MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Part 3
Sorry about the delay, but here's part 3. (If you like, revisit part 1 and part 2.)
Creative Pictures Studio
Screen Debuts: This was the first puzzle I worked on in this round, although I didn't make any of the useful progress on it. I did help with some of the grunt work once we figured out how to make a picture out of it, and then i was looking at it wrong and didn't see what it really was.
Space Filler: This was the second puzzle I worked on in this round. There weren't many of us awake during my morning phone shift, so I actually had time to work on two different puzzles during that time. I helped solve a bunch of the clues, and after we figured out the gimmick that each answer was the name of a city or town in Massachusetts and a word that formed a phrase with a color, I helped to solve the remaining ones. Charles was filling in the colors on a map after we figured out to do that instead of just marking spots on a Google map (exactly as the solution page says the testers kept trying - but we had the title to clue us in on the right idea!) And we clearly got a picture of a palm tree on a little island. As the holder of the phone role, I was the one submitting the various answers like PALM TREE and DESERT ISLAND. Eventually we got time blocked, 17 minutes to confirm another answer, just as we had the idea to try submitting emoji characters. First we tried to submit the emoji that was just a palm tree, and that was sitting delayed in the queue. Then my team came up with the desert island one which matched better, and I canceled the delayed submission and submitted the correct one, still delayed 14 minutes, but after less than one minute, somebody at HQ saw what we'd done, canceled the delay, and the answer was accepted. With that done, my teammates who were looking at the picture in Screen Debuts correctly (that was the dog's tongue at the bottom, not the neck of a man) quickly got the right emoji for that one. And so we started down this road of an entire round where all the answers were emojis.
Obscure Movie House: After I got off my morning phone shift, I spent a lot of time working on this puzzle, partly with Vraal. A lot of time; it's a huge cryptic. I wasn't around when it was finished, many hours later.
Gala Premiere: I worked on this diagramless with a couple other people; I forget who. We filled the grid, saw the roughly circular pattern of the two-letter squares, and somebody else figured out what the answer was.
King's Ransom: I helped a large group working on this one later in the hunt, assembling pictures (they didn't realize the pictures corresponded to the groups matching each line of the ransom note, so we did it the hard way) and solving little rebus puzzles afterward.
Star Maps: I helped assemble the jigsaw with a couple other people. And I was still working on it when we figured out the big dots probably were meant to link graphs of some common type, which went in the blanks. But others took over at that point.
Safari Adventure
Frog: I looked at this one based on the board game Concept, but didn't solve any of it.
Phoenix (Firebird): Another one I looked at without making progress.
Whale: I worked on one or two of the rolling block puzzles.
The Astrologer: The first time I looked at this meta, we had nothing and it didn't make any sense to me. The second time I looked at it, somebody had found the 28 mansions of Chinese Astrology, identified all the appearances of the English names for those in the puzzle's text, and then we assumed it'd extracting from letters in the puzzle answers for this round but we had too few of the answers. The third time I looked at the puzzle, we'd figured out it needed four seven-letter answers, extracted the message REASSEMBLE ALL LETTERS AS AN IMMENSE TERM, and we'd figured out the gimmick with the missing Tiger answers so we had the only word that would work for it. So I followed the instruction, found that the answers anagrammed to ANTIDISESTABLISHMENTARIANISM, and submitted it.
The Captain: This was the last meta we opened in this round, and it was optimally placed to thwart solving the final meta (more on that below). When we finally got it, it didn't last long. We had all but one of the answers (aside from the Tiger one), and I searched on rescue and salvage boat and found the Wikipedia page for these navy rescue and salvage ships which matched out answers, and it was a simple A=1 B=2... so I solved it, backsolved the missing answer, and identified the Tiger answer.
Safari Adventure: The first two metas we solved in this round were The Cubs Scout and Jack. This led to two missing Tiger answers, and after maybe one more meta solve, we figured out we weren't getting a tiger puzzle; some puns on Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon were submitted early on. Another one or two solves later, we figured out the tiger answers all came from "Tyger, Tyger" and while we had a couple other ideas, our primary one was using the line numbers of the Tiger answers, converted to letters, to spell out an answer. We had FL?M?NLIPS which looked a whole heck of a lot like FLAMING LIPS, with one more meta not unlocked yet. The metas had appeared anywhere in the row, so we considered it possible we'd get one where we needed it. Of course that was submitted and wrong. And we went on a huge tangent because the Flaming Lips have a song called "Tiger Dreams".
Around this time we got the Tiger answer from the Astrologer and it gave us an E instead of the expected A. I looked at the Astrologer at this point and solved it, and this opened the missing meta, also not where we expected it to go. And The Captain also fell quickly, and with only one missing letter we could finally solve the meta.
