These heroes, although not as rare as you might think as a new one is born every 2 weeks, are precious gems appreciated by all. Sometimes all you can do is stare at them, other times you can't help but cheer them.
This ode is not only about these heroes though, but also about their vanquishers...
@Ankoganit Yeah, but I'm honestly not sure how to state it. I can tell whether something is a metapuzzle or not, but not describe it, apparently. (And Sp3000 is the same way.)
Typically, metapuzzles use answers from other hunt-style puzzles - those answers are English words or phrases, and they're combined in a way that involves some form of wordplay or interpretation.
Yeah the vanquisher one is close, but indexing kills it a bit (I'd be happy to call that one borderline meta, but since the answers could almost have been anything it's a bit weird)
For instance, TGE's Alice in Wonderland puzzle, and Rubio's recent pentomino wordplay puzzle were NOT metapuzzles.
Exactly.
Another important thing: metapuzzles need to have some constraint on their answers. If the answers can be nearly anything you want, then it's probably not a metapuzzle (or at least, not a good one).
With that round of puzzles, we got some flavortext. I'll copy it down here:
As you arrive in this large and bustling city, you encounter many recent victims of pickpockets. The local cutpurses seem efficient and organized, and after a few well-placed threats, you manage to extract the location of their employer. But confronting him is easier said than done, as the winding network of city streets is difficult to navigate.
As night falls, the city becomes even more confusing; in the moonlight, everything looks black and white. You’ll really need an experienced guide if you want to find your way around.
The first thing that we noticed was that each answer started with a six-letter word. The second was that the non-6-letter words were made entirely of letters from BLACK/WHITE.
And the third we noticed was the last word of the flavortext: mastermind.
Turns out we could interpret those words as Mastermind guesses and responses. The first word was the guess, the second was the response (where B/L/A/C/K were black pegs and W/H/I/T/E were white pegs)
Metapuzzles can also have other components, but the puzzles' answers need to be vital to the actual solution. Another example from this past MITMH is here:
After exploring an abandoned castle, you arrive at the only exit, but what appears to be an icy blue wall blocks your way. Curiously, one of you reaches toward it and find that your hand penetrates the surface and begins to burn; you quickly recoil. This is no ice wall; it’s a gelatinous cube, blocking the way!
The Fighter draws her sword and smoothly cuts the cube down the middle, but within seconds, the two resulting smaller cubes merge back into one and continue to block your path. The creature seems equally impervious to magic and to all of your other anti-cube schemes. This is going t…
In this round, we got a misshapen grid, and each puzzle was associated with one of the grid squares.
All the answers were six letters. So naturally, I tried writing the answers into the grid going down and right. There was only one way to do that - and all the paths the answers made could be folded into cubes.
Alexander Graham Bell really likes to keep in mind,
A number that should quite easy for you to find.
Just find the sum of all the numbers you've ever called.
But be wary as some people might become quite appalled,
At the variant that is shared by governments abroad.
But remember to answer th...
In addition, the letters on the same colored squares were the same. This meant that we could match them up and make a 2x2x2 cube where all the touching letters are the same.
Of course, there was only one way to do this. Once we did that, one face had UP/UP and the opposite one had DOWN. Holding the cube like those faces said to and reading around the side gave us FERMAT'S LOST SERUM - the perfect trick for making sure two cubes can't join together to become one!
(and yes, reading that answer off the cube was hilarious. luckily, the three of us who were working on that meta were all math nerds, so we got the terrible pun immediately)
No (but that group of 6 "character" metas were all related to the characters - the Wizard meta's answers were all effects of Harry Potter spells, the Economist's were all things on the backs of state quarters...)
Now that Deus has reminded me of the 2016 hunt, I just realised I subconsciously took a puzzle idea from the Maniacal Merchants :/ oops, time to write a new one
I have another one which I know is basically the same as a different MIT hunt puzzle too, but hopefully this one doesn't matter as much. MIT's gone through so many ideas sometimes it feels like it's hard to not have a double up...
@Sp3000 I've been compiling hunt puzzle ideas for a long time, and I keep having to go through them to make sure none of them were used in the Mystery Hunt.
(quick type-by) Hiya, @Jonathan, and thank you @Ankoganit! I was dropping off a video for you the other day, Jonathan, and the room didn't recognize your name, so I wondered if the system had gone haywire.
"Metapuzzle" is hard to define. There are various aspects:
- answers feeding into the solution in some sense - answers being constrained by the metapuzzle, and being English words or phrases - answers' puzzles being unrelated, except for the meta
but that still leaves something out that I can't quite put into words.
Ah I have seen "metapuzzle" being used to link multiple questions into a thread, I'd say that is kind of distinct from what a metapuzzle actually is - a puzzle which is solvable by first finding the puzzles it contains and solving them.
What do you mean by "being used to link multiple questions into a thread"?
Chained puzzles are not metapuzzles. If puzzle 2 requires the answer to puzzle 1, and puzzle 3 requires the answer to puzzle 2, then it's not a metapuzzle.
@Deusovi A metapuzzle (or meta) is a puzzle composed out of the solutions to other mostly disjoint puzzles. The solutions which feed into the metapuzzle should appear unrelated at first, but share a common hidden theme which is vital to solving the metapuzzle. The metapuzzle can depend solely on the puzzle solutions (in which case it is called a "pure meta") or have additional components, but the solution to the metapuzzle must be dependent on the answers which feed into it.
