzles possible which would otherwise be too easy.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 Eggsam

restrooms

MIT Mystery Hunt 2003 When Johnny Comes Marching Home

retrograde rebus chess puzzles

In these chess puzzles, each type of piece is represented by a different letter, and one side by caps and the other by lower case (rebus, in the chess world). Additionally, you must solve for which piece is which in such a way that the position could be reached in a legal game (retrograde).

MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Rretro Chess Puzzle

reuse@mit

MIT Mystery Hunt 1999 Prague
MIT Mystery Hunt 2010 Reduce, Recycle
MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 Building Challenge

reversals

words or phrases that are reversed by letter, sound, or word

MIT Mystery Hunt 1995 12: Screening Room
MIT Mystery Hunt 1999 Stuttgart
MIT Mystery Hunt 2008 Input/Output
MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 Stage Lines
MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 Get Your Dog Back...
MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 Crimes Against Cruciverbalism
MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 Zodiac Quest
MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Clued Connections
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Town Hall Meeting
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 MIT Confessions
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Analog Circuitry
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Attack of the Lobsters
MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 First Contact Lens
MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Endless Knots

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

Reversi

See Othello (game)

reviews of products

MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 One Starry Night

revolutions

MIT Mystery Hunt 2004 Lost in Translation

RGB color values

rhyme schemes

MIT Mystery Hunt 2009 Reflections on a Milky Steed Who's Quite Amphibious, Indeed
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 "Line, please."

rhyming words

rhythm games

Video games akin to Dance Dance Revolution in which you are expected to enter a sequence in sync with the timing of the icons on screen and, to some extent, with the beat of accompanying music.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Rhythm Game Arcade

ribbons (substitute military medals)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2004 Stripes

"Rick and Morty" (cartoon)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 Feedback Encounters of the CLD Kind

Rickroll

MIT Mystery Hunt 2009 The Elderly Gentleman Who Wants to Reverse the Polarity of the Neutron Flow
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Le Chiffre Indéchiffrable
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Pitch Black
MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Lost to Time

Ricochet Robots

MIT Mystery Hunt 2003 Bogots

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

rigged dice

MIT Mystery Hunt 2015 Game

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

ring sizes

MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Tree Ring Circus

Risk (game)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2010 Conquering the World
MIT Mystery Hunt 2015 Golden Tower Meta

rivalries

MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 The Trainer

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. The wolf, goat, and cabbage puzzle is one of the oldest known puzzles; copies of it have been traced back to the 9th century AD.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2009 Our Crew is Replaceable. Your Package Isn't.
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Text Adventure

rivers

MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Degeneration and Regeneration
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Charon

Roadkill Buffet

Improv show formerly held at MIT on Saturday night during Mystery Hunt.

MIT Mystery Hunt 1999 Monterey

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?

roadside attractions

MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 Roadside America

Julia Roberts

MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Rules of Order

robots

MIT Mystery Hunt 2009 Please Prove Your Humanity
MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 Stage Select
MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Just Desserts

Rock & Roll Hall of Fame

MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Proof by Induction

Rock Band (game)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2009 The Hiigara Dome
MIT Mystery Hunt 2011 Amateur Hour

rock climbing

MIT Mystery Hunt 2011 Rocky Horror
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Inaugural Funky Stickperson Contest

rocketry

MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 You Will Not Go to Space Today

rock, paper, anything

MIT Mystery Hunt 2007 One, Two, Three, Shoot!

rock, paper, scissors

MIT Mystery Hunt 2009 Genetic Struggle
MIT Mystery Hunt 2010 From the Earth to the Moon
MIT Mystery Hunt 2011 Zombies vs. Zombies Event
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Build-a-Wand Workshop

rock, paper, scissors, lizard, spock

Expansion of rock, paper, scissors made popular on Big Bang Theory

MIT Mystery Hunt 2015 The Acerbic Sixteen
MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Insider Trading

Rockstar programming language

MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Turing Tar-pit

Rocky Horror Picture Show

MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 At the Late Night Picture Show

Ginger Rogers

MIT Mystery Hunt 2009 Now is the Time on Kronos When We Dance

Roguelike games

Rogue was the original in a line of games which famously includes Moria, Nethack, Angband, and ADOM, among others. What these games have in common is an ASCII-art interface where each character represents a type of monster, object, wall, etc., and turn-based movement in 4 or 8 principal directions.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 Walk Across Some Dungeons
MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 Lost in Translation
MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 Walk Across Some Dungeons 2
MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Conjuri's Request
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Roguelikes with a K

role-playing games

MIT Mystery Hunt 2009 Character Test

roller coasters

MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 Please Remain Seated
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Drawing Board
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Cedar Gardens

rolling block maze

In a rolling block maze, a cube or other shape block rolls across a grid by rotating around one of its base edges repeatedly. Many variations are possible. Rolls may be restricted by having labeled sides and certain sides have to face up at certain points, or by using blocks of more than one cube with obstacles in the grid where the block cannot go.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 I'll Tumble 4 Ya

Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Songs of All Time

MIT Mystery Hunt 2005 Track 12

romance novels

MIT Mystery Hunt 2006 Literature's Other Half

Romanian language

MIT Mystery Hunt 2003 The Hall of Chess
MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Romance Languages

Roman mythology

MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 Wandering Stars
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Clusters
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Divine Intervention
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Mercury

Roman numerals

Romeo & Juliet

MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 "Line, please."

Roscolux lighting filters

MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 New Year's Town/Holi Town Meta

roses

MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Ornaments

ROT-13

MIT Mystery Hunt 2006 Spoiler Warning!
MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 Keeping Records
MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 Texts from Mom
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Analog Circuitry

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

rotated letters

MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 Directions in Writing
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Enter the Perpendicular Universe

rotator logic puzzle

See Spiral Galaxies puzzle

roulette

MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Sahara

round-robin tournament

MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Gone Guys

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.

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

RPS101

A version of rock-paper-scissors with 101 possible moves.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 5050 Matchups

RSA cipher

MIT Mystery Hunt 2004 Noise in the Air
MIT Mystery Hunt 2006 Ask Ye Silly Question...

RSA Factoring Challenge

MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Halting Problem

rubbings

MIT Mystery Hunt 1999 Phnom Penh
MIT Mystery Hunt 2002 Rubber Baron
MIT Mystery Hunt 2010 Graffiti

Rube Goldberg machines

MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 The Cat's Combobulation

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
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Puzzle with a Twist

Ruby programming language

MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 IO

rum

MIT Mystery Hunt 2004 Rums Booty Meta

Rummikub

MIT Mystery Hunt 2004 The Answer Fits the Puzzle

rumors Taylor Swift created various works

MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Deep Conspiracy

runarounds (and photo identification of MIT)

runes

See Futhorc

Rupaul's Drag Race

MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 Subservient Chicken vs. Tim the Beaver
MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 Your Rival
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Charisma

Rush Hour (sliding block puzzle)

Rush Hour is one of the classic sliding block puzzles.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Whale

Russian language

MIT Mystery Hunt 1996 5A
MIT Mystery Hunt 1999 Chihuahua
MIT Mystery Hunt 2004 Lost in Translation
MIT Mystery Hunt 2005 Lost in Translation
MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Symphony from the Old World
MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Linked Pairs
MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 Space Sounds TV
MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Split Seven Ways
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Old West Revue
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Le Chiffre Indéchiffrable
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 T (Counts) for Two

sabermetrics

Sabermetrics is the application of statistical analysis to baseball records in an attempt to better understand how to play and manage the game.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 Special OPS

SafeRide (MIT shuttle system)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2007 Guest List

saints

MIT Mystery Hunt 2003 Chapel
MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 O Blessed Day

Salt Lake City, UT

MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 I Left My Stomach in Salt Lake City

Salt-N-Pepa (hiphop group)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 The Salt-N-Pepa Diner

same title, different work

MIT Mystery Hunt 2000 Making Tracks
MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Something in Common

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

Sanskrit language

MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Delightful
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Old West Revue
MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 To Numbers and Back Again

Saturday Night Live

MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 Some Nutty Lines
MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Board Members

Scattergories

In Scattergories, you are asked to think of items that belong to various categories beginning with specific letters of the alphabet.

MIT Mystery Hunt 1997 The Big Bopper, Jim Croce, and Elvis Found Running a Pizza Hut in Beirut!

scavenger hunt

scholar's mate (chess game)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 Day 5 Meta

"School Song" (alphabet song from Matilda, the Musical)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Golden Wolf

Schubert's music

MIT Mystery Hunt 2009 Yoda Sings Schubert!

science fiction

MIT Mystery Hunt 2003 Second Game
MIT Mystery Hunt 2006 Just a Jump to the Left
MIT Mystery Hunt 2009 Round 3 Meta

scientific constants

MIT Mystery Hunt 2003 Whoa-I Know Dating

scientific formulas

MIT Mystery Hunt 2006 Fun with Formulae

scientific laws

MIT Mystery Hunt 2011 Unnatural Law

scientific names for organisms

This most commonly refers to Linnaean binomial nomenclature, the system by which every genus and species pair is chosen to be unique across all life. However, it can refer to any named applying to any level in the classification system. Traditionally, that system had seven levels: Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, and Species. In modern times, Domains or Empires have been proposed as supersets over the Kingdoms, and various sub- and super- variants inserted into the tree to account for branches in evolutionary development.

