Events: The Midway
by Summer Herrick, Jonathan McCue, Chris Guthrie
Answer: BOARDWALK
Elimination Match
The underlying picture is actually a red herring - literally, a picture of two red herrings. Players must instead focus on the symbols, 2 of which don’t actually have a match (unique). Those 2 symbols are a COAT and a TAIL. Joined together, they give the answer word COATTAIL.
Ring Around the Bottle
This puzzle was probably the most straightforward, players just needed to find the word that could precede all of the words they were given, which was SKI.
As a side note, to procure enough bottles to create this Midway booth, Left Out drank a LOT of Mexican Coke in the week before the Hunt.
Ball In the Bowl
Each slip of paper holds the name of a company who has sponsored a Bowl game and an enumeration that matches the name of Bowl game that they sponsored. Taking the final number as an index into that city yields the word VERY:
| Bowl Color | Paper Text | Bowl Game | Indexed Letter |
|---|---|---|---|
| red | MITSUBISHI 3 5 [4] | LAS VEGAS | V |
| orange | NEW ERA 9[9] | PINSTRIPE | E |
| yellow | CAPITAL ONE 6 [2] | ORANGE | R |
| green | AUTOZONE 7 [7] | LIBERTY | Y |
Open Range
Each of the blocks has an item pictured on it, but when the block is knocked over it reveals a different object. Players must realize they’ve “opened” the first item to reveal what was inside of it. When they take the first letter of each revealed (“inside”) object, they spell a word:
| Initial Item | Inside Item | First Letter |
|---|---|---|
| CIRCUS TENT | ELEPHANT | E |
| HOSPITAL | NURSE | N |
| DINOSAUR EGG | VELOCIRAPTOR | V |
| CHICKEN | EGG | E |
| BOTTLE | LIGHTNING | L |
| ROWBOAT | OAR | O |
| OYSTER | PEARL | P |
| CORAL | EEL | E |
The first letters of the inside items spell ENVELOPE.
Gone Fishin'
Upon examining their fish, players hopefully realized that each crossword style clue solved to a word that's also a fish. Ordering and then indexing into that word by weight got you:
| Fish Size | Fish Weight | Crossword Clue | Fish | Letter |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1 LB | STAGGER CLUMSILY | FLOUNDER | F |
| 2 | 2 LB | BOTTOM OF SHOE | SOLE | O |
| 3 | 3 LB | BIRDCAGE FEATURE | PERCH | R |
| 4 | 4 LB | KIND OF BOARD | SKATE | T |
| 5 | 2 LB | HAIRSTYLE | MULLET | U |
| 6 | 3 LB | ZEST | TANG | N |
| 7 | 2 LB | SINGING VOICE | BASS | A |
| 8 | 5 LB | LIQUEFY | SMELT | T |
| 9 | 4 LB | MEDIEVAL WEAPON | PIKE | E |
This gives us the answer word: FORTUNATE.
Upside Down Croquet
The key to this puzzle (in addition to managing to hit all the targets, which was quite tricky) is realizing that all the ‘beginning’ words can all have the same letter put at the start to make a new word, ‘middle’ words can all have the same letter placed into the middle to make a new word, and ‘end’ words can have the same letter placed at the end to make a new word:
| ? | ? | ? | ||||||
 |
|
| ||||||
| beginning | beginning | beginning | middle | middle | middle | end | end | end |
| (a)corn | (a)lone | (a)void | mo(n)th | pe(n)al | so(n)ar | ever(y) | grim(y) | scar(y) |
Taken together, those three letters form a word: any.
Midway Meta
Fun fact: the Rubik's cubes given away at the prize booth were originally used in the finale of the Miskatonic University Game before finding a second life as Midway prizes in the 2020 Mystery Hunt.
To solve the Midway meta, solvers needed all the answers to the Midway games and the meta handout from the Heart prize. However, they likely rapidly discovered that the answer words from the various Midway booths didn't fit on blanks they were given. Each answer word, in fact, had to be transformed one additional time by applying the name of the Midway game they came from as an operation on the word:
| Midway Game | Answer Word | Transformation | Meta Word |
|---|---|---|---|
| upside-down croquet | any | Turn that lower case word upside down! | hue |
| Elimination Match | COATTAIL | Eliminate the pairs of matching letters | COIL |
| Open Range | ENVELOPE | Open the envelope to see what's inside | LETTER |
| Ring Around the Bottle | SKI | Put RING around the answer word | RISKING |
| Gone Fishin' | FORTUNATE | Get rid of the fish! | FORTE |
| Ball In the Bowl | VERY | Put BALL in the answer word | VERBALLY |
Putting that all into your meta sheet:
Reading the letters in order gives the message: SHORT LINE BALTIC, which hopefully reminded solvers of a Monopoly board. What's midway between Short Line and Baltic on a Monopoly board? Our final answer: BOARDWALK.