I remember that I started by heading west, and I think I actually had enough time to get the aha (that the clued words formed compound words/phrases), so looking at the map, maybe I went west a few steps and then north.
#CRYPTEXT HUNT FIRST TWO PUZZLES SERIES#
In the second phase, I found myself in a interconnected series of rooms, some of which had plaques cluing simple words. I polished the logic elements off quickly but stumbled a bit on extraction before I noticed the weird staticky bits that told me which letters to take to yield the correct answer. The first puzzle was a relatively traditional grid logic puzzle, which felt advantageous to me given that I’ve written a book of those. Party time.įinale 1.0: When the finale began, everyone leapt into the first room. When I arrived there was only a person or two there (if I remember correctly), though when I logged back in the next day, the room was teeming with competitors. Typing in further letters gave me minimal feedback, but entering all four answers one letter at a time took me to a waiting area for the finale.
There wasn’t much to see there, but the first letter of the first answer was U, and typing it in sent me into a weird void where I could travel in any direction. I was less surprised when I checked the MUD map and saw that there was a pagoda to which I could navigate. So I have to admit that I was surprised when the fifth answer was… PAGODA. (Nor was the format or number of puzzles… we were going in pretty blind in terms of whether the last task would take hours or days.) As noted earlier, the first four daily puzzle answers were formed from text adventure direction abbreviations, which allowed for a certain degree of backsolving. Pre-Finale: In addition to providing fun individual competitions, the puzzles during the preceding week were a crucial step to participate in the finale, because while the five daily puzzles all launched from the same hub location, the start location for the finale wasn’t specified. I did promise a unique perspective on the endgame, and my memories aren’t getting any less faint, so let’s roll up our sleeves and dig in. That means I should probably clear the docket… oh, six months ago I wrote the first half of a recap about a hunt that’s now ten months old. The MIT Mystery Hunt (written by Setec Astronomy) is two and a half weeks away, and I’m sure I’ll have lots to say about the process and the results of that project after the fact. Information on the hunt can be found here. This is a recap/review of the 2018 Cryptex Hunt, which happened in February/March.
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