A Math Guide to the MIT Mystery Hunt 2011
As I did for 2010 and for previous years, here are math-related puzzles from the MIT Mystery Hunt 2011.
- Another Small Collection of Immense Integers — Large integers.
- Two Heads are Better than One — A logic puzzle.
- Worthy of Picasso — Paint-by-Numbers followed by a mathematical extraction.
- Unfair Cryptogram — A cryptogram.
- The Eternal Struggle — Something happens at every time step.
- N-tris — A tetris variation.
- Scrambling Attributes Yields Conundrum — A hidden logic puzzle.
- Basic Knowledge — An integer circuit diagram.
- Nik-holey — A set of Nikoli puzzles with a twist, including Nurikabe, Slitherlink, Hitori, Heyawake, Fillomino, Hashiwokakero.
- Games — Related to games.
- You Shall Understand What Hath Befallen — An Othello game.
- Pointillisme — Paint-by-Numbers.
- The Crypt — A cryptogram.
- Technological Crisis at Shikakuro Farms — My favorite puzzle, a blend of shikaku, kakuro, and sudoku.
- Showcase — This one looks the most mathematical, but you need to physically visit MIT’s math department to solve it.
- Advanced Maths — My second favorite, this looks like binary operations, but not quite.
- Efficiency — A Scheme code.
- Losing My Nerve — A changing cipher cryptogram with extra math at the extraction stage.
- Clues and Coordinates — 3D geometry.
Two more puzzles deserve a special mention for their nerdiness. My teammates loved them.
- Sufficiently Advanced Technology — It is difficult to believe that this puzzle is not over-constrained.
- Unlikely Situations — This puzzle needed cooperation from a very special person in advance.
Jenny:
The links don’t appear to be working…
22 January 2011, 11:39 amTanya Khovanova:
Jenny, they work for me, slowly.
22 January 2011, 11:53 amJenny:
Oh, now they do! Before, it was just “Page not found”
24 January 2011, 7:00 pmJBL:
Technological crisis was indeed fun — it’s nice to have a puzzle with directions, for once :). I really enjoyed the Build Your Own Acrostic from Zelda World: https://ihavetofindpeach.com/puzzles/zelda/build_your_own_acrostic/ — three meshing of the three answers was beautiful.
25 January 2011, 3:15 pmWild About Math bloggers 2/11/11 » Fun Math Blog:
[…] Law of Cosines, and of the basic trig laws for oblique triangles. Tanya Khovanova has produced a Math Guide to the MIT Mystery Hunt 2011. These look like some pretty tough […]
20 February 2011, 10:29 am