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Chinese New Year 2014

Dave Tu — Wed, 29 Jan 2014 18:16:45 +0000

This year's Chinese new year is Friday January 31st, and will be the year of horse. More specifically, the year of green / wood horse. (青馬 / 木馬).

Chinese year are based on Luna cycle, and there are 12 zodiac, in the following order

Rat
Ox
Tiger
Rabbit
Dragon
Snake
Horse
Goat
Monkey
Rooster
Dog
Pig

With each year there is also an element associated with it out of the five element

Metal
Wood
Water
Fire
Earth

And of course, there is also Yin and Yan, and each element also has a color associated with it.

There is also another more fine categorization of the Chinese zodiac, which breaks it down to 36 zodiac, which I will not get into right now.

In any case, no matter if you are born on the year of horse or not, happy almost new year.

Mystery Hunt 2014 - Summing Up

Dave Tu — Thu, 23 Jan 2014 22:41:50 +0000

This year's mystery hunt's winner is a team go by the name of "One Fish Two Fish Random Fish Blue Fish". They have manage to find the coin at 2:30 AM on Sunday, January 19, 2014.

I think this year's hunt is easier then those that I have been to. I did have fun, but one minor point, personally, I enjoy more of the hardcore logic puzzles, but this year, the initial set of puzzles does not have many of them (more are released later on, but personally I think those sets are released a little bit late).

Why do I think this year's hunt was easier? Let me speak meta-physically. It feels like most puzzles this year have 2 layers of indirection, where when you solve the first layer of the puzzle, the second layer become fairly obvious, where as last year, it feels like I have to solve 4 different layers, and have to conjoin the 4 layers using some convoluted connection to bend the layers out of shape in order to poke at the answer. The puzzles and solutions are out already, feel free to determine if it was easier or not by yourself. http://www.mit.edu/~puzzle/2014/

How did our team do this year?

We did pretty well, probably solved around 30 puzzles, including 3 meta puzzles. This is compared to last year, which was probably less than 10. (And the first year our team has done it, we only solved about 5).

As far as my personal goal, I was aiming for being major contributor to 2 puzzles this year, where I end up contributing to probably around 5 (including helping out on 2 of the meta). I was happy with how I did.

In terms of how much sleep I got over the weekend, probably less than 10 hours combined over the period of 3 days. Which is pretty typical for me when it comes to mystery hunt.

Here is one of my favorite puzzle from this year's hunt, see how you do on it. http://www.mit.edu/~puzzle/2014/puzzle/stage_select/

Mystery Hunt 2014 - Events

Dave Tu — Sat, 18 Jan 2014 02:11:12 +0000

Mystery Hunts often have on campus events that are participated jointly by all teams. (At least it has those for every one that I have been to).

This year, I have just went to an event which before going, all it was mentioned that send 1 to 2 people with musical talent. At the event, all participants were broken into 8 groups, each groups was give a mix sets of music notes which needs to be assemble in the correct order to form a song. Once we correctly figured out the song, a music sheet is handed to us, where the song needs to be performed by all member in the team each person can only do one word follow by the next person doing the following word and so on.

Our group got "A Whole New World" from Aladdin, which was interesting, because it has duet part.

At the end of each performance, a person is randomly selected and given a word, where at the end, the 8 words from all teams combined formed a phrase, and that phrase is the answer.

Its not really puzzles, but it is fun nonetheless.

MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 -Theme

Dave Tu — Fri, 17 Jan 2014 20:27:58 +0000

Each year's mystery hunt will have a distinct theme, and this year is Alice in the Wonderland. This will be my 4th hunt, the theme I've been through include bank heist (2013), producing Broadway show (2012), and Mario saving princess Peach across video...

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MIT Mystery Hunt 2014

Dave Tu — Wed, 15 Jan 2014 22:38:46 +0000

The coming weekend (Martin Luther King, Jr. Day weekend) is another MIT Mystery Hunt, where many teams gather at MIT to try solve hundreds of puzzles. This event occurs once every year, and the objective of the event is to solve puzzles (which the answer themselves are often clues to another puzzles and so on), and eventually the final answer will lead to the "coin". Which ever team obtain the "coin" is the winner for that years Mystery Hunt, and the winning team gets the price of making the puzzle hunt for the following year.

There is no limit to team size, and people on the team can solve the puzzle remotely or on site (except certain puzzle require to be on campus), and since last years puzzle winning team is the designer of the puzzle this year, the puzzles comes in all sorts of variety and requires all sorts of random knowledge and skill.

Every year's Hunt will also have a different theme, with an opening event, and a closing event and some random on site event that are not necessary puzzles, but generally fun to participate in.

If you want to find out more about the MIT Mystery Hunt, visit their official page at http://www.mit.edu/~puzzle/