1998 Mystery Hunt

Description

The 1998 Mystery Hunt began at noon on January 16, 1998 in MIT's Lobby 7. The organizers invited hunters to "compete to find a hidden coin by solving mind-bending paper, audio, video and Internet puzzles, engaging in creative contests, uncovering MIT trivia, exploring obscure parts of the campus, and not sleeping."

Unfortunately, the content of the hunt is currently missing, except for a single page called 9.ZZZ - Abstract Dream Analysis. If you have any information on it, please contact us.

Hunt Information and Errata

The following information was left on the hunt's web page and appears to be mostly hints and errata:

It is now 2:30pm on Sunday, Jan. 18 and the coin has been found by Iliaphay. The wrap-up session will be held at 10:00 pm. The room will be announced as soon as possible (probably the steep large lecture hall on the second floor of Bldg 35 (35-225?) - where it usually is).

Puzzle Issues (corrections)

Freshman Subjects

Hints are available for any of these puzzles you are stuck on. please feel free to bug the faculty, we are here for you.

19.39 -- "hep" is close but not quite correct.

14.321 -- page 2, second grid, the o in column 7, row 7 should be removed (the o before the black d)

24.24 -- 3rd list on 1st row replace 'nhh' with 'nh'
Note: This list is not men's names. (Good try, though!)

Extracurricular -- The "name in the news" is not the name of a human being.

7.51896 Rhodography -- note the corrected subject number. The Faculty have released the answer to this question: Nuclear Reactor.

19.7 Cryptography - The third "cryptogram" is not solvable.

We are now accepting partial scavenger hunt solutions - bring 'em on in! One omission - we also plan to keep the Pocky.

Sophomore Subjects

Hints are available for any of these puzzles you are stuck on. please feel free to bug the faculty, we are here for you.

6.666 Arcane Programs -- This puzzle has been replaced by a file at http://web.mit.edu/puzzle/mystery.txt.

8.137 - You can pass the final exam without reading a single word of the thesis. Nothing in black is important.

19.1289 Decoding Advanced Cryptography -- Feel free to call us to confirm sub-parts. This puzzle has nothing to do with alternating elements in the Fibonacci Sequence - clever try, though!

19.2582 -- Jon Voight's name is misspelled in the class notes.

Junior Year

Clarification: You cannot get credit for passing your own course. (Duh.)

19.789 Color threory -- colors and font size are important and independent; there are 3 of each. size of color swatch is not important. bold font face does not matter. (hint 2) notice that items on the list share characteristics use these characteristics to choose letters.

18.123 - There is a typo in the first line. In the last word on that line, the second number should be 19.

18.000 Remedial Math - Teams report that "W" doesn't seem to work, but they can solve it anyway. You may wish to consider this in your ranking. Or not.

19.13 Junior Lab - "ycucolb" should be "ycuyolb"

19.2837 transformative linguistics -- the last clue should be "next to last letter" not "last letter" of the book

7.270 sustenance of life -- the small grid is a key.

6.1835 AI pattern rec. -- Skeet shoot in reverse.

19.456 cartooning -- p, c, n, e are the 1st letters of the second column.

19.567 Thesis Preparation - The Faculty have issued a verified set of replacement numbers for this course:

    6,1,8   4,4,3   4,1,1
    2,4,3   1,3,3   9,5,3
    7,3,1   2,1,7   5,2,2
    3,3,1   8,1,5   7,3,1
(hint: this deals with athena mini-courses)

Senior Puzzles

4.123 Coloring Within the Lines - In the first row, the third and seventh squares should be filled in. In the twelfth row, the eighth square should be filled in.

18.617 Number Theory - The question regarding Louis Ray Groza concerns regular season only. Also, when you have an idea regarding Jealousy's book, let us know and we can clue you in on the number.

4.4444 Structures - It is not necessary to slide pieces after they've dropped.
On block 52, there is an apostrophe missing: ERE'S
IMPORTANT: The Tetris grid can be solved just fine. When you solve it, you'll get an answer. It turns out that answer describes two possible things. We want the second one.

19.333 Chaotic Clues - In clue 5, change "proverbially" to "according to common wisdom".

19.667 Grid Puzzles - Each of the following 12 three-letter words appears in a different column of the correctly filled in grid: ABS ATE DWI EFF HAN ILL NEE ODE RAE REO UAW WET

21L.2557 puzzling literature - just to clear things up totally, note that on the second page, the "cherry blossom" character should appear normally and commonly in the games.

6.535 roamin' - take the numbers, convert to 7 letters, convert to 7 numbers

19.154-62-3522 Seminar in Enigmatology For those of you who overslept, here is the (Songs) puzzle from the seminar: