Microsoft Puzzle Hunt

Microsoft Puzzle Hunt

The Microsoft Puzzlehunt is a quasi-annual Microsoft tradition started in 1999. It is a puzzlehunt in the same vein as the MIT Mystery Hunt or The Game. The hunt is a team puzzle competition which challenges each team to solve a large number of original puzzles of all different kinds. The answers, when used in conjunction with the meta-puzzle, lead to a hidden treasure concealed somewhere on the Microsoft campus. Teams spend the weekend solving original and unique puzzles, usually created by the team that won the last hunt. Puzzles may be anything from traditional puzzles like crosswords, word searches, cryptograms, jigsaw puzzles, word play and logic problems to wandering around campus to find landmarks or puzzles that have to be solved on location. Teams are no larger than 12, at least 4 must be current Microsoft employees, and at least 6 must be current or former employees.

The Microsoft Puzzle Hunt takes place over a weekend at the Microsoft campus in Redmond, Washington, usually lasting approximately 32 hours from beginning to end.

Microsoft has a rich tradition of puzzle events, including Microsoft Puzzle Safari, Microsoft Intern Puzzleday and Microsoft Iron Puzzler, but Microsoft Puzzle Hunt remains the "main event" for puzzle solvers in the Microsoft community.

Read more about Microsoft Puzzle Hunt:  Puzzle Hunt I: The Microsoft Games (August 13-15, 1999), Puzzle Hunt II: Age of Puzzles (April 1-2, 2000), Puzzle Hunt III: You Don't Know Puzzles (November 4-5, 2000), Puzzle Hunt IV: Clue (November 3-4, 2001), Puzzle Hunt V: Mission: Impuzzible (September 21-22, 2002), Puzzle Hunt VI: TimeCorps (May 17-18, 2003), Puzzle Hunt 7: Alice in Puzzlehunt (March 20-21, 2004), Puzzle Hunt 8: The Hard Way (February 19-20, 2005), Puzzle Hunt 9: Doomsday (November 5-6, 2005), Puzzle Hunt A: Atlantis (February 10-11, 2007), Puzzle Hunt 11.0: Caught in The Net (October 6-7, 2007), Puzzle Hunt 123: Jeopardy!/Puzzlehaunt! (February 28-March 1, 2009), Puzzle Hunt 14: Travel The Number 14 (September 10-11, 2011), External Resources

Famous quotes containing the words puzzle and/or hunt:

    Waiting for the race to become official, he began to feel as if he had as much effect on the final outcome of the operation as a single piece of a jumbo jigsaw puzzle has to its predetermined final design. Only the addition of the missing fragments of the puzzle would reveal if the picture was as he guessed it would be.
    Stanley Kubrick (b. 1928)

    In communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticize after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, shepherd or critic.
    Karl Marx (1818–1883)