Mystery Hunt Roundup 2020
Jan. 26th, 2020 04:39 pmSo this was my first Mystery Hunt where I actually went up to Boston for it! Y'know, that being practical now that I'm in New York. Normally if I were going up to Boston I'd see if I could stay with a friend, but during Hunt... yeah, no, not going to subject my host to that. :P As I mentioned Daniel and Emma were also coming up to Boston for Hunt (and also on Plant) so I tried to coordinate with them somewhat; that didn't really work out but I did at least go stay in the same hotel as them?
So yeah I stuck with Plant this year rather than returning to Donner Party, because I didn't want to be one of a very few on-site people on a mostly remote team, because they I'd get stuck with all the on-site-only stuff. And hoo boy with the weather that especially turned out to be a good idea! I was not prepared for how cold Boston was going to be; I totally forgot to bring a sweater. Oh well...
So uh yeah most of the time was just spent at Plant HQ. So much of my food for that weekend came from the snacks they had lying around there! I tried to go to kickoff but got there a little late and they were full. Instead of watching the livestream, I just sat outside and read stuff on the internet. Meanwhile, with other people watching the livestream, I heard everything dimly twice... I also made it to wrap-up, but maybe I should say a bit more before I talk about that.
I also ran into Marc Sweetgall from high school there, woah. He's on Setec Astronomy apparently. At wrap-up I encountered Eric Frackleton (currently on one of the teams that split off from Palindrome) who I totally forgot I had seen a few months ago at the PROMYS thing. Missed seeing Li-Mei (of Death and Mayhem) there apparently... (Rhiannon, despite leading a team and living near Boston, solves remotely! So she wasn't there...)
Oh, I'm pretty sure this was also my first Hunt where I didn't stay up all night at any point. :P I was just way too tired. Friday I was tired both from waking up for wrap-up and from waking up early the previous day just to see Nintendo announce freaking Byleth for Smash @_@
(Not that I'm against Byleth in Smash, I'm always for more characters in Smash (as long as isn't Sora :P ), but there's no denying it's a bit of a disappointing choice)
So yeah I couldn't stay up all night Friday. In fact I was so tired I was planning on going to sleep at a normal person time like 11 PM, or maybe after the nominal HQ closure at 1 AM, but there were puzzles so in fact I stayed up till past 4 AM, i.e. normal time for me. :P I was really tired Saturday night as well for whatever reason...
Oh yeah, nominal HQ closure -- whoo, that was a mess. Fortunately, despite having no actual MIT students on the team, we were able to get special permission to stay open, so that wasn't a problem, yay!
(Also in firsts: Yay automated answer-checking!)
We were not close to winning; we didn't make it to the runaround or anything. When I went to sleep Saturday night we still had the two final lands still locked. We did have them unlocked when I woke up Sunday but I don't think we were very far in either.
Btw, on the way to the hotel when I was arriving I passed by a place with a Medieval Madness machine... I was like, oh man I have to go there before I leave... (I did not)
(Really though I gotta get myself to Sunshine Laundromat sometime)
Anyway so! On Sunday night after coming back to the hotel, intending to sleep, I went down to the lobby to get more tissues and there I encountered... Hunter and Lee! They called out to me and it took me a moment because I certainly didn't expect to see them here. I was like, what are you doing here, and they're like, we're here for Mystery Hunt, same as you. Lee apparently saw me at kickoff but I missed his attempt to get my attention. They're on... I forget what team, a team associated to some dorm that is mostly undergrads from that dorm.
(I had completely forgotten that Hunter does Mystery Hunt, I think largely because we never did it together in Ann Arbor.)
Anyway so I ask them if they're going to wrap-up and Hunter's like, no, wrap-up is terrible. Harry do you like wrap-up?? And I'm like, I've never been up to Boston for Mystery Hunt before, I have no idea! Anyway he explains, most of wrap-up is OK, but then there's always the part where they ask people to come up and tell solving stories from the year, and people just come up and talk about how oh there was this puzzle and we thought it was about crabs but actually it was about samurai and it's terrible. Well, uh, they didn't do that at wrap-up this year? So it was OK!
Oh, one other thing: Google search results really aren't what they used to be, huh? That may have made some things harder. I tried using DuckDuckGo but didn't notice a big improvement; maybe the things I was searching just never would've worked well. Still, wondering if I should start using Bing instead or something...
