Puzzle Hunt
Hundreds of students gathered in Grainger Auditorium on Friday night to kickoff the second annual PEA Puzzle Hunt. To begin, seniors Arjun Rajan and Solon James introduced the rules to an eager and competitive crowd. After fielding a few questions, senior Matt Hambacher appeared on stage dressed as the most popular character from Exeter math courses, Alex the Geologist. Hambacher played the part of a lost, confused and thirsty Alex, asking the crowd to help him find the fastest way to the nearest gas station to buy a soda. With that, the puzzle-filled weekend began.
“The real fun of the hunt came from actually solving the puzzles and running around the town of Exeter to try to find clues.”
About 250 students competed in the Puzzle Hunt, which featured teams of six to ten members vying for over $600 in prizes. This year’s Hunt leaders came up with a creative story as a theme for the Hunt: Alex the Geologist had been kidnapped at the hands of the three Sodalords: Dr. Pepper, Mr. Pepsinister and the Cokie Monster, each with the goal of featuring their sodas in the Exeter math curriculum.
The winning team, led by senior Alec Sun, won an all-expenses paid trip to a Boston escape room, which is a room where players need to solve puzzles in order to escape. The team—named Pleasant Mother Pheasant Pluckers—solved a total of 34 puzzles by Sunday afternoon at 4:37 P.M. Three other teams—Rudolph, North by North Weth and The Strongs—also completed the hunt by 7 P.M. on Sunday night.
The Hunt had begun last year when a group of students, inspired by their experience at the MIT Mystery Hunt, decided to bring the tradition back to Exeter. The group spent over three months writing puzzles for this weekend’s event. Upper Vinjai Vale, the Hunt Director, emphasized the value of such events, saying, “Puzzle Hunt is unique because it brings together Exonians across specialties and interest groups to work together. The teams have art people and math people, poets and science people.”
The competition is structured with five rounds, each containing four to six puzzles for teams to solve. The answers to each of those are then used for the meta-puzzle, given at the end of each round. After completing the previous five rounds, the teams must solve a meta-meta-puzzle, combining answers from the other meta-puzzles. Upon completion, the teams enter into the final round, which requires them to find clues across campus and the town of Exeter.
When teams believe they have an answer, they enter it into a website designed by the Hunt headquarters. Vale said that the headquarters received around 1,000 separate submissions over the course of the weekend.
Vale also noticed that multiple friend groups joined the Puzzle Hunt. “It’s the kind of thing that you can do with your friends that come from all kinds of different backgrounds, and I think that’s one of the reasons the Puzzle Hunt draws so many people.” Other people were also drawn to the team aspect of the competition. “Solving puzzles certainly could not be done without a group; an integral part of the process was bouncing around ideas and splitting up tasks,” said Sun.
Instructor of Physics James DiCarlo, one of the few faculty members who participated in the event, enjoyed watching students discover their own solutions to the puzzles. “It’s great to be part of a problem-solving group where I’m not the ‘teacher.’ It’s a chance to revel in just how clever and tenacious and tech-savvy and broadly-intelligent the students here are. It’s humbling and fantastic,” DiCarlo said. He also enjoyed the puzzle-solving process, saying, “It’s satisfying to see patterns emerge from noise. You also get a peek into the intricate minds of the people writing the puzzles, many of whom are my physics students.”
Senior Gavin Cotter, who participated in the Hunt for the first time this year, remarked on the excitement of solving puzzles. “My favorite part about solving puzzles is spending a lot of time really thinking about a problem with others and then finally having that moment when you come to an answer,” Cotter said.
The Hunt had something for everyone; the final round saw fierce competition. The winning team finished just twenty minutes ahead of the second-place group, after more than 46 hours of puzzle solving.
Though Sun enjoyed winning the final prize, he particularly liked the joy he and his team found in the search of puzzle answers. “Each puzzle was unique in its own way, and some of the best ones had us interacting with the Exeter campus,” Sun said. “The real fun of the hunt came from actually solving the puzzles and running around the town of Exeter to try to find clues.” He also appreciated the significant amount of work that the Hunt headquarters had carried out in order to give their fellow students a chance to let down and have fun. “They revamped the website, and I think a lot more teams were motivated to complete the hunt. It was a true spring term breakout,” Sun said.
Most of the people that made up Hunt headquarters also met weekly with Puzzle Club, where they had discussed puzzle-solving strategies and writing. In the future, the club hopes to travel to the MIT Mystery Hunt and take part in some online competitions.
For the second year, the intensive work of Puzzle Hunt writers and organizers paid off to bring an intellectual challenge to the Exeter community. “I really have to thank the entire headquarters, especially the lead puzzle writers, Solon James and Yannick Yao, for being instrumental in running a successful event,” Vale said. “We’ve spent the last few months writing puzzles, and I think everyone had a great time.”