Puzzles
Last updated February 8, 2024.
One of my main hobbies is puzzlehunts. They’re a little hard to describe, but generally, a puzzlehunt puzzle is some data that usually doesn’t come with direct instructions. Figuring out what to do is part of the puzzle, and it will usually be obvious when you are doing the right thing. Puzzles come in all sorts of forms, but will always result in an answer, which is usually an English word or phrase. See this post for a more detailed introduction.
I’ve been solving puzzlehunts since 2010, and normally try to fly in for MIT Mystery Hunt, which is the biggest puzzlehunt of the year. Here are some Mystery Hunt related things I’ve written:
I’ve also written some puzzles. My more recent puzzles are better than my old ones, but I’m including everything for completeness.
2023
- Mystery Hunt 2023
- Museum Rules, with Catherine Wu and Harrison Ho
- Loading Puzzle, with Catherine Wu, Ivan Wang, and Jacqui Fashimpaur
- Collage, with Brian Shimanuki and Jacqui Fashimpaur
- Interpretive Art, with Ivan Wang
- Conglomerate, with Katie “chuttiekang” Chung and Nishant Pappireddi
- Weaver, with Brian Shimanuki, Tracey Lin, Edgar Chen, Harrison Ho, Nathan Wong, Nishant Pappireddi, Mona Wang, Moor Xu, and Sylvia Jin
- Broken Wheel, with Brian Shimanuki, Nishant Pappireddi, Rahul Sridhar, and Tracey Lin
- Lost to Time, with Bryan Lee, Edgar Chen, and Nishant Pappireddi
- Quandle
- The Filing Cabinet, with Asher Walkover, Jacqui Fashimpaur, and Patrick Xia
- Reactivation, with Bryan Lee, Catherine Wu, Harrison Ho, Jacqui Fashimpaur, Liam Thomas, Olga Vinogradova, and Patrick Xia
- The Legend, with Brian Shimanuki, Patrick Xia, Jacqui Fashimpaur, Jordan Bunker, Lindsay Oliver, Mona Wang, Moor Xu, and Sylvia Jin
- The Scheme, with Brian Shimanuki and Olga Vinogradova
- We Made a Quiz Bowl Packet but Somewhere Things Went Horribly Wrong, with Alex Gotsis, Catherine Wu, Nishant Pappireddi, and Patrick Xia
- Lost at Sea, with Brian Shimanuki and Nishant Pappireddi
- Bedtime Stories / Castle Grounds / Easy as Pie / Fire Starter / Follow Me / Robber Baron, with Brian Shimanuki and Jacqui Fashimpaur
- Period of Wyrm, with Brian Shimanuki, Jacqui Fashimpaur, and Olga Vinogradova
- 5D Barred Diagramless with Multiverse Time Travel, with Holly Sipek and Evan Chen
- Walking Tour, with Brian Shimanuki, Bryan Lee, Edgar Chen, Moor Xu, Nishant Pappireddi, Taichi Akiyama, and Tracey Lin
- Win a Game of Bingo, with Justin Yokota
2021
- Teammate Hunt 2021
- Objection!, with Ivan Wang
- All That’s Left To Do is Extract, with Ivan Wang and Rachel Wei
- Marquee Fonts, with Olga Vinogradova and Rachel Wei
- Plagiarism
- The Mystical Plaza (meta), with Olga Vinogradova and Rachel Wei
2020
- Teammate Hunt 2020
- Codemanes, with Alex Pei, Bryan Lee, and Ivan Wang
- Puzzle Not Found
- Solve, Index, Sort, Identify
- My Little Pony: Puzzles are Magic
- Art of the Dress
- Applejack’s Game, with Nishant Pappireddi
- It’s a Long Story
- The Key is Going Slow and Steady, with an anonymous person
- Equestrian Tour (meta)
- Cross Eyed, with Anderson Wang and Nishant Pappireddi
- Recommendations
- Anthropology
- Seasoned Traveler (meta)
- Endgame
- Elements War (meta)
2013
- MIT Mystery Hunt 2013
- Snow Day, with John Wiesemann and Veronica Gross
- This puzzle no longer works - if you have the original assets, let me know!
- Houston, We Have Liftoff
- Snow Day, with John Wiesemann and Veronica Gross