"Scooby Doo, Where are You!"

MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 Zoinks!

Scotland Yard (board game)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 Mr. Y Hunt

scouting

MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Badges, Badges, Badges
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 The Cubs Scout

Scoville scale

A measure of the hotness of hot peppers.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Cowboy Campfire

SCP Wiki

MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Foundation's Collection

Scrabble

Scrabblegrams

Messages that are 100 letters long, using exactly the distribution of letters from a Scrabble game (including free choice for the two blanks).

MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 The Times They had

Scrabble in other languages

MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 T (Counts) for Two

sculpture

MIT Mystery Hunt 2004 Interior Decorating
MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Art of the game.such.fame!

scytale

The scytale is a cipher where a narrow ribbon is wrapped around some cylindrical object and a message is written across the windings of the ribbon rather than along it. The right size cylinder (or a lot of patience) is required to decipher it.

MIT Mystery Hunt 1996 9B
MIT Mystery Hunt 2003 First Round Puzzle
MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 Mass Aid

seas

MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Vertexillonomy

Second Life

MIT Mystery Hunt 2009 Your So-Called Second Life

Secret Service codenames

MIT Mystery Hunt 2009 Robots in Disguise
MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 Jeopardy!
MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Protection Plan

security questions

These are the questions you can use to reset your password on many web sites, truthful answers to which are sometimes seen as a huge security flaw allowing people to specifically target you.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 Show Me the Proof

Seeking Syren (logic puzzle)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2010 Seeking ~~Syren~~ Scotchy

selfies

MIT Mystery Hunt 2015 Friendship
MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 Peter is the bomb!

self-modifying programs

MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 A Puzzle with the Answer RICE

Semantle

A guessing game (named a la Wordle) where you are given responses that indicate how semantically close your guess is to the answer.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Terminal
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Sumantle

semaphore

Senate

MIT Mystery Hunt 2007 Round VIII Meta (seating chart)
MIT Mystery Hunt 2011 The Higher They Climb, the Farther They Fall (seniority)
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 A More 6 ∪ 28 ∪ 496 ∪ …

Senior House entry names

MIT Mystery Hunt 2004 Reminder's World

sentence diagrams

MIT Mystery Hunt 2011 Part of Speech
MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 Schoolhouse Rock

sephiroth (tree of life)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2003 Biological Garden
MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 Safer Sephiroth

Sesame Street

MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Theater Pieces
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 New York's Seediest Street
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Julia and Friends
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Transylvanian Math

Set (card game)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2005 No Child Left Behind
MIT Mystery Hunt 2008 Trouble in Triplicate
MIT Mystery Hunt 2009 Alien Mixer event
MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 A Set of Words
MIT Mystery Hunt 2015 Shipwreck
MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Strange Garnets

sets

Settlers of Catan (game)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 Highlights
MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 Ye Olde Seventhe Duck Konunnndrum: The Cones of Duckshire
MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 Hexed Adventure
MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 The Desert

Dr. Seuss

MIT Mystery Hunt 2003 Guys'll Eat Ivy, Too (On Beyond Zebra)
MIT Mystery Hunt 2009 On Beyond Zyzzlvaria
MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 I’ll Teach You
MIT Mystery Hunt 2015 Chemistry Lab Meta

seven-colored torus

On a plane or sphere, the maximum number of colored needed to color a map so that no two regions sharing an edge are the same color is four. On a torus, it's 7, and you can make it work with just seven regions.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 A Rift in Hades

seven deadly sins

MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 A Divine Comeowdy

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

seven-segment displays

MIT Mystery Hunt 1998 7.270 Sustenance of Life
MIT Mystery Hunt 1998 4.123 Coloring Within the Lines
MIT Mystery Hunt 2003 Less Engineering, Dammit!
MIT Mystery Hunt 2005 Seven Days
MIT Mystery Hunt 2011 The Writing on the Wall
MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 Substitutes
MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Getting Digits
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Enter the Perpendicular Universe
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 A Bit of Light

sex-related terms

MIT Mystery Hunt 2015 Toasting the Bagel

sex toys

MIT Mystery Hunt 2011 Good Vibrations

Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band

A song by The Beatles, and the album containing it, which features a collage of various notable people on its cover.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 Rip Van Winkle Dream Fragment
MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Star Wars Cosplay

SHA-1 hashes

MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 A Puzzle with the Answer CRONIN
MIT Mystery Hunt 2015 The 10,000 Puzzle Pyramid
MIT Mystery Hunt 2015 Cryptochains

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!

Shakespeare

MIT Mystery Hunt 1995 15: Drawing Room
MIT Mystery Hunt 2000 The Play's the Thing
MIT Mystery Hunt 2001 Necromancy
MIT Mystery Hunt 2003 Don't Make Me Say This Twice
MIT Mystery Hunt 2004 The Old Man's Story
MIT Mystery Hunt 2006 Succeeding Men in Youth Do Count Things Rare (sonnets)
MIT Mystery Hunt 2007 Writing Nerds
MIT Mystery Hunt 2011 Stagecraft Man Meta
MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Dear Abby
MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 The Thrilling Thespians
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 "Line, please."

Shakespeare programming language

MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Turing Tar-pit

sharks

MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 The Captain

Shark Tank (TV show)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Snark Tank

George Bernard Shaw

MIT Mystery Hunt 2003 Squiggles

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

sheep breeds

MIT Mystery Hunt 2004 Construction

Allan Sherman

MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 My Son, The Science Fiction fan

shifting letters

(like Caesar ciphers or Vigenere, but with separate shifts provided for every letter)

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

ship names

MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 Another Puzzle with the Answer SULLIVAN
MIT Mystery Hunt 2015 Smiling Vessel
MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 Shoal Patrol
MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Fame is Fleeting

ships

MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Casino Royale

shoes

MIT Mystery Hunt 2008 The Last of Sheila
MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Trim Designs

shortened forms of words

MIT Mystery Hunt 2008 Hold Your Tongue

shortlex order

MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 Any Old Puzzle

Will Shortz

MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 May the Shortz Be With You
MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Sunday Dinner

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.

sidekicks

MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Second Helpings

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 2015 Polyglot

Sign Language

MIT Mystery Hunt 2004 Quagmire
MIT Mystery Hunt 2006 Louder than Words
MIT Mystery Hunt 2008 Manual Transmission
MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Projection Booth
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 The Venetian

silent letters

MIT Mystery Hunt 1995 28: Hall of Ancestors
MIT Mystery Hunt 2003 Round 1 Meta
MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Complaint Letter
MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 Whistle Training (Meta)
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 ERROR: PUZZLE DISABLED

similes

MIT Mystery Hunt 1997 Elvis' Siamese Cat Discovers Ionized Presleyium on the Moon!
MIT Mystery Hunt 2004 Collision in the Marketplace

Simmons Hall (MIT Building)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 Fun Sized

Simon Says

MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Directions Event

Simplified Chinese characters

MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Radical Rebuses

The Simpsons

MIT Mystery Hunt 2001 A Disturbing Universe
MIT Mystery Hunt 2009 Croctograms
MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Season Changes; No One Ages
MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 A Puzzle with the Answer SULLIVAN
MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 Repeated Punishment
MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Does Any Kid Still Do This Anymore?
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Deep, Deep Trouble

simulated computer

MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 Replication
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Marathon Block Pushing Game

"Single Ladies" (Beyonce song)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 How Far?

Singlish (Singaporean English creole)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 How Come This Crossword Got No Grid One?

SI prefixes

MIT Mystery Hunt 2011 Katamari Small Meta
MIT Mystery Hunt 2011 Katamari Medium Meta
MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 The Maniacal Merchants

sister cities

MIT Mystery Hunt 2011 Meta testing!
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Level One

sitcoms

MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 The Shunned, Cyclopean Postcards
MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Laugh

six flags over Texas

MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 The Castle

size of objects

MIT Mystery Hunt 1998 19.789 Color Theory
MIT Mystery Hunt 2011 Charitable Collection
MIT Mystery Hunt 2011 Katamari Supermeta
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Isle of Misfit Puzzles

SKI combinator calculus

MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 SKI Trees

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.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Ocean's Eleven Meta

ski trails

MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 SKI Trees
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Snow Job

Skulduggery Pleasant books

MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Unpleasant Characters

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
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Flamingo

Slalom puzzle

See Slant puzzle

slang

MIT Mystery Hunt 2015 Toasting the Bagel

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

Sleep No More

MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 The Other Scottish Play

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

slogans

MIT Mystery Hunt 2007 Negative Ad Campaign
MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 Initial Public Offering
MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 One Starry Night
MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 Corporate Chains
MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Furious Fellows

Slovak language

MIT Mystery Hunt 2005 Lost in Translation

Slovene language

MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 T (Counts) for Two

Slow-scan television (SSTV)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 Space Sounds TV

Small World (game)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 Highlights

