The MIT Mystery Hunt is an annual puzzlehunt competition at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. As one of the oldest and most complex puzzlehunts in the world, it attracts roughly 40 teams and 2,000 contestants annually, in teams of 5 to 150 people. It has inspired similar competitions at Microsoft, Stanford University, Melbourne University, University of Limerick, and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign as well as in the Seattle, San Francisco, Miami, Washington, DC, Indianapolis and Columbus, Ohio metropolitan areas. Because the puzzle solutions require knowledge of esoteric and eclectic topics, the hunt is often fused with popular stereotypes of MIT students.
The hunt begins at noon on the Friday before Martin Luther King, Jr. Day when the teams assemble in the lobby of Building 7 to receive the first puzzles. It concludes with a runaround to find a "coin" hidden on MIT's campus. Each puzzlehunt is created and organized by the winning team of the previous year, which can lead to substantial differences in the rules and structure. While early hunts involved a few dozen linear puzzles, recent hunts have increased in complexity, some involving as many as 130 distinct puzzles arranged in rounds, hidden rounds, and metapuzzles. Recent hunts have also revolved around themes introduced as a skit by organizers at the opening ceremony.
Famous quotes containing the words mit, mystery and/or hunt:
“This summertime must be forgot
MIt will be, if we would or not....”
—Philip Larkin (1922–1986)
“The butterfly’s attractiveness derives not only from colors and symmetry: deeper motives contribute to it. We would not think them so beautiful if they did not fly, or if they flew straight and briskly like bees, or if they stung, or above all if they did not enact the perturbing mystery of metamorphosis: the latter assumes in our eyes the value of a badly decoded message, a symbol, a sign.”
—Primo Levi (1919–1987)
“The nearest the modern general or admiral comes to a small-arms encounter of any sort is at a duck hunt in the company of corporation executives at the retreat of Continental Motors, Inc.”
—C. Wright Mills (1916–1962)