2013 MIT Mystery Hunt structure

Warning: contains lots of spoilers!

After winning last year's Hunt, Manic Sages mortgaged the coin to Enigma Valley Investment & Loan, who secured it in a vault guarded by six security systems all constructed by experts. Kick-off was a presentation from the bank's president about their security systems. After this presentation, Alyssa P. Hacker appeared to rally solvers together to find the coin.

In the first round of the hunt (round 0), each puzzle's solution is the name of one person who designed a security system for the bank. At the end of the round, you're shown a video describing all the security systems and also access to another website, which contains the remaining rounds.

Each subsequent round is centered on one of the six characters. Alyssa asks the person to join your heist team, but he inevitably disagrees. The metapuzzle solution gives you a bad pun describing a reason why that character should be mad at the bank, which convinces the character to change his mind and help you. At the end of the round, you're also sent to the Institute for Heist Training, Facilitation, and Planning to physically solve a mock-up of the security system.

After solving all rounds, Alyssa still won't let you go ahead with the heist because she doesn't trust you; you need your own reason to be mad at the bank. The puzzle "Some Puzzling Activity On Your Account" provides you with such a reason and then leads to the final run-around.

Unfortunately, during the third round, you decide to pass up on Maxwell Smart and recruit Agent 99 for your team instead. Maxwell Smart tries to steal the coin himself, but he's caught and so the bank beefs up its security systems. Luckily, your account manager at the bank is on your side and wants to help you out.

During the final run-around, a small away team of six or so people has to solve the physical security system, while the home team works on the puzzle emailed out by the account manager. The puzzle provides a hint which is critical for solving the more difficult version of the security system.

After finally breaking into the vault (which was in 13-1143), teams found nine coins: eight counterfeits plus one original. The final challenge had teams weigh these coins on a balance scale to determine which was the real coin.

This year's coin was a one trillion dollar piece of currency with images of Killian Court, the Enigma Valley logo, and a beaver.