Anyway enough fluff, time to talk about the puzzles! Yes including some crab/samurai stories. :P
( Cut for puzzle spoilers! )
Whew OK I think that's all I have to say about that! And hopefully I can go up to Boston again next year!
So yeah I stuck with Plant this year rather than returning to Donner Party, because I didn't want to be one of a very few on-site people on a mostly remote team, because they I'd get stuck with all the on-site-only stuff. And hoo boy with the weather that especially turned out to be a good idea! I was not prepared for how cold Boston was going to be; I totally forgot to bring a sweater. Oh well...
So uh yeah most of the time was just spent at Plant HQ. So much of my food for that weekend came from the snacks they had lying around there! I tried to go to kickoff but got there a little late and they were full. Instead of watching the livestream, I just sat outside and read stuff on the internet. Meanwhile, with other people watching the livestream, I heard everything dimly twice... I also made it to wrap-up, but maybe I should say a bit more before I talk about that.
I also ran into Marc Sweetgall from high school there, woah. He's on Setec Astronomy apparently. At wrap-up I encountered Eric Frackleton (currently on one of the teams that split off from Palindrome) who I totally forgot I had seen a few months ago at the PROMYS thing. Missed seeing Li-Mei (of Death and Mayhem) there apparently... (Rhiannon, despite leading a team and living near Boston, solves remotely! So she wasn't there...)
Oh, I'm pretty sure this was also my first Hunt where I didn't stay up all night at any point. :P I was just way too tired. Friday I was tired both from waking up for wrap-up and from waking up early the previous day just to see Nintendo announce freaking Byleth for Smash @_@
(Not that I'm against Byleth in Smash, I'm always for more characters in Smash (as long as isn't Sora :P ), but there's no denying it's a bit of a disappointing choice)
So yeah I couldn't stay up all night Friday. In fact I was so tired I was planning on going to sleep at a normal person time like 11 PM, or maybe after the nominal HQ closure at 1 AM, but there were puzzles so in fact I stayed up till past 4 AM, i.e. normal time for me. :P I was really tired Saturday night as well for whatever reason...
Oh yeah, nominal HQ closure -- whoo, that was a mess. Fortunately, despite having no actual MIT students on the team, we were able to get special permission to stay open, so that wasn't a problem, yay!
(Also in firsts: Yay automated answer-checking!)
We were not close to winning; we didn't make it to the runaround or anything. When I went to sleep Saturday night we still had the two final lands still locked. We did have them unlocked when I woke up Sunday but I don't think we were very far in either.
Btw, on the way to the hotel when I was arriving I passed by a place with a Medieval Madness machine... I was like, oh man I have to go there before I leave... (I did not)
(Really though I gotta get myself to Sunshine Laundromat sometime)
Anyway so! On Sunday night after coming back to the hotel, intending to sleep, I went down to the lobby to get more tissues and there I encountered... Hunter and Lee! They called out to me and it took me a moment because I certainly didn't expect to see them here. I was like, what are you doing here, and they're like, we're here for Mystery Hunt, same as you. Lee apparently saw me at kickoff but I missed his attempt to get my attention. They're on... I forget what team, a team associated to some dorm that is mostly undergrads from that dorm.
(I had completely forgotten that Hunter does Mystery Hunt, I think largely because we never did it together in Ann Arbor.)
Anyway so I ask them if they're going to wrap-up and Hunter's like, no, wrap-up is terrible. Harry do you like wrap-up?? And I'm like, I've never been up to Boston for Mystery Hunt before, I have no idea! Anyway he explains, most of wrap-up is OK, but then there's always the part where they ask people to come up and tell solving stories from the year, and people just come up and talk about how oh there was this puzzle and we thought it was about crabs but actually it was about samurai and it's terrible. Well, uh, they didn't do that at wrap-up this year? So it was OK!
Oh, one other thing: Google search results really aren't what they used to be, huh? That may have made some things harder. I tried using DuckDuckGo but didn't notice a big improvement; maybe the things I was searching just never would've worked well. Still, wondering if I should start using Bing instead or something...
Anyway enough fluff, time to talk about the puzzles! Yes including some crab/samurai stories. :P
( Cut for puzzle spoilers! )
Whew OK I think that's all I have to say about that! And hopefully I can go up to Boston again next year!