John Smith

A common name

MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Orangutan

Smithy code

MIT Mystery Hunt 2007 Round V Meta

smooth numbers

N-smooth numbers are those with no prime factors greater than N

MIT Mystery Hunt 2015 p1ctures

Smoots

MIT Mystery Hunt 2005 From A to B
MIT Mystery Hunt 2008 Ecolocation
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Tall Tales

S-M-R-T smart meme

MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 So Smart

Smurfs

MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Toy Chest

snack foods

MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Dessert Party
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Snack Bar
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Product Placemat

snake criss-cross

A criss-cross puzzle with clues for the words. Rather than indicating where each clue's answer goes, as in a crossword puzzle, additional clues define words that fit in the grid as non-overlapping snakes on winding paths, using each letter in the grid in exactly one snake. In some instances of this puzzle you may have to find the snakes; in other cases their locations may be marked by heavy lines.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Crossword of the Ouroboros

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

Snake (video game)

Snake is a classic video game where you direct the head of a snake to eat food in marked locations within a grid. Each time the snake eats, it gets longer. When the snake runs into another part of its body, the game ends.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Slinking Slumber

Snapchat

MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 Snap Story

SNOMED medical codes

MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Operation

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs

MIT Mystery Hunt 2009 Downsized Plutonians

soap operas

MIT Mystery Hunt 1999 Warrant 3.2

soccer

MIT Mystery Hunt 2005 Three-Mile Debut
MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 Substitutes
MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 Worldwide Contacts
MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 Arts and Crafts
MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Letters from the Battlefield

So Clover (word-cluing game)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Field of Clovers

Soddy circles

Given three mutually tangent circles, there are two ways to add a fourth circle tangent to the other three. Soddy's theorem related the curvatures of the four circles.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 The Unambiguous Osculation

Steven Soderbergh

MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Diced Turkey Hash

soil types

MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Wolf

Sokoban game

MIT Mystery Hunt 2015 A Push in the Right Direction
MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Cure the Werewolf's Woe
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Marathon Block Pushing Game

Solitaire Dominoes

See domino puzzle

Solitaire (encryption algorithm from Cryptonomicon)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 Patience for the Bridge Builder
MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 Marked Deck

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

Solresol (musical conlang)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 The Sound of Music
MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Sea Bass

solution missing

The solutions for these puzzles are missing. Please contact the current Mystery Hunt team if you have the solution.

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

Stephen Sondheim

MIT Mystery Hunt 2002 A Tribute to Seth Bisen-Hersh
MIT Mystery Hunt 2010 Side by Side by Side
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Do I Hear a Waltz?

songs named for musicians

MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Recursion

songs with lists

The order of the items in the list may be important as an indexing or ordering mechanism in puzzles that use songs with lists.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2002 Cross Breeding
MIT Mystery Hunt 2005 Seven Days
MIT Mystery Hunt 2007 Unscrambled Cable Porn
MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Space Monkey Mafia
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Next House

Aaron Sorkin shows

MIT Mystery Hunt 2007 A Few Good Actors

Sorry! (board game)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Sorry Not Sorry

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)🔫

Soundex

Soundex is an algorithm for very loosely classifying words phonetically based on their initial letter and consonant pattern.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Sound X
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Family Tree

sounds

MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Noise Apparatus

“South Park”

MIT Mystery Hunt 2009 Nurse Charnel's Reports from the Sickbay of the U.S.S. Parkerstone

spacecraft

MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Permuted

space groups (crystallography)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2004 Ahuitzotl's Art Gallery

Space Jam

MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Basketball

space shuttle

MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Houston, We Have Liftoff
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Orbital Simulator

Spaceteam (app/game)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 DK8: The Turducken Konundrum (Turkey)
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 You Will Explode If You Stop Talking

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

spaghetti westerns

Italian-made films about the American West

MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Pass da Pasta

Spam Haiku Archive

MIT Mystery Hunt 2003 Cans and Donations Gratefully Accepted

Spanish language (Castilian)

The language most of the English-speaking world calls Spanish. Parts of the Spanish-speaking world do this too (Español), but it is also called Castellano (Castilian) to contrast it with other languages spoken in Spain.

MIT Mystery Hunt 1999 Chihuahua
MIT Mystery Hunt 2000 Isn't It Romantic?
MIT Mystery Hunt 2001 Xenophobia
MIT Mystery Hunt 2004 Lost in Translation
MIT Mystery Hunt 2005 Lost in Translation
MIT Mystery Hunt 2006 Buenos Aires Ante
MIT Mystery Hunt 2007 UN-Speakable
MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 Sounds Good to Me
MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Linked Pairs
MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 Crimes Against Cruciverbalism
MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 Self-Referential Mania
MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Romance Languages
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 An American in Paris
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Shade of Wealth
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Climbfinder
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 T (Counts) for Two
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Machines
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Fren Amis

Sparks (band)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 SparksNotes

spatial perception

MIT Mystery Hunt 2008 Let's Ask the Dead Guy
MIT Mystery Hunt 2008 In Other Words
MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 Death From Aslant

spectrograms

MIT Mystery Hunt 2006 White Noise
MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Drive-Thru Dilemma
MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Red Herring
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Paris

spectrum

See colors of the rainbow

speeches

MIT Mystery Hunt 2011 Part of Speech

speech recognition

MIT Mystery Hunt 1998 24.7 Word Recognition

speedruns

Attempts to complete various tasks in video games in the shortest possible time. Sometimes involves ignoring the main goal of the game and/or taking advantage of bugs.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Run the Gamut

spelling bee

MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 Believe

spelling bee losing words

The last word misspelled in a spelling bee. See also spelling bee.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Second-rate Tiles
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Befouled Spellings

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
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Befouled Spellings

spelling bee winning words

The last word spelled in a spelling bee. See also spelling bee.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2004 English Class
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Befouled Spellings

spelling out letters

Spelling out names of letters, like ay, bee, see.

MIT Mystery Hunt 1997 President Clinton: "I'd Like to Meet God, or, If I Could, Elvis!"

spelling out numbers

MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 1000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000001000000000000116

spelling songs

These are songs that spell out a word or phrase in the lyrics, like BINGO in the song about the dog.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 Orbits

spherical crossword

MIT Mystery Hunt 2011 Clues and Coordinates

spices

MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 11 Secret Herbs and Spices
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 McCormick Hall

Spicks and Specks (Australian quiz show)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 The Puzzle Keeps Turning Upside Down and We Can't Figure Out Why

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
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Body Language

Spiritfarer video game

MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Asphodel

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
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Split the Difference

spoilers

MIT Mystery Hunt 2006 Spoiler Warning!
MIT Mystery Hunt 2009 The Spoilers of War
MIT Mystery Hunt 2015 Escape from the Classroom

Spongmonkeys

A really annoying viral video of two "monkeys" singing.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 Time Suck

sponsor names in 10-250

MIT Mystery Hunt 1999 Christchurch

Spontaneanation with Paul F. Tompkins (podcast)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 Spontaneous Reactions

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
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Field of Clovers

Sporcle (trivia web site)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 Mentally Stimulating Diversion
MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Badges, Badges, Badges

sports

(see also specific sports: baseball, basketball, bowling, boxing, cricket, football, golf, soccer)

sports teams that moved

MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Moving Day

sports teams with the same names

MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Chairiot Races

spreadsheets

MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 The Excelerator
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Hey, Can You Give Me A Hand With This Puzzle?
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Machines

square dancing

MIT Mystery Hunt 2003 Barn
MIT Mystery Hunt 2006 Do Sa Do
MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Square Routes
MIT Mystery Hunt 2015 Lead Right
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Everybody Dance Now

Squaredle word game

MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Mausolea

squares (named road intersections)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Square Routes

squaring the circle

MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Pi Day Town/Bloomsday Town Meta

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

stages of grief

MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 The Maniacal Merchants

stalking

MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 Stalk Us Maybe

stamps (postage)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2004 Lost in Translation

Stanford University

MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Satellite Swing

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

Starbucks

MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Espresso Stand

StarCraft

MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 Course 7E
MIT Mystery Hunt 2015 Imba

Stardew Valley (video game)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Steam Library

starfish crossword

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

MIT Mystery Hunt 2015 Starfish

staring contest

MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Build-a-Wand Workshop

Star Trek (all series)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2004 Have You Been Here Before?
MIT Mystery Hunt 2008 Alien Species
MIT Mystery Hunt 2008 Son of the Realm of Unspeakable Chaos
MIT Mystery Hunt 2009 Round 5 Meta
MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Altered Transmissions
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Spacing Out

Star Wars

MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 I Stumbled Across a Recording
MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 May the Shortz Be With You
MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Star Wars Cosplay

Stata Center lockers

MIT Mystery Hunt 2010 Trance State

state abbreviations

MIT Mystery Hunt 1994 10
MIT Mystery Hunt 2007 Recounting Former Glories
MIT Mystery Hunt 2008 Input/Output
MIT Mystery Hunt 2010 Round 1 Meta
MIT Mystery Hunt 2015 Funny Shapes
MIT Mystery Hunt 2015 The 10,000 Puzzle Pyramid
MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 The Economist meta
MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 Message in a Bottle
MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Divine the Rule of Kings
MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Ada Twist, Scientist

state birds

MIT Mystery Hunt 2009 Calling You from My Cell

state flowers

Flowers designated by each state as their official flower

MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Return to Sender

state machines

MIT Mystery Hunt 2010 Nuptial Date Announced
MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 Blinkenlights
MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 Death From Aslant
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Magic Railway

state nicknames

MIT Mystery Hunt 2011 The Word
MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Clued Connections
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Could You Restate That?

