Puzzlehunt CMU 2024: Department Store Hunt

ABBA IS YOU - Figured out words from the word bank had to be combined to form lyrics from ABBA songs in the style of Baba Is You rules, e.g. + "RICH MAN HAS WORLD" ("It's a rich man's world") + "NAPOLEON ON WATERLOO IS DEFEAT" ("At Waterloo, Napoleon did surrender")

Polyrhythms + Figured out the answers to the clues were all rhythm game songs

SKÄRIG + Figured out all the players' roles in the Blood on the Clocktower game and extracted

Helium Balloons + Solo-solved, including figuring out the stick figures represented people who had won Nobel and Ig Nobel prizes.

Forewords Lost in Translation + Solo-solved, including figuring out the stories were altered versions of Chinese chengyu (four-character idioms), with exactly one character of each idiom changed.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2024

Deep Conspiracy - Solo-solved the subpuzzle "From the Vault"

IV Guys - Realised what the core mechanic of the puzzle was after Googling the puzzle title (the rebuses corresponded to phrases formed by removing letters from store names) - Solved the rebuses for IKE(A), GOO(D)WILL, and (GI)ANT EAGLE

Steam Library - Identified all the enemies in the subpuzzle "Terraria," and figured out that each enemy inflicts a specific debuff that one of the accessories used to form the Ankh Charm protects against

Deposit at the Word Bank - Figured out the correct answer to the clue "Toll" was PEAL, enabling team to progress with the solve

Rhyme Thyme - Solved 90% of the clues after figuring out all the answers in each category had to rhyme (and were in alphabetical order)

Show of Hands - Identified the categories "tennis scores," "troy weight units," "chemical elements," "synonyms of 'tow'," "letter sounds," "Greek letters," "South Park characters," and "abbreviations for time"

Welcome to the Festival - Solo-solved

You're the Only One - Solved the clues for CALLER I'D OWE/COLORADO and GERM I KNEE/GERMANY

Divine Intervention - Figured out that the prayers could also be offered to Catholic saints - Figured out that the canonical hours that were missing letters indicated times that were shifted back a number of hours equal to the number of missing letters

The Other Scottish Play - Identified all the characters in each scene using online resources

This Puzzle Keeps Turning Upside Down and We Can't Figure Out Why - Figured out that each set of songs was taken from a specific movie soundtrack (with one odd song out)

Augmented Raility - Figured out the ninth screenshot is of GoldenEye 007 through extensive Googling

Najaf to... - Noted that the three alphabetically consecutive letters in the names of LKM did not have to be adjacent or in alphabetical order - Identified the destinations TOKYO, CHATTOGRAM, SPARTANBURG, DAKAR, GRANADA, ACCRA, and NEWPORT NEWS

Revolting Developments - Solo-solved, including figuring out that rebuses clued songs by The Decemberists and each dictionary definition contained a superfluous portion that clued a word from the lyrics of each song that was offset from the primary definition's word by a number of words equal to the day in December of the corresponding headline

League of Their Own - Identified that the rebuses corresponded to Cranjis McBasketball names from Impractical Jokers

Halloween TV Guide - Figured out the puzzle centered on episodes of TV shows that were parodies of A Christmas Carol from the flavor text alone

Itineratum de Urbes Universum - Solo-solved post-hunt

A Silly Sign from the Universe

I've been having a bad year. I quit my job in 2022. It was a dead-end job with long work hours, shit pay, and nonstop stressful assignments with constantly changing goalposts. But it was still more or less a stable source of income. I spent all of 2023 trying to find a new job and failing. I've seen so many headlines about writers being laid off. The percentage of job listings for writer positions that are for writing AI content keeps going up. I only have enough money in my bank account to pay for half a year more of living expenses. I wasn't able to renew my health insurance for 2024. Productivity is difficult when I have to fight everyday against the debilitating effects of untreated depression. I'm constantly on edge, not knowing when my flatmate will get sick of me invading her apartment and kick me out. I feel like I lost a month working on a friend's academic project that can't even make the claim that it'll pay me in exposure. My flatmate tested positive for COVID last week and I've been holed up in this room to avoid being infected by her if I'm not already and to avoid infecting others if I already have been. Neighborhood friends dropped by today to drop off food from a New Year's Eve brunch and to wave at me from a safe distance while I collected the bag and I nearly burst into tears because it was a precaution I would have taken myself if they hadn't, but the experience of seeing them so put-together and happy from afar was too much for me and made me feel even more isolated and alone.