(Though I'm not sure that's entirely accurate, still. The theme may only appear when the answers are together, or it may manifest itself differently in different answers.)
Teams are made up of anywhere from 5 to 150 people. I'm on a team with about 70 called Test Solution, Please Ignore, and most of our members are remote solvers.
There are some hyper-competitive teams. We're not one of them yet, but we're slowly rising. We typically come in around 15-20th (out of around 70-80 teams).
We're not aiming to win yet (for multiple reasons, including that the winning team has to write next year's hunt)
@Deusovi I want you to test-solve/look at my new puzzle. I need to check if its color blind friendly. If it is, it will serve as an example for me to set future puzzles. Can I drop you an email?
Hundreds of boxes in columns and rows
In a room with two thousand windows
I start opening the boxes, I go on my way
Some of them change color, the rest of them are gray
The tension increases, it is part of the fun
I'm looking for glasses to wear in the sun
Blue, Green, Green, Red
Just as e...
I've been taking an art course recently, and I met someone who was proficient with grid ASCII art paintings. However, the teacher of the class always seemed to think there was something wrong with his artwork. Can you help him work out why the teacher doesn't like his work?
He said:
I took a...
There is a big event, a LAN party with 1'200 people. One notices there is constantly 10 people on the restroom.
The event is long enough that everybody goes to the restroom many times during the event.
On average, how frequently each person goes to the restroom assuming that each visit lasts a...
There are different kinds of infinity, but infinity is still bigger than anything finite.
(In fact, when you look at ordinal numbers, nearly every size there is is infinite, and the finite numbers are just a trivial thing at the very bottom.)
Seek out a sunny picture -
Remember you're on SE -
And on that sunny picture,
Figure out what you can;
You are a less capital idea
Than those who follow you.
What kind of birds appear?
Hint 1:
Hint 2:
Hint 3 (like Hint 1, but bigger):
@BeastlyGerbil Well, I'm not going to condemn all puzzles that use imgur at all. I'm sure it's perfectly possible to make something interesting and innovative using an old idea.
An entry in Fortnightly Topic Challenge #30: Metapuzzles...
For two months, the ship had hovered above the world ... silent, unmoving, just relentlessly hovering in a fixed spot over a desolate expanse of desert. Making no discernable EM emissions, and appearing to reflect all signals above or...
@Randal'Thor Wait, was it you? I thought it was f''.
Also, I think imgur-mazes still have some potential. But the way they're being used right now, a lot of them are just the same thing over and over, and it's really not fun.
Seek out a sunny picture -
Remember you're on SE -
And on that sunny picture,
Figure out what you can;
You are a less capital idea
Than those who follow you.
What kind of birds appear?
Hint 1:
Hint 2:
Hint 3 (like Hint 1, but bigger):
It's a rebus puzzle. You know what to do.
What single English word do these symbols represent?
Part of a metapuzzles entry: I, for one, welcome our new ...
Butting in off topic for a moment - if we are doing new types of puzzles would we have to tag it as such or are they just enigmatic, tags being added if a trend or other replication occurs?
@Rubio I love the prose accompanying your puzzle. It's rare to find a puzzle creator who can actually write well. I enjoyed it just for the story itself, before I even got to the puzzle.
These heroes, although not as rare as you might think as a new one is born every 2 weeks, are precious gems appreciated by all. Sometimes all you can do is stare at them, other times you can't help but cheer them.
This ode is not only about these heroes though, but also about their vanquishers...
Alexander Graham Bell really likes to keep in mind,
A number that should quite easy for you to find.
Just find the sum of all the numbers you've ever called.
But be wary as some people might become quite appalled,
At the variant that is shared by governments abroad.
But remember to answer th...
Hundreds of boxes in columns and rows
In a room with two thousand windows
I start opening the boxes, I go on my way
Some of them change color, the rest of them are gray
The tension increases, it is part of the fun
I'm looking for glasses to wear in the sun
Blue, Green, Green, Red
Just as e...
**************************** **************************** **************************** ****************************
* * * * * * * * * * * *
* * J * * * K ...
I've been taking an art course recently, and I met someone who was proficient with grid ASCII art paintings. However, the teacher of the class always seemed to think there was something wrong with his artwork. Can you help him work out why the teacher doesn't like his work?
He said:
I took a...
There is a big event, a LAN party with 1'200 people. One notices there is constantly 10 people on the restroom.
The event is long enough that everybody goes to the restroom many times during the event.
On average, how frequently each person goes to the restroom assuming that each visit lasts a...
Yew Knead It's Vane Urn Wrapped Strait,
don't You?
Don't be mislead, it sounds like you're on the right track.
Seek out a sunny picture -
Remember you're on SE -
And on that sunny picture,
Figure out what you can;
You are a less capital idea
Than those who follow you.
What kind of birds appear?
Hint 1:
Hint 2:
Hint 3 (like Hint 1, but bigger):
An entry in Fortnightly Topic Challenge #30: Metapuzzles...
For two months, the ship had hovered above the world ... silent, unmoving, just relentlessly hovering in a fixed spot over a desolate expanse of desert. Making no discernable EM emissions, and appearing to reflect all signals above or...