state quarters

Starting in 1999 the United States mint issued a series of quarters with designs featuring each of the 50 states. These were followed by quarters for the District of Columbia and other non-state territories, and then the national parks.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2003 Financial Report
MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 The Economist meta
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 How to Quadruple Your Money in Hollywood

state superme court seals

MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Museum Rules

state trees

Official species or variety of tree for each US state

MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 X Marks the 🍎
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Cedar Gardens

statistics

MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Much Ado About Nothing

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

Steel alphabet (Mistborn)

An alphabet used to write inscriptions in the Mistborn series of novels by Brandon Sanderson

MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 I Write These Words in Stele

steganography

MIT Mystery Hunt 1998 8.137 Physics and Information Theory of the Vacuum
MIT Mystery Hunt 2004 Reminder's World
MIT Mystery Hunt 2006 Long Division
MIT Mystery Hunt 2010 Words Get in the Way
MIT Mystery Hunt 2011 The Crypt
MIT Mystery Hunt 2015 Read Between the Lines
MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Picture Book
MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 The Bill
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 best song ev-er!
MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Red Herring
MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Lost to Time

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

stock symbols

MIT Mystery Hunt 2001 Agoraphobia
MIT Mystery Hunt 2004 Islamic Pilgrimage Omura
MIT Mystery Hunt 2007 Round VII Meta
MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 Pirates of the Tyrrhenian
MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 Harsh Financial Scrutiny

stores

MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 IV GUYS

“The Straight Dope”

MIT Mystery Hunt 2000 Gearbox

Strava (cycling and running app)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 Swedish Strivers

streaming platforms

Internet-based providers of television and movie content

MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Peak TV

streetcars

MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 A Streetcar Named...

streets

MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 On the Road

stress patterns

MIT Mystery Hunt 2015 A Short Transmission

Strongbad e-mails

MIT Mystery Hunt 2004 The Property of Ones

Student Center elevator directories

MIT Mystery Hunt 2007 Success Stories

John Stump (satirical composer)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Cacophony

SubPar Parks

SubPar Parks is an instagram account created by Amber Share whih provides artful depictions of actual negative reviews people left of national parks.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Obelisks of Sorrel Mountain

subsequences

MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 1000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000001000000000000116

"Subterranean Homesick Blues" (Bob Dylan song)

1965 Bob Dylan song featured in a promotional film clip for a documentary film of Dylan's 1965 tour. The clip, which features Dylan flipping through cue cards with the song's lyrics, is sometimes considered the first music video.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Subplutonean IHTFP Blues

subway (the T or other cities' systems)

sudokube

There are two different puzzles which have been called sudokube. One of them is a Rubik's Cube type puzzle. The one which has appeared in Mystery Hunt is a sudoku puzzle played on a cube net with 4x4 cells on each face, in which the rings around the cube, each containing 4 cells on each of 4 faces, replace the usual rows and columns of the sudoku puzzle.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Flamingo

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:

suffixes

MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 Hang Ten

Sugar Rush racers

Characters from a fictional racing game Sugar Rush within the movies Wreck-it Ralph and Ralph Breaks the Internet

MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Von Schweetz's Big Question

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.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2015 Polyglot

Super Mario Maker 2

MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Super Mystery World

superposition

MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 Student Simulator

Super Smash Bros. Melee

The second video game in the Super Smash Bros. series of crossover fighting games featuring characters from various Nintendo franchises.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Dropypasta

supervocalics

See vowels, phrases containing all

Supreme Court cases

MIT Mystery Hunt 2006 Washington Meta

Supreme Court justices

MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Judges of the Underworld
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 A More 6 ∪ 28 ∪ 496 ∪ …

SureType keyboard

MIT Mystery Hunt 2011 Blackberry Man Meta

Survivor (reality TV show)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2003 Whoa-I Know Subtraction
MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 Worldwide Contacts
MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Lord of the Flies

Swahili language

MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 My Fun Bow

Swedish language

MIT Mystery Hunt 2003 The Hall of Chess
MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 Sounds Good to Me
MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 The Leaning Tower of Sheshach
MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Split Seven Ways
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 An American in Paris
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Fren Amis

Sweethearts conversation hearts

MIT Mystery Hunt 2010 It Takes Two

Taylor Swift

MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 Black and White
MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 Swifties
MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Starbucks Lover
MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Invisible
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Deep Conspiracy

swimming

MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 I'm Wet! I'm Hysterical and I'm Wet
MIT Mystery Hunt 2015 Sunken Treasure

swing dancing

MIT Mystery Hunt 2003 Ballroom

Switzerland

MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 Cruciform Heraldry
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 The Nauseator

Swype keyboard

Swype is a keyboard program for smartphones and tablets which lets you enter whole words by swiping your finger through all the letters on screen, using a word list and other techniques to guess which word was meant.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 Sneaky Fox

SyFy original movies

MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 The Most Dangerous Night

syllables

MIT Mystery Hunt 1994 8
MIT Mystery Hunt 2002 Tax Puzzle
MIT Mystery Hunt 2015 Cthulhu
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Relitasti
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 ⊥IWPE: Pistol (Event #4)🔫
MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Minor Details
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 A Radical Fishing Trip

syllogisms

MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 25th Annual Putnam County Debate Tournament

Sym-a-Pix

See Spiral Galaxies puzzle

symbols and abbreviations

MIT Mystery Hunt 1998 19.00s A Study of Contemporary Culture, Terminology, and the Symbolism of Post-Modernism in a Neo-Industrial Proto-Futuristic Paradigm

symmetry

MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Permuted
MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 A Curious INCIDENCE
MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Communicating with the Aliens

synonyms

syntax tree

MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 The Talking Tree

synthesizer (music)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Voltage-Controlled

syzygy

MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Twins

T9

See phonespell (2 = A,B,C)

Taboo (word game)

In the original form of this game, a cluer tries to convey a word to his or her teammates, in the style of Password, but in addition to not being allowed to use forms of or parts of the answer, there are five additional related words they are not allowed to use while cluing.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 ⊥IWPE: Pistol (Event #4)🔫

the Taco Bell $2 bill story

This is an old story, perhaps an urban legend, about a guy who got a free taco because the employees of a Taco Bell didn't know there was really such a thing as a $2 bill.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Pippi Långstrump/Pippi Longstocking

Tagalog language

MIT Mystery Hunt 2001 The Chimera
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 An American in Paris

taiko

A Japanese drumming art form

MIT Mystery Hunt 2015 Check Out This Sticked Asiatic Music

Takegaki

See fences puzzle

Takuzu

See Binairo

TaleSpin

MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Ms. Cunningham

Tamil language

MIT Mystery Hunt 2015 Benny Lava
MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 So Smart
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Old West Revue
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 An American in Paris

Tamil numerals

MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 Pictocryptolists

tangible objects given to teams

In most cases, these tangible objects will not be available to those solving old Hunts from the archives, though sometimes electronic reproductions of them are possible.

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.

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

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

tap code

Tap code is an unencrypted 5x5 cipher, typically with C & K combined, rather than I & J or U & V, as is common in other such ciphers.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Magic: The Tappening
MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Drive-Thru Dilemma
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 This Space Intentionally Left... Well, You Know

tarot cards

Most often, this refers to the Major Arcana, 22 uniquely named, numbered cards which represented a trump suit in the game this deck was originally designed for. But the suits and ranks of the non-trump cards are also sometimes used.

MIT Mystery Hunt 1999 Taipei
MIT Mystery Hunt 2001 Runaround
MIT Mystery Hunt 2003 Dealing With Change
MIT Mystery Hunt 2005 Rite Awaits Myth
MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 Quest for the Truth
MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 The Treehouse of Crossed Destinies
MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Anima Oratorio
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Heart of the Cards
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Homemade Photography
MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Diced Turkey Hash

Taskmaster

A British game show also known for a board game version, in which contestants/players compete in a series of bizarre tasks, sometimes judged in equally odd ways.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Do You Measure Up?

tatting

Making lace

MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Encore

tattoos

MIT Mystery Hunt 2005 Skin Grafts
MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 Missing the Mark

tcpdump

MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 Trips

tea

MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Common Flavors
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Green Tee

Teamfight Tactics (video game)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Composing Compositions

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.