Earlier today, I thought to myself sourly that when midnight rolled around, I would likely be stuck doing exactly what I had been doing this entire last week, this last year: scrolling through job ads and wrestling with code someone else had broken and expected me to fix for no compensation. And that would be how my new year started, colouring the rest of the year to come.

I finished coding early. I finished scrolling through job ads early. I booted up critically-acclaimed MMO Final Fantasy XIV to do my chores a.k.a. try to level Monk up to 70. I had had a large mimosa, the ingredients for which had been in the care package from earlier in the day. I was very tipsy and worn-out and couldn't bring myself to even care about trying to do my rotation correctly. I go through the daily roulettes. Lost City of Ampador (Hard) for the level 50/60/etc roulette. Nice. Shisui of the Violet Tides for the Leveling roulette. Nice. Labyrinth of the Ancients for the Alliance Raid roulette. Well, at least it's not Syrcus Tower. Trial roulette. The queue pops instantly and it's an ongoing duty. I blink. Enter and it's The Chrysalis. Three DPS and a healer. No tanks. Ah.

I stay. It turns out on the last attempt someone disconnected right before the part where you're supposed to use a Limit Break to burst down an add before the party wipes to meteors, leaving the party without a Limit Break. A healer joins. Then a tank. I wonder aloud whether the queue would send me back to this instance were I to leave and requeue as a tank. The Samurai in the party says they'll give it a try. They leave. A different DPS and a tank immediately join. RIP Samurai. Your sacrifice was unnecessary but appreciated.

The trial proceeds uneventfully until the boss is down to about 15% health. One of the other DPS members starts casting the Limit Break, presumably not realising we were going to need it shortly for that one add. The Red Mage and one of the tanks scream in horror. Then, miraculously, the would-be Limit Breaker and herald of our wipe actually reads chat and cancels the cast in time. A collective sigh of relief is heard. We get sucked into the vortex, the add spawns, I get to use the Limit Break on it and punch it into oblivion.

The duty concludes. A round of GGs is had, I wish everyone Happy New Year, and then I exit the duty and realise it is indeed the new year, the clock having ticked over roughly some time while we were panicking about a possible wipe. Someone has said the word "fullerene" in the group chat and summoned me from the void. I unleash my unholy wrath upon them and they bid me return to the vessel from whence I came, whether it be a lamp or a bottle. I respond, in part as a morbid joke I expected only myself to be in on, that I would return to the uterus. They say no, you can't do that, and I am flummoxed by the uncharacteristic abruptness. I wonder if my clandestine moment of dark humour had been caught.

A few minutes later, I remember the name of the trial I had been in and revive the earlier conversation to joke that that way the vessel I had been in and to which I would now return. I pause as a memory stirs. A post had come out of my Tumblr queue two days ago. Something about a chrysalis. It talked about how it is a long painful process, the process of healing. How the caterpillar tucks itself into a cocoon when it finally feels safe enough to do so and must first dissolve into a disgusting slurry in order to metamorphose into what it was meant to be.

I start crying.

Huntinality III: Hunts Upon a Time

Link's Final Stand - Identified the sell prices as indicators of word length for the rebus solutions (rupee number divided by 100) and attack power as the numbers for indexing - Identified rebuses for CAPRICE, DISCOVERED, EARNEST, GENERATING, TENANTS, and THINKING - Identified mechanic where the solutions to the rebuses were the ways to defeat the various Ganondorf forms (as their sort-of opposites)

Into the Woods [Meta] - Identified "SEE THE KING" as a possible candidate for an unsolved feeder puzzle and caught an oversight where "SELL THE COW" had two possible slots where it could fit and had been inserted into the wrong one

Missing Members - Identified the extraction method: use ROYGBIV ordering for the colors associated with each substring and read the first letters of the substrings

