Mystery Hunt Highlights by Bryan
Highlights from the Hunt complete with the first puzzle we solved!
Soon I’ll be posting some photos and such from the hunt, but for now I’ll leave you with some of the funny quotes from the weekend. Also, this week, I’ll be highlighting some of the puzzles from the hunt. The next day, I’ll post the solution.
Quotes:
Tom: “There’s no other shape with four sides other than a square, right?”
Chris: “Wiki-wiki-wiki-wiki-wiki-forever fresh”
Brian: “The answer is shynonymush.”
Chandra: “I’m reading photon jokes…”
Brian: “The answer is SPEED OF LIGHT. Can I spell that? S-P-E-E-D O-V L-I-G-H-T”
Pete: “Hello, I’d like to speak to Agent Chitty Chitty”
Here’s the first puzzle we solved, see if you can figure it out.
182.2 SMOOTS
On one side, it says “NCIL SACOEBBD FM TH RDC AEUEF DDQNCQL AM GANKDRED HQ RJ UFEG”. On the other side, it says “ZMIZ SIYYEZDF LY TV VLG MMWEV TFWZGSZ AY IAVYNTYX JU VT YJYS”.
Haha good times. This mystery hunt looks really really fun
.
Anyway, so in the cooperative spirit of MIT:
182.2 smoots is half the Harvard Bridge, or halfway. The two sentences placed one above another gives you letters, so, halfway between the respective letters in each sentence gives you:
THIS SENTENCE IS TO THE GIVEN LETTERS AS HARRISON IS TO WHOM
(I think)
Cool except this analogy means nothing to me. Maybe other people can pick up where I left off, this puzzle is eating into homework time
. Enjoy!
That was a really bad explanation. Here’s an example:
NCIL
ZMIZ
Halfway from N to Z is T, Halfway from C to M is H, etc I etc S. So the first word reads THIS.
I figured out the “halfway” relationship between the letters by staring at the sentences for a very, very long time.
“N is to Z as…” “N is letter 14, Z is 26…” “subtract…” “square…”
Eventually I got somewhere.
I forgot about the title – 182.2 Smoots – entirely.
Although that would have cut down on my staring time a lot, wouldn’t it?
Yo, sounds fun fun fun! Are you coming down to NYC at all this IAP?