The Tech

MIT Mystery Hunt 2002 Drive-Time Shift
MIT Mystery Hunt 2008 Propaganda
MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 Good Auspicious Hunting
MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Get Smart (Meta)
MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 Cross-Pollination
MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Fake Estate

Technical Machines (TMs, from Pokémon)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 The Advertiser

Technique (MIT Yearbook)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 Stalk Us Maybe

tectonic plates

MIT Mystery Hunt 2008 At Sea

TED talks

TED is a popular conference whose presentations, called TED Talks, are widely viewed on YouTube. They also publish other videos on YouTube, such as TED-Ed on various educational topics.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 Basic Phrenology
MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Haunted

telephone calls

MIT Mystery Hunt 1995 39: Ballroom (Meta)
MIT Mystery Hunt 1996 Endgame
MIT Mystery Hunt 1997 "I Don't Control Ledgers," Accountant Says. "Elvis Does it for Me!"
MIT Mystery Hunt 2000 Overanalysis
MIT Mystery Hunt 2000 Mothers Know Best
MIT Mystery Hunt 2001 The Alchemist's Workshop
MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Phone Tag
MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Getting Digits
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Concierge Services

telephone exchange words (like 55 = Klondike)

(see also phonespell)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2004 Fair Trade
MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 Phantom of the Operator Meta

Telephone (game)

Telephone is a traditional game in which one person tells a secret to another, and that person repeats it to a third person, and so on. The final person reveals what they were told and the players find humor in how the message mutated in retelling.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Shoephone Construction
MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 The Runaround

television networks

MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Battle of the Network Stars

Television Without Pity web site

MIT Mystery Hunt 2005 Sparing the Snark

Telugu language

MIT Mystery Hunt 2015 Benny Lava
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Old West Revue

Tengwar numerals

MIT Mystery Hunt 2006 Numeracy

Tentai Show

See Spiral Galaxies puzzle

ten thousand puzzles

So many minipuzzles that you have to program solutions to the individual puzzles

MIT Mystery Hunt 2015 The 10,000 Puzzle Pyramid
MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 The 10,000 Puzzle Tesseract
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 The 10,000 Commit Git Repository

tents logic puzzle

In this logic puzzle, you are given a grid with trees in some cells and numbers for each row and column. You are to place tents in the grid so that one tent can be associated with each tree it is orthogonally adjacent to, and the number of tents in each row and column matches the clue number. Tents may be adjacent to other trees besides the one they are associated with. Tents may not touch other tents, even diagonally.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Hall of Archaeology

ternary cipher

Terraria (video game)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Steam Library

test solving

MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Quality Assurance

TETCBN (answer appears as part of puzzle)

In the National Puzzlers' League, the phrase The Error That Cannot be Named is used in errata to say that the answer, or part of the answer, appears in the puzzle, without giving away what that answer is. In the Mystery Hunt this technique is used on purpose once in a while.

Tetracross puzzle

A tetracross is a crossword puzzle which, like the jumping crossword, skips over some squares. In this case, the skipped squares form tetrominoes.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 Triptychs

tetragrammaton appears in puzzle

MIT Mystery Hunt 2004 The Lame Puzzle

Tetris

MIT Mystery Hunt 1998 4.4444 Structures
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Green Building
MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Nowhere To Hide
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Roguelikes with a K

Tetris variations

MIT Mystery Hunt 1997 Elvis Nabbed After Scaling Round Sphere Atop Green Building!
MIT Mystery Hunt 2006 Pentris
MIT Mystery Hunt 2011 N-tris
MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 Falling Into Place

tetrominos

MIT Mystery Hunt 2009 Growth Involves Reconstructing Legos
MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 Triptychs

Texas Hold 'Em

MIT Mystery Hunt 2005 Dogs Playing Poker
MIT Mystery Hunt 2008 Bad Beat Jackpot

text adventures

textbooks

MIT Mystery Hunt 2011 Basic Knowledge

texting

MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 ✏️✉️➡️3️⃣5️⃣1️⃣➖6️⃣6️⃣6️⃣➖6️⃣6️⃣5️⃣5️⃣
MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Crow Facts 3000

text messages

Those short messages teenagers send each other constantly on their phones.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 Crow Facts

Thai alphabet

MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Now I Know

Thai language

MIT Mystery Hunt 1996 5A
MIT Mystery Hunt 2001 The Chimera
MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Symphony from the Old World
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Old West Revue
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 An American in Paris
MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Now I Know

Thai numerals

MIT Mystery Hunt 2006 Numeracy
MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 Pictocryptolists
MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Once is Happenstance

The Happy Squirrel (tarot card introduced by The Simpsons)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 The Treehouse of Crossed Destinies

"The Incredible Giraffe Puzzle"

This refers to a YouTube video of a two-piece jigsaw puzzle.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 MacGregor House

The Joy of... books

MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 Joy

The Meaning of Liff

MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 The Universs and Everythinn

Thermo Fisher white powders library

MIT Mystery Hunt 2011 Powder Monkey

Thermometers (logic puzzle)

In the standard form of this puzzle, a grid is provided filled with thermometer shapes (ovals which lie within a single row or column, with a bulb at one end). Shade in some cells, but within each thermometer, only a connected group starting at the bulb, so that the number of shaded cells in each row and column matches the clues outside the grid.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 Blackout

They Might Be Giants

MIT Mystery Hunt 2011 Study Materials
MIT Mystery Hunt 2015 Nina

things shaped like letters

MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 The Alphabet Book

"This is Just to Say" (William Carlos Williams poem)

A poem about plums with short lines

MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Fruit Around

Threadless T-shirts

MIT Mystery Hunt 2008 No Strings Attached

three letter acronyms

MIT Mystery Hunt 2009 The Satellite of Love
MIT Mystery Hunt 2015 The Last Airbender
MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 1, 2, 3
MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Travelogue

three-named people

MIT Mystery Hunt 2015 Three's the Charm

THX 1138

MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Hyena

Tibetan numerals

MIT Mystery Hunt 2006 Numeracy
MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Diced Turkey Hash

Tichu

MIT Mystery Hunt 2008 That'll Tichu to Mess with Us
MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 I’ll Teach You

Ticket To Ride game

MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 Toll Bridges
MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Ridin' Delhi

tic tac toe

MIT Mystery Hunt 2008 The Dungeon
MIT Mystery Hunt 2010 Exotic Tactics
MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Blue Ox
MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 Stage Select
MIT Mystery Hunt 2015 Pod of Dolphins Meta
MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 The Woeful Warlord

tiddlywinks

The classic game of launching small discs through the air by pressing them with another disc and dragging it until it moves off the disc.

MIT Mystery Hunt 1982 Subclue #9

tilt mazes

The standard type of this puzzle is a mechanical puzzle where you have to maneuver a ball through a maze, trying to get it from a starting point to a goal, without falling through any of the other holes in the maze. You can only manipulate the ball by tilting the entire maze, using gravity to move the ball.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2006 Grid with a Hole in the Middle
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Toddler Tilt

time-sequence puzzles

(putting pictures in chronological order based on clues in the pictures)

MIT Mystery Hunt 1997 Elvis Nabbed After Scaling Round Sphere Atop Green Building!
MIT Mystery Hunt 2003 Cubicle
MIT Mystery Hunt 2008 World of Comics
MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Time Conundrum
MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Ex Post Facto
MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Around the World in 1 Day
MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 My Cup Runneth Over
MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Lojicomix
MIT Mystery Hunt 2015 Wait, What Did You Say?
MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 Hamiltonian Path

time travel

MIT Mystery Hunt 2006 Just a Jump to the Left
MIT Mystery Hunt 2011 The Writing on the Wall (various)
MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Time Conundrum
MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 The Revenge of Yuki Nagato Episode 00
MIT Mystery Hunt 2015 Nautilus's Duplicated Quest
MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 5D Barred Diagramless with Multiverse Time Travel

time-varying puzzles

(when you reload the puzzle later you get something different)

time zones

MIT Mystery Hunt 2007 Atlas Shrugged
MIT Mystery Hunt 2009 Timecop
MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Travels with Charlie
MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Around the World in 1 Day
MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Clockwork Oran.ge
MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 Worldwide Contacts
MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Travelogue
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Where on Earth Is Carmen Suntigre?

Tinder (app)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 Just Keep Swiping

tire tread patterns

MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Too Tired to Travel

title questions

MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Questionable Answers

Tocharian A language

MIT Mystery Hunt 2001 The Chimera

Tohu wa Vohu

See Binairo

toki pona (conlang)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 Sounds Good to Me

Tom Swifties

A Tom Swiftie is a pun involving a quotation from a character usually named Tom, which is followed by a dialogue tag of the form Tom said ___ly. The pun is that the adverb chosen is appropriate in some way to the message he said.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2010 Chatterbox
MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 Swifties

tongue twisters

MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 Gibberish and More Gibberish

Tony Awards

MIT Mystery Hunt 2011 Where's Antoinette?
MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 Award-Winning Poetry

Too Many Cooks (Adult Swim short)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Spoiler Alert

Top Chef (TV cooking competition)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Luxor

"Top Gear" (TV show)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 How Hard Can It Be?

topology

MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 CrossWord Complex
MIT Mystery Hunt 2015 Say Cheese and Dive!
MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 Blocks and Blocks

toponyms (words derived from place names)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 Trail Goods
MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 Irritating Places

toppling dominoes

MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 Recover the Sci-Fi Core Memory
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Domino Maze

"_ to the _" phrases

MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Under Pressure

Touch Tone dialing tones (DTMF)

MIT Mystery Hunt 1998 6.551J/HST.714J DEF TUV TUV OPER OPER
MIT Mystery Hunt 2004 Rant
MIT Mystery Hunt 2009 Calling You from My Cell
MIT Mystery Hunt 2011 Redundant Obsolescence
MIT Mystery Hunt 2011 Making the Possible Impossible

tower defense game

MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Snow Day

Tower of Hanoi

The Tower of Hanoi is a classic puzzle with a set of disks of different sizes and 3 posts on which to place the disks. In the standard form of this puzzle, you are asked to move the entire stack from one post to another, but you can only move one disk at a time, and you can never place a bigger disk on top of a smaller disk.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2001 Eschatology
MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 Towers
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Text Adventure

trademarks

MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 Trubled Monicas

trail blaze symbols

Painted markings used to help hikers follow trails

MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Obelisks of Sorrel Mountain

train lines (rail)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 Getting There is Half the Fun
MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Our Fates are Interlocked
MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Safety Training

TransAmerica game

MIT Mystery Hunt 2008 Train Station

Transcendental Algebra

Writing system and book of the same title about it created by Jakob Linzbach.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Transcendental Algebra

transdeletions and transadditions

A transdeletion is a combination of deletion and anagram, deleting one letter from a word and rearranging the rest to spell another word. A transaddition is the opposite operation.