Around the World - Identified 8/12 of the video games - Identified 30/45 of the locations, characters, items, and objectives clued - Figured out the ordering method for extraction: order by video game release year - Figured out the question being asked, clued by the extracted phrase GIANT SPARROW, was WHAT REMAINS OF EDITH FINCH, and the answer and final puzzle answer was FINCH

Weaving - Figured out the clues "Process which breaks on reordering" and "In rock is ore" were a pair and had to be interwoven together to produce the cryptic crossword clue "PROCESS IN WHICH ROCK BREAKS IS ON ORE REORDERING" and the answer "EROSION"

Creatures [Meta] - Figured out that each letter of the alphabet only appeared once in the first halves of the clues, as indicated by the flavor text, which was an altered version of "The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog" - Figured out that the answers to the clues needed to be paired with the feeders to produce the name of a specific animal species, e.g. + (Animal/coloration descriptor) ZEBRA + FINCH + (Autonomous prefecture) CHUXIONG + FIRE-BELLIED NEWT - Figured out the answer to the clue "Headgear descriptor" was CASQUED to pair with the feeder OROPENDOLA

What's Next? - Solo-solved, including figuring out that the solutions to the rebuses all appeared in the lyrics to the Billy Joel song "We Didn't Start the Fire" and indexing into the item that occurs next in the list in the song

Are You The One? - Figured out the clues indicated wordplay that revealed which letters each person wanted to see in their perfect match's name, including: + Match who appreciates a good kayak or racecar and loves their mom is AVA + Someone who can drive them around is GIOVANNI + Partner who follows a straight edge lifestyle is HEATH + Match who will sit down and rest after adding a man to their life is OTTO + Partner who knows all the right angles for pictures is ELLIE

How Many Reps? - For the Chinese Zodiac subpuzzle, figured out that the clues "VASTLY POWERFUL," "VEER ONTO A TANGENT," and "DON'T RUSH" belonged to this category with the respective answers of "STRONG AS AN OX," "DOWN A RABBIT HOLE," and "HOLD YOUR HORSES" - Also figured out the extraction method for this subpuzzle: indexing the place of each animal in the Chinese Zodiac into each associated clue phrase to get WALRUSSIA

Candies and Stories - Identified the altered fairy tale titles "THE FOG AND THE SPARROW," "THE RUBBER BRIDEGROOM," and "THE WOLF AND THE KITS"

Keep Out - Determinedly (teammates spectated me continuing to solve this puzzle even after the last meta had been solved) solo-solved (except for places where my math was corrected by teammates because sleep deprivation caused me to forget everything I knew about PEMDAS), including: + Creating a comprehensive map of the text adventure game in Google Sheets + Identifying the chemical compounds used as ingredients + Figuring out the two ingredients needed for each colored cauldron had to be related to a real life compound that causes fire to change to that color...and then proceeding to brute force the ingredients because I was very tired and thought that would be easier than just looking up the compounds in question + Figuring out the signs being described in the text adventure game were GHS hazard pictograms based on the text in the first room that says, "DANGER: Gruesome Horrific Science inside." + Figuring out each set of secret rooms represented the NFPA fire diamond for the chemical compounds used to unlock the rooms

Galactic Puzzle Hunt 2023: GalacticCardCaptors

Dargle - Solved collaboratively, helped decode several of the cards' flavor texts, including "norgle-Dirgle Crergle" as "non-Dinosaur Creatures"

Gnutmeg Tree - Solo-solved by identifying the one card available that could break board symmetry

Coloring - Solo-solved, including figuring out the locations given all had counterparts in Wyoming as well as Colorado (and realising the name of the puzzle was a portmanteau of the two states' names)

Beige Flags - Helped identify several of the city flags, as well as some of the clued phrases that were almost-anagrams of the city names, including AUCKLAND/HAND-CAULK and LONDON/OLD NEON

Slime - Identified "King Bee (who sends his regards)" as a key card for this battle

Mister Penny - Solo-"solved" via brute force and never having figured out the theme

