View the Hunt website as seen by teams at the end of the Hunt, including all puzzles and solutions.
The 2018 MIT Mystery Hunt was kicked off on Friday, January 12th at noon in Kresge Auditorium. It was themed after Pixar’s Inside Out. After a lackluster introduction of the “2018 Health and Safety Mystery Hunt” by Team Life & Order (renamed from Death and Mayhem), participants were revealed to be inside the head of Miss Terry Hunter, who herself was participating in the Health and Safety Hunt.
Terry’s emotions got a little carried away over the theme (Fear loved it, but Anger was furious), and they managed to both lock themselves out of the control room and eject Terry’s core memories to their respective Islands of Personality. Buzzy of Cranium Command kicked off Operation: Head Hunters to get Terry’s emotions and core memories back where they belonged.
(You can watch kickoff on Youtube.)
In order to complete Operation: Head Hunters, teams had to find a way for each of Terry’s emotions to sneak back into the control room and discover where the core memories had been hiding. Once they had done that, they took over the control panel from Terry’s emotions, guiding Terry through the Health and Safety Hunt’s “epic walkaround.” After completing the Health and Safety walkaround, Terry found the Health and Safety coin, which created a new core memory inside Terry’s mind. The memory of winning the Hunt was the reward for the winners of Operation: Head Hunters.
The new core memory (the coin) was first found by Setec Astronomy at 4:21 PM on Sunday, January 14th. Cranium Command remained open through 10 AM on Monday, January 15th. During that time, an additional 11 teams (12 total) completed the Hunt. Additionally, 51 teams successfully rescued the emotions.
We’ve made the full activity log for the 2018 MIT Mystery Hunt available, including all unlocks, answer submissions, interaction requests, and solution purchases.
- The Emotional Finale, experienced by teams after rescuing the five emotions
- The missions to recover the core memories, experienced after locating one of the core memories: Games, Sci-Fi, Pokémon, and Hacking.
- Bonus puzzles, which were written and tested, but ultimately not needed during Hunt.
- The Grand Finale, a “Spaceteam meets Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes” interactive endgame, which teams experienced after recovering all four core memories.