This is a flat type in the NPL, typically using a sequence of 4 parts related by transdeletions.

The laddergram is a puzzle based on transdeletion chains of 3 words.

Transformers

Toy line with cartoon series and movies depicting the robots who transform into vehicles and some other things.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Altered Beasts
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Toy Chest

transliteration into different writing system

MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 Sounds Good to Me

transpograms

A flat type in the NPL in which some portion of the beginning of a word is moved to the end to make a new word, without otherwise changing the order of any of the letters, as in Tesla, slate. A more specific variant of this form of wordplay is Verlan.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 The Junk Pile
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Take Two
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 The Venetian
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Under Pressure
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Crossword of the Ouroboros

transposition cipher

This is any kind of cipher where the identities of the letters remain intact, but they are arranged into a different order. There are many names for specific variations of this cipher, but a typical case is for a text to be split into a number of equal rows, then read down the columns.

MIT Mystery Hunt 1994 25
MIT Mystery Hunt 1996 The Impossible Tribar
MIT Mystery Hunt 1996 Escher Meta
MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Security Theater
MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 Great Tits!

traveling salesman problem

MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Phone Tag

treaties

MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Human Cannonball

tree numbers

MIT Mystery Hunt 2002 Nature Walk

tree of life (cabbala)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2003 Biological Garden

trees

MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Valentine's Day Town/Arbor Day Town Meta
MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 X Marks the 🍎

triangle centers

MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 X Marks the Spot
MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 4D Geo

triangulation

MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Endgame

Tribond

The object of Tribond is to determine the common bond between three given things. For example, if the clues were crossword, jigsaw, and sudoku, the answer would be puzzle.

MIT Mystery Hunt 1997 Elvis a Trojan? "I Tortured Him Myself," Says 4000-Year-Old Spartan!

trigonometry

MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Solve for Ewe
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Aphrodite's Plutonic Affection Connection

trigrams

Groups of three letters. For a specific puzzle type which uses trigrams, see anaquote.

trios

MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Three Really Good Boys

trivia

Trivial Pursuit game

MIT Mystery Hunt 2002 D2: The Mighty Duck Konundrum
MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 Trivia
MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Holi Town/Pi Day Town Meta

trochees

MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Trochees, Etc.

troll quotes

Troll quotes are a meme in which a popular quote from a character in a movie is attributed to a different character, often presented with imagery from a third character, trying to incite reactions from members of one or more of the fandoms involved.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Don't Feed the Trolls

trolls

MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 So You Think You Can Count?

tropical geometry

The study of polynomials and their geometric properties when addition is replaced by minimization and multiplication is replaced by addition.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 The Farm

Tunic game

MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Direct Translation

Tupper's self-referential formula

MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Graph It

Turing machines

MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Halting Problem
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Machines

Turing Prize

MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Pippi Långstrump/Pippi Longstocking

turkeys pardoned by the U.S. President

MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Thanksgiving Town/President's Day Town Meta

Turkish language

MIT Mystery Hunt 1982 Subclue #13
MIT Mystery Hunt 2003 The Hall of Chess
MIT Mystery Hunt 2005 Lost in Translation

turtle graphics

See Logo (programming language)

Tuva or Bust! (Book about Richard Feynman)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Tuva or Bust

TV shows

(see also cartoons)

TV themes

MIT Mystery Hunt 2002 Variations on a Theme
MIT Mystery Hunt 2005 More Variations on a Theme
MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 Name that Show Tune
MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 Before and After Mash

TV Tropes

Web site originally devoted to repeated concepts across various TV programs, now extended to film, books, music, video games, and other media. Infamous for trapping people into reading page after page after hundreds more pages because they find it so interesting following the links. Many Mystery Hunt puzzles relate to a trope which can be found on the site; this keyword is only for puzzles that involve multiple tropes where the site might be used as areference for just what a trope is.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2010 Stick Man
MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Will Ruin Your Life [I'm Feeling Lucky]
MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Repetition and Variation

tweets

See Twitter messages

“The Twelve Days of Christmas”

MIT Mystery Hunt 2000 You'll Understand
MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 Tea Party Meta
MIT Mystery Hunt 2015 Twelve Grids of Pictures

Twilight Struggle (board game)

A Cold War-themed board game

MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Business Cards
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Modern Architecture

twin cities

See sister cities

twin primes

Pairs of prime numbers which differ by 2. It is unknown whether there are infinitely many such pairs (the famous twin primes conjecture).

MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Lists of Large Integers

Twister game

MIT Mystery Hunt 2003 Runaround

Twitch

Twitch is a web site that lets you broadcast your play of a video game.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2015 A Push in the Right Direction
MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 Twitch Plays Mystery Hunt
MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 Under Control
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 ⊥IWPE: Sailing (Event #1)

Twitter messages

MIT Mystery Hunt 2009 I'm Feeling a Little TwitterPetted
MIT Mystery Hunt 2011 Song of Birds
MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Travels with Charlie (imitation)
MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Straight from the Horse's Mouth
MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 The Puzzle Your Puzzle Could Smell Like
MIT Mystery Hunt 2015 Back on the Move
MIT Mystery Hunt 2015 Hash
MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Crow Facts 3000
MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 People Watching

two-hit wonders

MIT Mystery Hunt 2011 One More Try

"The Tyger" (poem)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Safari Adventure

typing

MIT Mystery Hunt 2011 Keyboard Cat
MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 Eight Digits
MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 JFK SHAGS A SAD SLIM LASS

UbbiDubbi

A language game in which spoken English words are made hard to understand by inserting "ub" phonetically before each vowel sound.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Drive-Thru Dilemma

Ubuntu Linux

MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 Executive Relationship Commandments

udoku

This variant of sudoku has regions smaller than the number of rows and columns. Regions may not contain repeated digits, but they will be missing a digit, thus compromising the "hidden singles" solving strategy.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2010 Mystery Hunt Puzzle 3000

Undertale

MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 Puzzle Extravaganza

UNESCO World Heritage Sites

MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 Only Carmen Sandiego Explores Nigh Unstoppably

Unicode

MIT Mystery Hunt 2003 Standard Excuses
MIT Mystery Hunt 2010 Words Get in the Way
MIT Mystery Hunt 2011 Squared Key
MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 Encoded
MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 Watson 2.0 Meta
MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 This Page Intentionally Left Blank
MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 I CAN'T SPELL YOU
MIT Mystery Hunt 2015 Takeout Ordering
MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 Unimaginably Twisted Files
MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 Dispatches from the Foreign Service Units
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Le Chiffre Indéchiffrable

unistems

A unistem is a string of letters which can have exactly one letter added to it to allow the group to be anagrammed into a new word (from a given word list).

MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 The 10,000 Puzzle Tesseract

units of measure

MIT Mystery Hunt 1997 Two MIT Students Claim Elvis Was Their 6.001 TA!
MIT Mystery Hunt 2003 Mixed Drink
MIT Mystery Hunt 2008 In Other Words
MIT Mystery Hunt 2009 The Intergalactic Sanitarium Unit
MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 The Measure of All Things
MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 The Contest
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 The Trebuchet
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Ms. Cunningham
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Tall Tales
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Squee Squee
MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Crow Facts 3000
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Machines

universities

MIT Mystery Hunt 1996 9C
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Itineratum de Urbes Universum

university mottos

MIT Mystery Hunt 2004 Truth
MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 Wisdom is Eternal
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Itineratum de Urbes Universum

university seals (crests)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Itineratum de Urbes Universum

Unix commands

MIT Mystery Hunt 1996 Endgame
MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 Makefiles
MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 Executive Relationship Commandments

Unix services

MIT Mystery Hunt 2006 At Your Service
MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Call and Response
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 IO

Unix timestamps

MIT Mystery Hunt 2003 Whoa-I Know Dating
MIT Mystery Hunt 2011 Another Small Collection of Immense Integers
MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 Trips
MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 To Numbers and Back Again

unmanageably many/huge puzzles

MIT Mystery Hunt 2008 The World's Tallest Cryptic
MIT Mystery Hunt 2015 The 10,000 Puzzle Pyramid
MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 Replication
MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 World's Longest Diagramless
MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 The 10,000 Puzzle Tesseract
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Infinite Corridor Simulator
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Infinite Corridor
MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 World's Largest Logic Puzzle
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Infinity Book

unpowered record player

MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 The Duchess

Untappd (beer tracking app)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 A Pub Crawl
MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Badges, Badges, Badges

UPC barcodes

MIT Mystery Hunt 1999 Stuttgart
MIT Mystery Hunt 2005 Bars of Soap
MIT Mystery Hunt 2008 Checkout Lines
MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Numbers

upsets

An upset in sports is when a player or team considered far worse or less likely to win actually wins a sports event.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 Mad Dogs

upside-down calculator letters

MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Calculated Whisk

Urdu language

MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Le Chiffre Indéchiffrable

urine samples

MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 You Know What's Missing

URL manipulation/guessing

MIT Mystery Hunt 2015 p1ctures

USDA beef grades

MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Appease the Minotaur

US states order of entry

MIT Mystery Hunt 2010 Master of the World

UTF-8 overlong sequences

MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 Unimaginably Twisted Files

valley words

Valley words have letters in reverse alphabetical order up to a point, then in alphabetical order for the rest of the word.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Wordplay

Vampire: The Eternal Struggle

MIT Mystery Hunt 2011 The Eternal Struggle

variogram forms

See 1, 2, 3 crossword

vaulting (gymnastics)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 A Puzzle with the Answer CAN'T BUY ME LOVE

vector norm

MIT Mystery Hunt 2005 Bars of Soap
MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 Guess What I'm Thinking

Vegas Showdown (game)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 Highlights

vending machines

MIT Mystery Hunt 2006 Head of Sales

Venice Connection game

MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Strange Garnets

Venn diagrams

MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 Venntersections
MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 Honey, I Shrunk the Hunt!
MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 Vennder Bender
MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Things
MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Common Flavors
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Hat Venn-dor
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Circles
MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Minor Details
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Circus Circus
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Spacing Out

"verbing name" movie titles

MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 A Lot of F***ing Movies

Verlan

Verlan is a French slang word referring to two words or two syllables which have those syllables swapped, based on performing this alteration to l'envers, French for "the reverse". An English example is lurker, curler. This is comparable to a phonetic transpogram but with the additional specification of the split beign based on syllables.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Split the Difference

vertical anaquote

This variation on the anaquote uses trigrams printed vertically to spell out a message which is broken onto three equal-length lines.

MIT Mystery Hunt 1998 19.2352 Web Word Puzzles
MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Chowing Down

The Very Hungry Caterpillar

MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Fruit Around

vice presidents

MIT Mystery Hunt 1997 Says Ross Perot: "I Can't Believe Elvis Snubbed Me!"
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 A More 6 ∪ 28 ∪ 496 ∪ …

video games

vi editor

views of a solid object

These are the 2-dimensional forms that appear when you view a solid object from different sides. It may be based on the overall shape of the object, or on markings on or inside the object.

MIT Mystery Hunt 1996 4B
MIT Mystery Hunt 2004 Janus
MIT Mystery Hunt 2005 Easy as ABC
MIT Mystery Hunt 2009 Bad Eggs
MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 Roller Coaster
MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 Some Assembly Required (SAR)
MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Twisty Passages
MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Invisible Walls
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 The Dollhouse Tour
MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Some Assembly Required

Vigenère cipher

Viking River Cruises

MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 Epic Raft Battles of History

Vikings

MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 Epic Raft Battles of History

villains

MIT Mystery Hunt 2009 Cheat Codes

Vim text editor

A descendant of the vi text editor

MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 A Good Walk Spoiled

viral videos

MIT Mystery Hunt 2009 The Elderly Gentleman Who Wants to Reverse the Polarity of the Neutron Flow
MIT Mystery Hunt 2010 Dr Ox's Experiment
MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 Any Old Puzzle
MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Safety Training

viruses

MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 A Trip to the Museum

“The Vitruvian Man”

MIT Mystery Hunt 2009 A Message in Space

Vocaloids

Voice synthesizers created by Yamaha, intended for singing. Several different voices, including ones designed for different langauges, are available.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 The Tower of Eye

voice actors

MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 You Should Be Listening
MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 The Circle of Life
MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 See Spot Run

voiced and unvoiced consonants

MIT Mystery Hunt 2015 Spotted Tower Meta
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 The Horse Whisperer

Voo Doo (MIT humor magazine)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 Bloodroots

voting systems

MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 Voter Fraud

vowel/consonant pattern

MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 Behave
MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 Venntersections
MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 Lost Skull
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Nutraumatic
MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Star Wars Cosplay
MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Crow Facts 3000
MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Communicating with the Aliens

vowelless puzzles

MIT Mystery Hunt 1998 19.001 Vwlss Pzzl

vowels, phrases containing all

MIT Mystery Hunt 2009 Round 7 Meta
MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 Behave
MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 Venntersections

Voyager Golden Record

the golden records sent into space aboard the Voyager spacecraft

MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Golden Images

Wacky Packages trading cards

MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 Collect Them All

wacky wordies

Wacky Wordies are an old Games Magazine feature. Words or phrases are clued in which part of the answer suggests a way to write letters, and the remaining part of the answer is written in this way. It is possible that those letters are written in two or more groups whose relationship is indicated by the unwritten words. For example:

STAND
I

represents "I understand."

MIT Mystery Hunt 1998 9.ZZZ Abstract Dream Analysis
MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 The Obligatory Wordsearch
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Rebus

Waffle House

MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Breakfast Menu

Waiting for Godot

MIT Mystery Hunt 2000 An Exercise in Futility

“Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me” (NPR show)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2008 No Police Record

walks on the moon

MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Small Steps

walkthrough

MIT Mystery Hunt 2011 Walkthrough
MIT Mystery Hunt 2015 Escape from the Classroom

Wally Wood's 22 Panels that Always Work

MIT Mystery Hunt 2010 100% Reliable

war (card game)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Casino Lobdell
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Final Runaround

Washington Nationals presidents race

An event at Washington Nationals home baseball games.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Notes from the Campaign Trail

Watchmen by Alan Moore

MIT Mystery Hunt 2008 The More the Merrier

water

MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 A Radical Fishing Trip

Waterfall puzzle

This word puzzle has several sets of clues. In each set, the first clue is complete. Each successive clue has blanks for missing letters which are filled in by the letters of the answer to the previous clue, in order. A grid is provided to enter the words in each set in a single column. A few unspecified rows will spell out other answers.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Trickster Tales

wealthy fictional characters

MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Thank You to Our Sponsors

weapons

MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 790.06 Crossword Puzzles and Other Word Games

weaving

MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Weaver

Webby awards speeches

MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 Don't Cross an Alpha Bitch!

web site icons

MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Endless Practice

web tricks

These puzzles use technological tricks generally to hide information. Text may be printed the same color as the background, or key information is only available through page element names, source code comments, file metadata, HTTP headers, and the like.

weird laws

MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Museum Rules

Welcome to Night Vale podcast

MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 Worrying Ziggurats

“Well-Tempered Clavier”

MIT Mystery Hunt 2002 Go Bye-Bye, Whinging Muchacha!

Welsh language

MIT Mystery Hunt 2001 The Chimera
MIT Mystery Hunt 2005 Lost in Translation

West Coast Swing Dancing

MIT Mystery Hunt 2003 Ballroom

Westminster Kennel Club

MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 Ribbons (Meta)

“The West Wing” (TV show)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2004 Wire Stories

what3words

What3words is a web site which offers a geographic coordinate system based on three words taken from a large set of common words. This system maps the earth down to the level of 3 meter squares.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 Words Search
MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 location.location.location
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 World Search
MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Art of the game.such.fame!
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Follow the Directions

what comes next

MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 Fear

"What Does the Fox Say?" (Ylvis song)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 Horse Code

what is it?

MIT Mystery Hunt 2000 Winds of Confusion
MIT Mystery Hunt 2001 Subterranean
MIT Mystery Hunt 2009 Downsized Plutonians
MIT Mystery Hunt 2009 Invasion of the Micronauts
MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 Potlines
MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 This Page Intentionally Left Blank
MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Circuitboard

Wheel of Fortune

This puzzle type is named for the game show, and is based on the idea of being able to guess some puzzles immediately, with no letters in it, based only on the lengths of the words and the punctuation provided. Various kinds of clues may accompany the blanked-out messages.

"Wheel of Fortune" (game show)

The game show Pat Sajak and Vanna White are famous for, which has run for decades. It's basically multi-player hangman for money and prizes. See also Wheel of Fortune for the related puzzle type.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 It's So Obvious!

Wheel of Time (Robert Jordan series)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2003 Breezeway

Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?

MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Watch Your Back

where is black cells?