Puzzlehunt CMU 2023: Celestial Magic Universe Hunt

Traveller's Guide - Assisted in identifying CMU building names from words in a given word bank that were anagrams of the building names with one additional letter per word, e.g. + CFA and FACT + HUNT and HAUNT + GATES and STAGED

24-Hour Total - Figured out one of the images depicted Māori POI - Figured out the time of 8:02 next to the crying emoji represented the word "SOB" written out via numbers and mirrored (and indicated that all the other strings should be converted in the same way)

Who Am I? - Figured out each audio clip described one of Count Olaf's disguises from the series A Series of Unfortunate Events

Ella Musk's Field Trip - Translated the text in each subpuzzle from the Genshin Impact languages into English - Solved subpuzzle 2 - Translated the clues in subpuzzle 5 from Latin to English - Figured out that the Os in subpuzzle 5 indicated where the Latin answers shared the same letters with the Genshin Impact characters' names - Figured out the puzzle answer of HORIZON ZERO DAWN once it was known that the first word was HORIZON

Neverland News - Figured out the extraction method of indexing the track listing numbers into each song title

The Sorcerer's Apprentice - Figured out that Lesson 2 involved finding October holidays indicated by each image - Figured out that each October date/number in the lessons corresponded to a daily prompt from Inktober 2023, allowing us to solve Lessons 1, 3, and 5, and extract from Lessons 2 and 4

First You Visit Pallet Town - Figured out the second half of the given clues that pointed to Pokemon game locations and their real life counterparts, starting with identifying the only mall in the Pokemon games that could be reached by crossing a bridge

Panda Magazine: Puzzle Boat 10

Chest of Poems - Solo-solved, including figuring out the given text were ROT# ciphers

Headaches for the Boss - Solo-solved up to extraction, including figuring out the descriptions corresponded to Bruce Springsteen songs and that the success of an attack was determined by the first letter of the input string and the boss's response by the last letter of the input string

Cas(ey)ing the Joint - Figured out one of the categories was TYPES OF SHIPS

Governor Gatling - Solo-solved up to extraction

Rebecca - Helped place trigrams in the grids - Figured out that each grid had two columns that contained an anagram of NIGHTMARE and another word respectively

The Prince of Wales - Solo-solved half of the puzzle, including figuring out the pattern for the first set of clue answers and solving half of the cryptic crossword clues for the second half, such as: + "Circle string" OLINE + "Crowd near French island" MOBILE + "One's spasm" ISTIC

Numbers Racket - Solo-solved

Loan Sharks - Solved many of the cryptic crossword clues, where the gimmick of the puzzle was some of the clues had "lent" one of their words to other clues. This included: + "Contrary Judean king capturing alien animal owned by well-known Paul Revere?" HETERODOX + "Revolutionary prince capturing man to use a key maybe?" ENCIPHER + "Seek forgiveness with a lot, essentially" ATONE + "Bitingly, like a fox holding instrument" SHARPLY + "Swelled heads depart, surrounded by best, essentially" EGOS

Surveillance - Solo-solved, including figuring out the solutions needed to all start with "REC"

Coordinated Interviews - Solo-solved some of the cryptic crossword clues that had had their wordplay swapped with other clues before the puzzle got backsolved. Solved clue pairs included: + "Again, happen to see doctor with advantage" & "Varmint behind Rhone's banks to dig up something" DREDGE & RECUR + "Odd clean rap…that's pleasant" & "Quite a good attempt to ignore Republican jargon" PARLANCE & NICETY + "Put an end to travelling tour featuring Nine Inch Nails" & "Bend, ignoring real encounter" RUN INTO & CEASE

Following the Clews - Filled in most of the grid

Capital Punishment - Solo-solved

Last Meal - Solo-solved half of the puzzle before it was backsolved, including figuring out the categories for "A criminal who had made a name for himself," "A forger known for passing things off as something else," "A guy named Ben who had been exploited by an old army buddy," and "A mime who knew even if they were silent, they needed to be seen"

Home Invasion - Solo-solved the word search, mapped out the maze, and identified all the leftover words, including identifying the Home Alone theme

Renee Montoya - Used the flavor text to figure out that all of the suspects' birthdays were major holidays