Creative Pictures Studio
Screen Debuts: This was the first puzzle I worked on in this round, although I didn't make any of the useful progress on it. I did help with some of the grunt work once we figured out how to make a picture out of it, and then i was looking at it wrong and didn't see what it really was.
Space Filler: This was the second puzzle I worked on in this round. There weren't many of us awake during my morning phone shift, so I actually had time to work on two different puzzles during that time. I helped solve a bunch of the clues, and after we figured out the gimmick that each answer was the name of a city or town in Massachusetts and a word that formed a phrase with a color, I helped to solve the remaining ones. Charles was filling in the colors on a map after we figured out to do that instead of just marking spots on a Google map (exactly as the solution page says the testers kept trying - but we had the title to clue us in on the right idea!) And we clearly got a picture of a palm tree on a little island. As the holder of the phone role, I was the one submitting the various answers like PALM TREE and DESERT ISLAND. Eventually we got time blocked, 17 minutes to confirm another answer, just as we had the idea to try submitting emoji characters. First we tried to submit the emoji that was just a palm tree, and that was sitting delayed in the queue. Then my team came up with the desert island one which matched better, and I canceled the delayed submission and submitted the correct one, still delayed 14 minutes, but after less than one minute, somebody at HQ saw what we'd done, canceled the delay, and the answer was accepted. With that done, my teammates who were looking at the picture in Screen Debuts correctly (that was the dog's tongue at the bottom, not the neck of a man) quickly got the right emoji for that one. And so we started down this road of an entire round where all the answers were emojis.
Obscure Movie House: After I got off my morning phone shift, I spent a lot of time working on this puzzle, partly with Vraal. A lot of time; it's a huge cryptic. I wasn't around when it was finished, many hours later.
Gala Premiere: I worked on this diagramless with a couple other people; I forget who. We filled the grid, saw the roughly circular pattern of the two-letter squares, and somebody else figured out what the answer was.
King's Ransom: I helped a large group working on this one later in the hunt, assembling pictures (they didn't realize the pictures corresponded to the groups matching each line of the ransom note, so we did it the hard way) and solving little rebus puzzles afterward.
Star Maps: I helped assemble the jigsaw with a couple other people. And I was still working on it when we figured out the big dots probably were meant to link graphs of some common type, which went in the blanks. But others took over at that point.
Safari Adventure
Frog: I looked at this one based on the board game Concept, but didn't solve any of it.
Phoenix (Firebird): Another one I looked at without making progress.
Whale: I worked on one or two of the rolling block puzzles.
The Astrologer: The first time I looked at this meta, we had nothing and it didn't make any sense to me. The second time I looked at it, somebody had found the 28 mansions of Chinese Astrology, identified all the appearances of the English names for those in the puzzle's text, and then we assumed it'd extracting from letters in the puzzle answers for this round but we had too few of the answers. The third time I looked at the puzzle, we'd figured out it needed four seven-letter answers, extracted the message REASSEMBLE ALL LETTERS AS AN IMMENSE TERM, and we'd figured out the gimmick with the missing Tiger answers so we had the only word that would work for it. So I followed the instruction, found that the answers anagrammed to ANTIDISESTABLISHMENTARIANISM, and submitted it.
The Captain: This was the last meta we opened in this round, and it was optimally placed to thwart solving the final meta (more on that below). When we finally got it, it didn't last long. We had all but one of the answers (aside from the Tiger one), and I searched on rescue and salvage boat and found the Wikipedia page for these navy rescue and salvage ships which matched out answers, and it was a simple A=1 B=2... so I solved it, backsolved the missing answer, and identified the Tiger answer.
Safari Adventure: The first two metas we solved in this round were The Cubs Scout and Jack. This led to two missing Tiger answers, and after maybe one more meta solve, we figured out we weren't getting a tiger puzzle; some puns on Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon were submitted early on. Another one or two solves later, we figured out the tiger answers all came from "Tyger, Tyger" and while we had a couple other ideas, our primary one was using the line numbers of the Tiger answers, converted to letters, to spell out an answer. We had FL?M?NLIPS which looked a whole heck of a lot like FLAMING LIPS, with one more meta not unlocked yet. The metas had appeared anywhere in the row, so we considered it possible we'd get one where we needed it. Of course that was submitted and wrong. And we went on a huge tangent because the Flaming Lips have a song called "Tiger Dreams".
Around this time we got the Tiger answer from the Astrologer and it gave us an E instead of the expected A. I looked at the Astrologer at this point and solved it, and this opened the missing meta, also not where we expected it to go. And The Captain also fell quickly, and with only one missing letter we could finally solve the meta.