MIT Mystery Hunt 2013

[Thok]

SOUTH BEND, maybe?

Also the unmarked boxes (with EXIT and SOUTH marked) give ACTRESS W.... if read left to right then top to bottom.

[novice]

Yeah I just marked off EXIT and SOUTH to reveal ACTRESS W...



so EXIT ??? instead of BEAT BOX, and SOUTH ???(?). SOUTH BEND works.

[Thok]

Place the clues alphabetically by shape word. I think that should work.

[Thok]

I'm pretty sure it's SOUTH BEND in the first 5+4 and we need to find something else to handle DEATH STAR. South Bend is a fairly famous city in Indiana (where the University of Notre Dame is).

[novice]

[novice]

And the final word is SCOPHTHALMUS RHOMBUS. We're left with ACTRESS WEST.



5 + 3 STORY ARC
5 + 4 SOUTH BEND
10 + 3 SUGGESTION BOX
6 + 6 GOSSIP ??????
3 + 5 + 4 ICE CREAM CONE
7 + 4 TRAFFIC CONE
6 + 6 STREET CORNER
8 + 7 BASEBALL DIAMOND
8 + 4 AMERICAN FLAG
6 + 5 DOUBLE HELIX
9 + 4 GRAPPLING HOOK
8 + 4 ASSEMBLY LINE
3 + 4 BEE LINE
6 + 4 CREDIT LINE
4 + 4 PLOT LINE
8 + 4 FEEDBACK LOOP
11 + 3 ULTRAVIOLET RAY
12 + 7 SCOPHTHALMUS RHOMBUS
6 + 4 BOXING RING
4 + 3 EXIT ???
5 + 6 DEATH ??????
10 + 8 SIERPINSKI TRIANGLE
5 + 4 CRIME WAVE
5 + 4 TIDAL WAVE

Call in MAE.

[novice]

I guess the final words are GOSSIP CHAINS, EXIT ROW, and DEATH SQUARE.

[esme]

The answer is correct (although the shapes of GOSSIP and DEATH are wrong).
_________________
Mundus vult decipi, ergo decipiatur.

[gftt*]

Great to see that one destroyed like that. I don't have time logs but I think it was the first one my team solved in the round. I definitely remember seeing a big SOLVED on it before I had even gotten a chance to look at the puzzle.

Skipping over Random Walk since it's a set of (hard!) logic puzzles that are hard to do collaboratively. Also skipping over You Should Be Listening since it's about Japanese television.

So that leaves us with Crossword Complex

[novice]

[esme]

[gftt*]

I put the crossword clues on the google doc:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Aq1IiQ8fbOs2dFVQX2FEdkdoYzV0NWhmeDA5b2R2Rnc#gid=1

I assume the 6 grids glue together along their sides to form a cube. It also seems that words go up and left in addition to down and across, and cross from one grid to the next grid.

[gftt*]

They do not form a cube. I have no idea what they form, actually, but it seems that the bottom of the first grid connects to the left side of the same grid.

[gftt*]

All but the extraction is done. The extraction will involve finding topologically trivial loops and probably is not all that interesting to people who don't like topology, and it is definitely not able to be done online. I'll finish it off at some point if nobody else does but we can start looking at the next puzzle.

That next one is Vertexillology - I did a fair amount of work on this one (after others got the aha(s)) and endorse it heartily! It should be a good one to do on the board. Enjoy!

[gftt*]

Nobody's interested in this one? It really is a good puzzle.

[Thok]

Some early observations:
a-k should be colors, and no color seems to be connected to the same color. There seem to be six colors (red,blue,yellow,green, white, black).

v,w,x,y,z should be positive integers, as should the the other expressions involving them.

[novice]

[gftt*]

OK, cool. Holler if you want a small hint.

[L'lanmal]

Vexillology is the study of flags. Perhaps the circles each represent countries, the lines between circles adjacencies/borders, the colors represent colors on their flags, and the internal edges the color adjacencies/number of transitions?

Otherwise, I note that while the numbers appear to go to 34, if we read those as 3 and 4, then only digits 1-5 appear.

[novice]

[novice]

First group of flags:
China (giving v=5) - Burma - Thailand - Malaysia
X - Japan? - Indonesia

The X then has colors i=blue, j=white, k=red and probably borders China and Japan, so I think it is North Korea:


Giving xy-vz-w = 2 and x/y - yw + v - z = 8 4.