Mark Halpin's Labor Day Extravaganza 2023: Two on the Isle

Haloanaka - Figured out many, many incomplete cryptic crossword clues, including: + Cla[I]ms, diamonds, etc. (SUITS) + [C]Alvin chiefly adores pieces of garlic (CLOVES) + Invoke loud couple of comments from a cow fattened fowl around lower left back of menu (CALL UPON)

Hi'iakaikapua'ena'ena - Figured out ALPHYSCSSFTNECHCOAORERSNEAKTOHETSHBRT with the rule "Remove all I's and move the last two letters of each word to the front" - Figured out DANDNVIRONMESTRANDOMETIMJSBANDALLJDSANDMEEANDINFLEANDRONTIJR with the rule "First letter shifts backwards in the alphabet by 1, followed by an 'AND'; 2nd-to-last letter shifts forward in the alphabet by 5" - Figured out the rule for MUDULAUFRUMATAUACHINGPLANURTHAUMURALUFAFABLAU being "Replace O with U and E with AU" - Spotted which transformation was one letter off when our end count of total letters was off by one - Figured out GAELIC was incorrect as a solution for DIALECT HEARD FROM IRISH SPEAKERS and the correct answer was BROGUE when the Baudelaire family chain had one incorrect substring

Kamapua'a - Figured out the solution to "Layered, like some clouds or ore deposits" was STRATOUS - Figured out the solution to "Souvenir from a Broadway show, maybe" was TICKET STUB - Came up with the idea to rotate the blocks of letters in the grid so they read left-to-right, top-to-bottom, and then rotate the pigpen cipher symbols accordingly.

Kanaloa - Solved 6/7 of the Mouse of Games round, 4/7 of the The Answer's in the Question round, 3/6 of the Broken Karaoke round (the last three that we were stuck on) - Having seen HOPSCOTCH MARIGOLD proposed as an answer, figured out RED LIGHT GREEN LIGHTNING MCQUEEN as another answer, and from there, figured out the games being used were the ones featured in Squid Game - Figured out that the clue phrase USE POST GAME PART meant to remove the names of the games from the answers to create new strings

Kauila - Figured out the final minipuzzle was not only a list of ingredients used in baking, but specifically ones used to make Turtle Candies (and therefore the missing answer was PECAN HALVES) - Solved the second minipuzzle: Figured out the turtles with red, purple, orange, and blue shells pointed to characters from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and more specifically the Renaissance artists whom these characters were named after. Figured out that eight words from the word bank could be put together to form the names of four famous pieces of art by said artists

Ku - Figured out the category SETTING from SUN and PLACE - Figured out the puzzle solution from the extracted phrase BIT TOSS

La'ila'i & Keali'i - Figured out "It makes a surface Rougher" was an ABRADER, "Shelley ode honoree" SKYLARK, "Like a rustic scene or poem" IDYLLIC, "You might order it rare" RIBEYE, "Canine comment" ARF

Lono - Solo-solve: Figured out that foods had to be paired up and their front halves swapped to create answers to the clues, and that letters were extracted by drawing a line between the paired foods

Maui - Figured out the Peppers, Brotherhood of Mutants categories - Figured out the extra-word-shaped-like-a-cane mechanic from JUGGERNAUT and JALAPENO - Found a bunch of the words, both before and after categories were known

Mokualli - Came up with the idea that the answer to the clue "One's full of sewage or wickedness" was a variant of CESSPOOL (CESSPIT) - Figured out the matched answers to the clues "Old geezer" and "Take over" were COOT and COOPT - Figured out the clue that paired with SECOND BASEMEN (and confirmed it was the answer to "Jackie Robinson, et al.) was "Below grade locales" with the answer being BASEMENT - Figured out the clue that paired with SCARE UP (and confirmed it was the answer to "Scrape together somehow, with difficulty") was "Accusation" with the answer being CHARGE

