On the hunt
It’s early afternoon on Friday, Jan. 16. On the third floor of MIT’s Building 34, three classrooms are buzzing with excitement. This is the assigned home base for Team PuzzFeed, whose members are clustered at round tables, refreshing their laptop screens impatiently. They’re waiting for 1:17 p.m. — the slated start time for the 2015 MIT Mystery Hunt. “It’s up!” someone shouts, and the team cheers as the first puzzles load online. The Mystery Hunt has been an MIT tradition since PhD student Brad Schaefer designed the first hunt in 1981. Much of the original design remains today: Teams solve complex puzzles to reveal clues that ultimately lead to a coin hidden somewhere on campus. But since 1981, the hunt has grown in size, with more participants, more puzzles, and more hours required to find the coin. More than 70 teams and 2,200 participants signed up this year. The team that...