[novice]

For the second group of flags, the green, yellow, black one could be Jamaica:


The one to the left of it could be Cuba, giving c=blue:


Lower left could be Panama, yielding w=3:


Pencilling in the one above Panama as Colmbia, with d=yellow:


Lower right is St. Kitts and Nevis:


The one to the right is Puerto Rico:


So we need something with (v/y + (x-wz))y boundaries between blue and yellow, bordering all these countries/territories.

[novice]

The only yellow and blue flag with lots of boundaries that I can think of is the EU flag, and I'm not sure what that has to do with the Carribean. So moving on to the third group:

red 9 yellow: Macedonia


red 3 black: Albania


white x a: Greece, a = blue, x = 8


red 2 white: Turkey


b 2 red blue green: Azerbaijan, b = white


white 8 red: Georgia


The blue circle: Israel, v+w+x+y+z-(z-w)y = 12 (there are white stripes at the top and bottom of the flag as well)

[novice]

Fourth group:

white 34 green: Saudi Arabia, I presume.


red, green, black and white: United Arab Emirates, y = 1


Or Jordan, with y = 2

[novice]

Jordan seems most promising, it leads us back to Israel for the (blue 12 e) circle, so e is white.


That also gives us (black, white 2 green, f=red) as Syria:


So in the blue circle we're looking for white and red, bordering Israel and Jordan, with y-(x-(v+w))/z connections. Since y = 2 this means at most 2 connections.
"Bordering" seems to be loosely defined. Bahrain and Turkey are two possibilities. Bahrain:

[novice]

The bottommost group should be the flags of Sweden, Finland, Denmark and Germany, with z=4 and a flag with black and yellow colours in the blue circle.

[novice]

I think these values may be correct:
v=5
w=3
x=12
y=2
z=4
I had x=8 from the greek flag, but the numbers work out with x=12.

In which case the five blue circles contain:
blue 1 white 1 red - W/T
yellow 5 blue - G
blue 24 white - N*
red 1 white - H
black 1 yellow - I

The letters are from mapping these circles to the flag alphabet. Not sure where we get the sort order, but the letters anagram to NIGHT and THING.
*Two rectangles only touching at corners are apparently counted as having separate boundaries - I guess that explains the Greek flag issue too.

Call in Night and Thing

[esme]

[gftt*]

Good: NIGHT. (Sorry.)

The blue circles represent seas - for instance, Denmark, Germany, Sweden and Finland all border the Baltic. This clues the nautical flags and also gives the sort order (since the seas are the Aegean, Baltic, Caribbean, Dead, and East China). My team debated for quite a long time over whether to loosen the definition of "bordering" and searching for flags of international organizations containing the given countries before seeing the nautical connection, so I'm glad you were able to sidestep that quickly.

OK, that's the last thief puzzle from Ocean's 11 that we can do, since Casino Lobdell was an event.

On to the casino puzzles; you can see them across the top of the main Ocean's 11 page. The way this worked - each member of the 11 is linked to 2-3 casinos. For instance, Carl Reiner/Saul Bloom/Vertexillonomy links to Stratosphere and Aria. When his puzzle got solved, new parts of the Stratosphere and Aria puzzles were revealed. For instance, three of the four blocks of clues in Stratosphere were initially unseen; each solve opened one new block.

We (meaning you) can look at Stratosphere next. I won't say whether the answers from the thief puzzles feeding into this casino puzzle are needed or not, but you have NIGHT from Carl Reiner and I'll tell you that George Clooney's puzzle has the answer BORG, since I don't think we'll be looking at that one. Brad Pitt's puzzle is the ...Left Blank one that novice is still working on so you'll have to work without that bit of info.

[novice]

Aegean sea - blue 24 white - N
Bothnian Baltic sea - black 1 yellow - I
Carribean sea - yellow 5 blue - G
Dead sea - red 1 white - H
East China sea - blue 1 white 1 red - W/T

Call in Night

Edit: crosspost

[Thok]

None of the locations in Stratosphere seem to be correct. For example, Rosa Parks died in Detroit, not Cape Romano, and the A&M bonfire collapse was presumably in College Station, not St. Martin.

[gftt*]

Maybe now that Suspence is back things can get going in this thread again. Or did he look at all the solutions too?

[Suspence]

Nope...haven't looked at anything. I'll try to catch up here.

Looks like we're waiting on a confirmation and new puzzle. Any unsolved ones I should peruse while we wait (rather than going back and reading the whole thread?)
_________________
I hate people who try to write interesting things in their signature.

