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.
Hunt | Puzzle title | Solves | Letter |
---|---|---|---|
2009 | His Worshipful Handmaiden | 7 | S |
Fantastic Voyage | 8 | I | |
Zhongwen? That's a Terrible Space Cowboy Name! | 8 | N | |
His Cardiologist | 14 | S | |
2008 | Method to the Madness | 4 | H |
Wiseguys | 6 | U | |
What Incarnation of Palindrome Are You? | 15 | N | |
Train Station | 1 | T | |
Trouble in Triplicate | 10 | T | |
No Police Record | 6 | I | |
2007 | Cambridge Tea Party | 10 | T |
Crescent City Blues | 14 | L | |
Puzzle Editing | 6 | E | |
Thinking Outside the Box | 20 | O | |
Two Out of Three Ain't Bad | 8 | F | |
2005 | Square Mess | 5 | R |
Melody | 4 | O | |
Notes From Underground | 10 | U | |
Peach Winslow | 8 | N | |
Seven Days | 6 | D | |
2004 | Worship of Zacazontli | 9 | F |
Lost in the Boiler Rooms | 2 | O | |
Subterranean | 2 | U | |
Turning Japanese | 3 | R | |
Hidden Passages | 7 | P | |
Construction | 7 | U | |
Tlazolteotl's Codex | 4 | Z | |
2003 | First Round Puzzle | 14 | Z |
Guys'll Eat Ivy Too | 5 | L | |
When Johnny Comes Marching Home | 3 | E | |
Whoa -- I Have a Migraine! | 9 | E | |
Auditorium | 4 | I | |
Gninreenigne Lab | 1 | G | |
Whoa -- I Know Subtraction! | 2 | H | |
Time's A-wastin' | 1 | T |
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.
Hunt | Puzzle title | Solves | Letter |
---|---|---|---|
2009 | His Worshipful Handmaiden | 5 | O |
Fantastic Voyage | 7 | T | |
Zhongwen? That's a Terrible Space Cowboy Name! | 6 | W | |
His Cardiologist | 9 | O |