Great Minds Think Alike

by Mike Sylvia and Corey Plover

ANSWER: KILLING THE AUDIENCE / BODY OF WORK

The descriptions of are of puzzles from six of the past seven Mystery Hunts. As clued by the repeated question, solvers need to find the number of teams that solved each puzzle during the Hunt. The '06 Hunt, which doesn't have this data publicly accessible, is not used. The other Hunts since '03 have their solving stats on the website in some form or another, though for '07 solvers have to download the raw stats and do some digging to get the right numbers.

Indexing into the puzzle titles by the respective number of solves gives the clue phrase SINS HUNT TITLE OF ROUND FOUR PUZZLE EIGHT points to the eighth puzzle of the Crime round of the 2007 MIT Mystery Hunt, KILLING THE AUDIENCE.

HuntPuzzle titleSolvesLetter
2009His Worshipful Handmaiden7S
Fantastic Voyage8I
Zhongwen? That's a Terrible Space Cowboy Name!8N
His Cardiologist14S
2008Method to the Madness4H
Wiseguys6U
What Incarnation of Palindrome Are You?15N
Train Station1T
Trouble in Triplicate10T
No Police Record6I
2007Cambridge Tea Party10T
Crescent City Blues14L
Puzzle Editing6E
Thinking Outside the Box20O
Two Out of Three Ain't Bad8F
2005Square Mess5R
Melody4O
Notes From Underground10U
Peach Winslow8N
Seven Days6D
2004Worship of Zacazontli9F
Lost in the Boiler Rooms2O
Subterranean2U
Turning Japanese3R
Hidden Passages7P
Construction7U
Tlazolteotl's Codex4Z
2003First Round Puzzle14Z
Guys'll Eat Ivy Too5L
When Johnny Comes Marching Home3E
Whoa -- I Have a Migraine!9E
Auditorium4I
Gninreenigne Lab1G
Whoa -- I Know Subtraction!2H
Time's A-wastin'1T

The supplementary information from 2009 reveals that in the alternate history, Setec Astronomy accidentally won the 2009 hunt at 6:59 PM Sunday. This changes the number of solves for the 2009 puzzles and spells O TWO HUNT TITLE OF ROUND FOUR PUZZLE EIGHT instead referring to BODY OF WORK.

HuntPuzzle titleSolvesLetter
2009His Worshipful Handmaiden5O
Fantastic Voyage7T
Zhongwen? That's a Terrible Space Cowboy Name!6W
His Cardiologist9O