Archives / 2000 Mystery Hunt

Description

The 2000 Mystery Hunt was based on Wizard of Oz and asked teams to help guide Dorothy back home using the Tornado-Operated Object Levitator (T.O.O.L.), which required a coin for its operation.

The coin was found at 2:18am on Sunday by Paintttniap, in a planter outside 9-136.

Credits

The 2000 Mystery Hunt was written by Roger Barkan, Jennifer Berk, Jamie Coffin, Jed Goldstone, Heather Handley, Ann Jones, Ray Jones, Dan Katz, Kiran Kedlaya, Rose Koch, Brian Litofsky, Christopher Long, Catherine Moore, Chris Morse (Captain), Darren Rigby, Dave Savitt, and Brian Tivol.

The Hunt Introduction

Welcome to MH2K! (That's Mystery Hunt 2000 for those of you are acronymatically challenged.) This year, your puzzle-solving skills are sorely needed in order to help our hero, Dorothy Gale, return to her monochromatic homeland.

The Munchkin Information Processing Board (MIPB) has offered to help Dorothy get home through the use of their newly designed Tornado-Operated Object Levitator (T.O.O.L.) Unfortunately, as a consequence of inventive eccentricity, the T.O.O.L. can only be operated with a special coin, and nobody on MIPB can remember where they left it. Your goal is to recover this coin.

Fortuitously, you have a powerful computer system to aid you in your search. MIPB possesses a highly advanced network affectionately known as the Wonderfully Intelligent Zenith of All Recovery Devices (W.I.Z.A.R.D.) that should be able to scan the campus and trace the location of the coin. However, Wendy the Insidiously Tyrannical Computer Hacker (W.I.T.C.H.) has installed a series of password blocks into W.I.Z.A.R.D. and no one knows how to access its higher functions.

It is known that W.I.T.C.H. has a careless habit of inadvertently leaving clues to her passwords around the MIT campus. Rather than make you look for them, Dorothy has graciously volunteered to brave the wild jungles of MIT in search of W.I.T.C.H.'s trail of devious puzzles, taking a pocket W.I.Z.A.R.D. terminal with her that will automatically record her adventures and post them online. Some of her adventures may bring her into contact with some familiar faces; it seems she's not the only one who had a recent run-in with a tornado....

You, the remote solving team, must solve W.I.T.C.H.'s puzzles, and extract from them a username and password, which will grant you access to the appropriate puzzles to deduce the second username and password, and so forth. Stay in contact with MIPB regarding your progress; they are working together with you to discover the coin, and they'll be glad to TRY to help you if you have questions.

Good luck, keep your wits about you, and remember: There's no place like hell.

The Hunt and Solutions (linked)

Photos

The photos below were accompanied by the following announcement: Insidious news! Bitter about the coin they lost last year, Carmen and her gang have caught up with Dorothy and are preparing to exact a cruel revenge. Film at 11.