Solution to Beach Party McMurdo
by Catherine Miller and Oliver Kosut
When solvers arrived at the Beach Party, they were astonished to
learn that it was not a party at all, but a trap laid by Moriarty! It
was impossible to escape without three keys that, between all of them,
met a list of criteria helpfully provided by the EIT agents.
Fortunately, between the random junk that S.P.I.E.S. operatives were
able to gather together and the things that solvers happened to have
brought with them, it was possible to assemble the three keys and escape
the death trap. Once they had escaped, teams were told the answer,
GENTRY.
The following is the list of criteria that the keys had to satisfy:
- Must be shiny.
- Must be metallic.
- Must be larger than 4' in one dimension.
- Must be less than one foot tall.
- Must be bipartite.
- Must smell like citrus.
- Must look like a smiley face from one angle.
- Must look like a frowny face from one angle.
- Must be battery operated.
- Must vibrate.
- Must look like a celebrity.
- Must be green.
- Must be plasmic.
- Must be oblong.
- Must contain a fluid.
- Must be springy.
- Must be valuable.
- Must be usable as a nail file.
- Must contain something living.
- Must be able to be used to play a game of hangman.
- Must be mechanical.
- Must contain a name.
- Must be flammable.
- Must be inflammable.
- Must be warm to the touch.
- Must be fun.
- Must taste sweet.
- Must weigh less than 1 pound.
- Must be able to hold a Kleenex box.
- Must be loud.
- Must be wooden.
- Must speak three different languages.
- Must be friendly.
- Must be musical.
- Must be holy
- Must be holey.
- Must be wholly transparent.
- Must be compressible.
- Must be under pressure.
- Must be describable with a pangram.
- Must tell you what to do.
- Must be a bad pun.
- Must be waterproof.
- Must hinge.
- Must be bald.
- Must be stretchy.
- Must be usable as a clock.
- Must be an allergen.
- Must be hollow.
- Must be new.
- Must be a lever.
2006 MIT Mystery Hunt