MIT has just made the puzzles from last week's Mystery Hunt public. You can see all the puzzles if you click the "Public Access" link on that page and then look through the Rounds dropdown menu.
I always enjoy picking through the MIT Mystery Hunt and seeing how much I can figure out. The answer is always "very little" because the puzzles are meant to be solved by teams of 30+ people working in shifts, and I heard that this year's hunt went long so the puzzles were probably especially hard this year. I'm happy if I can even recognise what a puzzle is about. I just like to admire the ridiculous hoops you're expected to jump through for some of these puzzles.
I've only looked at the Atrium round so far and all the puzzles have kicked my ass, but I feel like Cohost users might like the idea behind You're Telling Me. (I think that link will 404 unless you use the Public Access login link earlier in this post first.)
picking through these now, here's some other ones that catch my eye:
https://interestingthings.museum/puzzles/inscription
https://interestingthings.museum/puzzles/nuclear-words (edit: I didn't notice until just now, but I'm pretty sure this is a metapuzzle, so while it looks cool you're not gonna be able to do much with it unless you have all the answers from the other puzzles in the Science Center round)
https://interestingthings.museum/puzzles/natural-transformation
https://interestingthings.museum/puzzles/scicabulary
https://interestingthings.museum/puzzles/catenaverbozoa
https://interestingthings.museum/puzzles/direct-translation (this one is for the Tunic fans in the audience)
https://interestingthings.museum/puzzles/art-of-the-gamesuchfame
https://interestingthings.museum/puzzles/kubernetes
Finished flicking through the puzzles. This hunt did some wild things with metapuzzles!
Here's a few more which really grabbed me. (This is going to spoil the structure of the hunt, but I hope that doesn't matter at this point, since most of it is already available and unlocked on the Public Access version of the hunt)
One of the Puzzles of All Time - I managed to get about halfway through solving this on my own. I like that you can tell when in 2022 this puzzle was created.
A Twisted Theory - Listen to the audio file if you want to hear (a good impression of) Alex Jones ranting about anagrams. (Transcript provided for anyone who can't listen.)
Formula Deluxe - One of my favourite genres of MIT Mystery Hunt puzzle is the puzzle that is really clearly about one thing and then turns out to secretly actually be about another thing.
Weaver - This physical puzzle is unsolvable with just the PDF provided, so just click the View Solution button and marvel at this bonkers construction.
Zed Rainbow - A very cute retrocomputing puzzle. (If this link and the next few links give 404 errors, you'll first need to click the Public Access link here. It looks like the second half of the Mystery Hunt was hosted on a secret second website which uses a different set of cookies to the first website.)
This Puzzle is Just Another Regular Cryptic - As someone who's tried setting cryptic crosswords, I'm genuinely stunned by the gimmick of this puzzle. Brilliant construction.
Izzy's Art Gallery - A clever combination of two surprisingly similar themes. I think a lot of Cohosters will spot at least one of the subjects immediately, even without trying to solve the puzzle.
Flooded Caves - Another puzzle with an obvious theme and then a secret real theme. This starts off as a ton of variant Cave logic puzzles - I've never got the hang of Cave, but if you're good at them you might enjoy these.
Cure the Werewolf's Woe - This is a whole Sokoban-style puzzle game, and it's just delightful. I could quite happily play a full-length stand-alone version of this. (With a tutorial, of course. I did not solve any of the levels in this game.)