Shardhunt 2023

🔍🔍🔍 - Figured out that the minipuzzles were hidden in the results obtained through the library search function - Solved many of the cryptic crossword clues in the Google minipuzzle - Solved 4/7 minipuzzles + Where's Waldo minipuzzle - Figured out the theme, realised there were 26 words associated with each scene, figured out that the placement of the Waldo characters and their signature items within each 26-word list corresponded to the letters within the alphabet that needed to be extracted + Names minipuzzle - Figured out that pairs of names had to be matched up based on one person having a surname that was the other's given name + Titles minipuzzle - Solved the clues and figured out that the solutions were working titles used during production of famous films, figured out that the clue phrase BBC NEWSBRIEF was another working title for PROJECT PHOENIX + Search minipuzzle - Figured out the clues described Magic: The Gathering cards, figured out that extraction involved finding the cards that tutor the initial set of cards Elementary - Figured out that each clue described a poisoning from an Agatha Christie story Folk Wisdom - Figured out that the lyrics also corresponded to proverbs - Figured out that the final step was drawing lines on the painting to connect the proverb illustrations and creating the letters in ADVICE Greetings - Figured out that "Trelawney" referred to the character from Treasure Island and not the character from Harry Potter Identification - Figured out that SIMON TATHAM was the correct clue phrase and pointed to "Simon Tatham's Portable Puzzle Collection" - Solved the Sudoku minipuzzle Interplanetary Hopper - Solo-solved It's Your Turn - Solo-solved the first minipuzzle that involved working out the die rolls for a scene of D&D 5e combat KarAO3ke - Found the hidden stories on Archive of Our Own (AO3), in part through figuring out that the specific points in the song at which the AO3 screenshots appear are the points at which the specific lyrics being used for the story titles are supposed to be sung - Figured out several of the clued pieces of media and the numbers being clued in the scenes Poly Lines - Figured out that each graph plotted character appearances during a specific ensemble song from a musical and not throughout the entirety of the musical + Figured this out by realising that "J (many)" and "S (many)" referred to the Jets and Sharks from West Side Story and the last graph was for the song "Tonight" The Only Sanderson Puzzle - Solo-solved, including 6/8 of the mini "puzzles"

Admiral Boötes' Cosmic Discovery Expedition: Further Galaxies

Dahan Konundrum - Solved Parts 1-3 and extracted the phrase RUSSIA LEVEL 6 to unlock Part 4 Disk Golf - Figured out many of the characters being clued, including: + DEADMAUS from the clues "Participated in trademark disputes with Disney" and "Bad at computing square numbers" + GREEN GOBLIN from "Concerned about his son's failing health," "Genius-level intellect," and "Likes Halloween" + HASHIBIRA INOSUKE from "Prefers serrated over straight edges"Short-tempered and proud" + PHANTOM OF THE OPERA from "Expert in the construction business," "Mirror enthusiast," and "Serial kidnapper" Playful Sounds - Identified 12/13 of the stages in the Kirby minipuzzle and extracted the clue phrase PIANO KEY COLOR - Solved the Slay the Spire minipuzzle through a combination of combing game files and straining to hear game sounds in YouTube footage - Figured out that the emoji strings in the League of Legends minipuzzle were translations of champion quotes and identified 8/10 of the quotes, including 👊⬆️👊⬇️🧘as "Beat up or beat down? I'm flexible," 🚫🐇🚫💰 "No prey, no pay," and 🎯 🦢 "Precision and grace." - Solved the Sonic minipuzzle, including figuring out that the puzzle was about SiIvagunner remixes - Figured out the Minecraft minipuzzle uses music discs from the game and each disc's unique redstone signal intensity for extraction - Figured out how to transform the song titles identified in the Undertale minipuzzle

MIT Mystery Hunt 2022: Bookspace

Reepicheep - Figured out the sword fight banter corresponded to insults from Monkey Island Frankenstein's Music - Figured out the song clips were mashups from the website Bootie Mashups

Something Command - Solved 4/7 minipuzzles, extrapolated solutions for 2/7

Find someone who laughs like he’s silently convulsing.

Him, holding my face between his hands: Remember you're loved.

Me: Am I baby Harry Potter?

Find someone who reminds you that retrieving food and having it sit in the same room as you is not actually eating.

Find someone who reminds you to breathe.

Find someone who will dump you for the inevitability of time.

Find someone who is a python.