This was my first year solving MITMH and it was pretty fun, unfortunately it was kind of long so I got tired by the end of it. Our team got like 160/240ish solves so that's pretty cool, didn't finish though. Also I think it's kind of funny that after wrap up, all will to postsolve puzzles was immediately jettisoned from my soul. I would've thought I'd want to keep solving but I guess not. Anyways yeah, there were a lot of cool and creative puzzles in there and I hope to attend in person next year!⁸
Anyways now I'll talk about some of the puzzles in the hunt.
Always a sucker for a visual meta like this. One nitpick though, the flavor text says to find something on the banks of the river but the extract only involves one bank. Literally unsolvable.
😠😠😠😠😠😠😠😠😠😠😠ðŸ˜
If I were to describe this puzzle with one word it'd be elegant. It does just enough to do what it needs to do and exactly nothing more. It's something I strive for when I make my own puzzles as well.⁹
This was not fun to solo.
To be frank with you guys I didn't actually help much when solving this one, but I saw everyone else having a blast with it and learning the conlang, and when I realized I wanted to join in too everything had been translated. Damn.
Our team was stuck on this for so long thinking it was some html thing or a math theorem or whatever. Nah, turns out it was something really simple that just none of us noticed. It didn't help that the flavor text really pointed towards the html idea. I wish this meta had been better executed as I feel the core conceit is solid but it just got bungled somewhere along the way. Or maybe I'm just salty, there's always that possibility, never rule that out.
I love the babushka doll vibe this puzzle has where it just gets progressively smaller and smaller. Very fun, very enjoyable, I will be stealing this structure.
This is a hilarious puzzle just from the concept alone. Also some days after the hunt ended it was mentioned offhandedly that the crossword was in the shape of a Sorry board and that was a giant rake moment lmao.
This is an actually insane cryptic, and I love it for that. This brand of puzzle is always such a treat to see. I don't know how I'd define an "insane puzzle" but you definitely know it when you see it, maybe it's that elegance thing coming up again who's to say?
A sequel to possibly one of my favorite puzzle games of all time. You know what I'm going to go on a tangent about OCTOGRAM you can't stop me this is my blog I can do what I want. This game is the epitome of elegance in my mind, I love it so much because of what it achieves with so little, using only 8 characters per puzzle to express a wide variety of ideas. The design too is wonderful, having designated sets of puzzles allowing for ideas to ramp up and scale, or to have a set end with almost a punchline such as DERNEATH or having MANDATED appear twice. The gradual unlock of puzzles as well is also a very nice touch serving two purposes. One, limiting you so that you don't get immediately bogged down in choice, and two, the slow reveal of just how many different concepts there are, almost like a joke where it keeps going every time you think it'll stop. It's an absolute amazing experience that I don't think will be topped for a long time.
Back on track, I feel that ENNEAGRAM falls short of OCTOGRAM. Don't get me wrong, I appreciate the nod to Jack, but I feel as if the constraint of it being a hunt puzzle hampers the creativity it could have. Even still, I feel as if the puzzles in ENNEAGRAM are just more repetitive compared to OCTOGRAM, reusing the same tricks many times over. With all that said though, I am glad that this puzzle exists, and would rather have it than not have it.
This is another one of those insano mode puzzles, frankly this and Fren Amis should both be hung up in a museum somewhere.
I think that's about all the puzzles I care to comment on.
⁸Mainly because the merch this year was super cool and I want to guarantee myself some next year.
⁹Whether or not I actually hit that mark is up for debate.