[gftt*]

[Suspence]

OK, just gonna work through it and see what hits me (or the rest of you)

Cardinals defeat 49ers 31-14 in Punta Hualaxtoc in first regular-season game outside the United States - MEXICO CITY - 10/2/2005
Hudson Austin forms new Sinaloan military government - GRENADIAN - 10/19/1983
HMS Mercury decommissioned in formal ceremony in Cape Hatteras - ? - 8/31/1993
Four days after the election, votes still being counted for Franken-Coleman race in the Cayman Islands - MINNESOTA - 11/8/2008
"God Bless America" composer dies at 101 in his home at Isle of Palms - NEW YORK CITY - 9/22/1989
Christchurch, Nova Scotia struck by 7.1 magnitude earthquake; no deaths were reported - NEW ZEALAND - 9/4/2010
Golden Girls share Emmys with Cagney & Lacey at Cabo San Lucas award ceremony - PASADENA - 9/21/1986

First Bose-Einstein condensate produced at the Joint Institute for Laboratory Astrophysics in Alligator Point - BOULDER - 6/5/1995
Deadliest toll yet: Beltway Sniper kills five people in Intracoastal City - MONTGOMERY COUNTY? - 10/2/2002
Prisoners riot and seize control of Attica Correctional Facility in Cabo Gracias a Dios - ATTICA, NY - 9/9/1971
The Who plays at the Woodstock Music Festival in New Orleans - BETHEL, NY - 8/17/1969

National civil rights activist Parks dies peacefully in Cape Romano at the age of 92 - DETROIT - 10/24/2005
Dodgers win World Series after 9-3 win over White Sox in Pensacola - CHICAGO - 10/8/1959
Tom Powers scores six touchdowns in historic Everglades game - RICHMOND - 10/21/1950
A&M annual bonfire collapses, killing 12 in St. Martin - COLLEGE STATION - 11/18/1999
Gulf Shores becomes the fifth jurisdiction in Canada to legalize same-sex marriage - MANITOBA - 9/16/2004
Pedestal of the historic Outer Banks Statue of Liberty monument reopens to visitors after three years - NEW YORK CITY - 8/3/2004
Student kills two in tragic shooting at Rocori High School, Puerto Penasco - COLD SPRING, MN - 9/24/2003

Four suicide bombers kill 52 and injure more than 700 on the Cuban public transport system - LONDON - 7/7/2005
Four professors killed by mechanical engineering professor Fabrikant in Homestead, Florida university shooting - MONTREAL, QUEBEC - 8/24/1992
Balloon lands in Mazatlan, ending its record-breaking 2,515 mile journey from Costa Mesa - BLACKBEARD ISLAND, GA - 10/11/1981
National Geographic magazine announces Archaeoraptor fossil discovery at Cape Sable press conference - WASHINGTON, DC - 10/15/1999
National Defense Education Act signed in Santiago de Cuba - ? - 9/2/1958
Viamala tunnel crash claims nine Sinaloans in bus/car collision - SWISS - 9/16/2006
_________________
I hate people who try to write interesting things in their signature.

[Suspence]

About 85% done, and it now occurs to me I should have probably narrowed these down to individual dates. Bah!

EDIT: Going back through, it seems the date is important. Everything is between August and November.

EDIT 2: Not everything actually. I've run into a June and July as well.
_________________
I hate people who try to write interesting things in their signature.

[Suspence]

Found the connection - lots of coastal cities, with dates in hurricane season.

The clue gives the date, the incorrect city in the clue is where a hurricane hit on that date.

STAN - Punta Hualaxtoc - 10/2/05
TICO - Sinaloa - 10/19/83
EMILY
PALOMA
HUGO
EARL
NEWTON

ALLISON
LILI
EDITH
CAMILLE

WILMA
IRENE
?
LENNY
IVAN
ALEX
MARTY

DENNIS
ANDREW
NORMA
IRENE
ELLA
LANE

STEPHEN ALEC WILLIAM DANIEL

Call in BALDWIN

In hopes that this is correct, what's next?
_________________
I hate people who try to write interesting things in their signature.

[gftt*]

Indeed.

Next up is Treasure Island. It's a good puzzle, but I'm unsure of whether it is good one for collaboration on a message board. Nevertheless, you may as well give it a shot.

[Suspence]

Is there a spreadsheet we're collaborating on for this one? Seems like that would be a good format for the work on this one. I've got my own Excel sheet started.
_________________
I hate people who try to write interesting things in their signature.

[gftt*]

This has been the google docs spreadsheet:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Aq1IiQ8fbOs2dFVQX2FEdkdoYzV0NWhmeDA5b2R2Rnc#gid=0

Looking back also reminded me that This Page Intentionally Left Blank is still unsolved. You can check the last few pages to see what progress novice (primarily) has made.