See kuromasu

Where's Waldo

MIT Mystery Hunt 2008 Dossier 6 Meta

whirlwind puzzle

This puzzle is similar to Marching Bands with clues for words in each row and clues for words that go around the grid, but instead of forming separate bands, there are two spirals, one reading inward and one reading outward.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2008 At the Beach
MIT Mystery Hunt 2015 Dr. Nautilus's Secret Notes (one-spiral variant)

whiskey

MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Rusty Nail Saloon

Whitman coin folders

These are a common series of coin holders for collectors trying to collect every year and mint mark variety of a particular coin.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Wishing Fountain

"Who's on First"

Abbott and Costello comedy routine based on a baseball team whose names are all question words like Who and What, causing attempts to query the names of the players to be misinterpreted as statements and attempts to state the names of the players to be misinterpreted as questions.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 A Routine Cryptic

Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?

MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 15 Questions

Wie Is De Mol? (Dutch reality show)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Trust Nobody

Wikipedia

MIT Mystery Hunt 2006 Editor
MIT Mystery Hunt 2011 Walkthrough
MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 Coming to a Location Near You
MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 Everything You Read
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Erudite Game

Wilhelm scream

MIT Mystery Hunt 2004 Free Willy Wonka

Wil Wheaton

MIT Mystery Hunt 2009 Geek Drama

Windows programs

MIT Mystery Hunt 2001 The Braille Witch Project
MIT Mystery Hunt 2001 Eschatology
MIT Mystery Hunt 2001 Another Dimension (Round 4 Meta)

Wingspan board game

MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 The Linq

Winning Ways for Your Mathematical Plays

MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 A Number of Games

“Winterreise” by Schubert

MIT Mystery Hunt 2009 Yoda Sings Schubert!

wolves and sheep

See Sheep and Wolves

“Wonderfalls” (TV show)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2009 Space Madness

wood

MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 EAsT camPUS

Woodstock performers

MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 Into The Woodstock Meta

Word Arithmetic

See alphametics (encoded arithmetic)

word association

MIT Mystery Hunt 1999 Warrant 4.4
MIT Mystery Hunt 2000 Out of Sight, Out of Mind
MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 Set Theory
MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Mergers
MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 Quilt by Association
MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Collage

Word Avalanche

See reduplications

word chains

(the end of one word overlaps the beginning of the next; see before and after when the overlapping parts are words)

word deletions

One word is deleted from another word to leave a third word, such as deleting LET from DELETED to leave DEED. The NPL uses this as a flat type.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 Middle-See
MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Clued Connections
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Fortune Cookies
MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Nature Hike

word functions

See discover the hidden rules

Word Games puzzle

This puzzle has clue answers written on labeled blanks which are transferred into a grid in the style of a double crostic, but usually the cells are labeled by letter-and-number coordinates. A message is spelled out in the grid when the puzzle is finished, but black squares between words are not given. The clues are traditionally divided into 4 groups, with each group having its own unique clue style explained or hinted at by a title for the group.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2005 Word Play
MIT Mystery Hunt 2005 Vanna's Nightmare

word ladders

A word ladder is a series of letter changes with the goal of getting from one word to another, with each step forming a valid word.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2001 To a Monster
MIT Mystery Hunt 2004 Grizzly Ale
MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Snakes and Ladders
MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 The Broken Bridge
MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Clued Connections
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Wizard Woods
MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Step by Step Ladder
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 The Strat

Wordle

MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 I Don't have a Clue!
MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Quandle
MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Conjuri's Request
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Do You Like Wordle?
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Roguelikes with a K
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 The Venetian

word lists

MIT Mystery Hunt 2015 UKACD

wordplay (other)

word search

The standard word search is a grid of letters, within which a provided list of words is hidden, each one in a straight line in one of 8 directions (orthogonally or diagonally). Frequently the unused letters spell a final message. In World Puzzle Championship usage, the words may extend into a region where the letters are omitted and your goal is to identify all the missing letters (which are all used in at least one word), and this kind may show up in Hunts as well.

Word Search board game

MIT Mystery Hunt 2008 Advisory Boards

words of the year

Words selected by various dictionaries as the most popular words in a given year.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Annual International Fictionary Night

words on winding paths

Word search puzzles or crosswords which spell words on winding paths instead of in the usual way.

“Words” (poem by Dana Gioia)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2005 Reorganization

word stack

A word stack is a grid for a list of related words arranged so that some matching letters fall in the same columns; these letters get a single tall box to indicate the repetition. The words may be arbitrarily staggered left or right, and sometimes arbitrarily ordered, in order to increase the number and height of these shared letter boxes. Usually only a few letters are initially given.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2007 The Art of Succeeding
MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 A Rose By Any Other

word substitutions

A flat type in the NPL in which a word contains a shorter word within it, and the shorter word is replace with a different word to create a fourth word.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Book Spade

Words with Friends

MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 The Case of the Dangerous Game

word wrap

MIT Mystery Hunt 2008 The Dungeon

working with other teams

works inside other works

MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 Yo Dawg, I Herd You Like Puzzle Hunts
MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 Screen Test
MIT Mystery Hunt 2015 Beth

world leaders

MIT Mystery Hunt 2015 Atlantean Graves

World of Warcraft

MIT Mystery Hunt 2007 War Dances
MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 Running Around In A Blizzard

World of Warcraft Trading Card Game

MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 The Cryptozoicologist

World Puzzle Championship

MIT Mystery Hunt 2010 Puzzles from Loremipsumstan
MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Hall of Archaeology

World's Strongest Man

MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 The Contest

wormhole crossword

A one-off crossword meant to resemble the shape of a Schwarzchild wormhole.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2009 The Buzz-Cut Man in a Leather Jacket

Worm (web serial)

MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Unmasked

wraparound crossword

A crossword puzzle that wraps around the edges of the grid, so that there are no true edges. A petal puzzle is effectively such a crossword which has been twisted into a circle.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2007 Thinking Outside the Box
MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Something in Common
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Squaring the Circle
MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Called Onto the Carpet

wrestling

MIT Mystery Hunt 2000 Round 5 Meta Hint
MIT Mystery Hunt 2002 Ringside Seat
MIT Mystery Hunt 2005 Gold Rush
MIT Mystery Hunt 2006 Wipe the Floor with Him!
MIT Mystery Hunt 2007 Legal Men
MIT Mystery Hunt 2009 The Equipment Locker
MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 Google Bodyslam
MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 Lets Get Ready to Jumble
MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Gone Guys

X11 color names

MIT Mystery Hunt 2008 Dossier 1 Meta
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Water Guns
MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Conglomerate

X and Y coordinates

MIT Mystery Hunt 1994 13
MIT Mystery Hunt 2001 Scientology
MIT Mystery Hunt 2009 Well-Coordinated
MIT Mystery Hunt 2009 Space Madness
MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Lists of Large Integers

“X” anime

MIT Mystery Hunt 2010 Crossed Swords

X-Box

MIT Mystery Hunt 2009 Console-Nation Prizes

X-Box achievements

Xes

MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Crossed Out

“The X-Files”

MIT Mystery Hunt 2003 Round 6 Meta

XKCD

MIT Mystery Hunt 2010 Stick Man
MIT Mystery Hunt 2011 Plotlines
MIT Mystery Hunt 2011 Unlikely Situations
MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 You Will Not Go to Space Today
MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 Trochees, Etc.
MIT Mystery Hunt 2018 Fuch-sia
MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 Runaround Training
MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 The Day You Begin
MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Space Modules
MIT Mystery Hunt 2024 Deep, Deep Trouble

x-ray emission lines

MIT Mystery Hunt 2002 X-Ray Vision

Xzibit

Xzibit is the celebrity associated with the Internet meme "Yo dawg, I heard you like X so I put a X in your X so you can Y while you Y." It's based on his time as host of the MTV television series "Pimp My Ride" in which he said similar things about what he had installed in cars (where the last X was usually "car" and the last Y was usually "drive"). The meme version makes all the Xs the same, so that you're putting something inside itself, or another of the same thing.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2012 Yo Dawg, I Herd You Like Puzzle Hunts

Yahtzee

MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 Best of Five

yajilin

In a grid, some squares are shaded, which they may have a number and arrow. You are to blacken in some squares (no two sharing an edge, though they may share an edge with the given shaded squares) so each arrow points to as many blackened squares as its number. Additionally, draw a loop through all squares not shaded or blackened, connecting squares only orthogonally and without crossing your path.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 The Neverending Story

"Yakko Warner Sings All the Words in the English Language"

MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 World's Longest Diagramless

Weird Al Yankovic

MIT Mystery Hunt 2006 Dear Reader
MIT Mystery Hunt 2013 A Strange Puzzle
MIT Mystery Hunt 2016 It's So Obvious!
MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 Shopping List

Yin-Yang logic puzzle

See black and white (logic puzzle)

MIT Mystery Hunt 1996 9C
MIT Mystery Hunt 2000 Art for Art's Sake
MIT Mystery Hunt 2004 Xipe-Dee-Doo-Dah
MIT Mystery Hunt 2004 Fair Trade
MIT Mystery Hunt 2005 Junk Mail
MIT Mystery Hunt 2006 Boston Ante
MIT Mystery Hunt 2010 Bulls and Cows
MIT Mystery Hunt 2017 A Lengthy Journey
MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Zip Line
MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 The Hound of the Vast-Cur-Villes

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