a sherbet lemon tucked beneath her tongue

[renewherself]

MIT Mystery Hunt 2026

Bird Calls - Figured out that all the answers to the clues were bird-themed

Sound Translation - Translated some Mandarin

Nominative Determinism - Solo-solved, somehow finishing the quiz second-try based on vibes (and knowing Ikea furniture)

Minute Minute Cryptic - Realised a different set of clues was being displayed every minute - Solved cryptic clues such as: + "Sierra James's giant sidekick orated lecture" = SPEECH + "Dish caused Bill to empty out stomach, hurting inside" = BOWL + "Dainty songbird slipped into piss" = PETITE

The Physics of Linguistic Fracture - Figured out that pairs of answers had overlapping halves

I Think That's Why They Call It That - Figured out that movie titles needed to be inserted into the dialogue - Figured out a third of the movie titles

Point of Divergence - IDed the Dear Evan Hansen song (Thanks, Jenny Nicholson!)

A Fake Artist Goes to Eland Islands - Figured out the game being played was A Fake Artist Goes to New York, also from the Oink Games catalogue

Adding and Abutting - Had the 'aha' that the gimmick involved finding words that were one letter off from the answers to the clues

Loch Mystic - Figured out that we had to look at John Murray's bathymetric survey

Invitation - Had a good laugh, given I'd just come back from a wedding on Friday - IDed the patterns of roses on the invitation as Braille and translated them into English - Figured out there was a withjoy.com registry for Cardi and Nality, with the password coming from the roses, and transcribed all the subpuzzles - Solo-solved the subpuzzles Registry and Travel - Figured out that the answers to the clues in the Q&A subpuzzle all contained numbers and solved 75% of the clues - IDed and translated the semaphore in the subpuzzle Wedding Party

Combative Felines - Instantly pegged this as a puzzle about Warrior Cats - Duo-solved the puzzle, including figuring out all the arrow types - Cursed Brambleclaw for the number of time I had to revisit his wiki page

Short Stories - Popped in and solved the clue about "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" out of sheer annoyance that someone had put down A Clockwork Orange as the answer

Calls of the Wild - Figured out bits and pieces of the clues when we were still lacking most of the letters, including "of a man falsely accused of" and "made in memory of a cartoonist in 2009"

Triple Threat - Figured out that some of the obfuscated names were those of baseball players

Skilldrasil - Figured out some of the obfuscated text - Had the 'aha' that the text were skill descriptions from various video games - Solved for 6 of the 8 games and 7 of the 11 skills

Psychology: Perception - Figured out 5 of the 10 sets: Blackpink; Crosby, Stills, Nash, & Young; Fab Five; Olympic Sets; The Three Tenors - Had the 'aha' that one member of each set was the odd one out in some way and then did not follow up on this 'aha' for a long time - Figured out the odd element out for 8 of the 10 sets

Psychology: Intelligence - Figured out the sequences for Blood Sex Sugar Magik and Starbucks order sizes - Used Nutrimatic to guess the answer (particularly the third letter)

Psychology: Emotion - Hilariously was on the right path the whole time and doubted myself every step of the way Me: I want this to be Inside Out, but I don't know if it is Me: I could believe these are the colors of the emotions in Inside Out, but Joy is conspicuously missing Teammate: ooh? Me: something like [insert image of color wheel labeled with the names of Inside Out emotions] Me: but I don't know what cyan would be and there's no yellow/Joy Me: Sadness for blue and Envy for cyan maybe Me: let me see how that indexes Me: not awful letters but doesn't spell anything that I can see [insert image of same color wheel, now with extracted letters] Other teammate: anagram worked!! nice find! Me: Me: I forgot anagramming is a thing XD

Re: State Diagram (post-hunt) - Solved cryptic clues, including + "Spoke—like a sun god on call" = RADIAL + "Nickname for president leading a big-box store" = IKEA + "Cosmetics counter without mum" = ELF + "Patronage of gold herbs" = AUSPICES

Oh My! Interesting Alleles! (post-hunt) - Figured out that the title pointed to the OMIA databse - Figured out that glitched text needed to be shifted two to the left on a QWERTY keyboard layout - Extracted the clue phrase IDX SNP TO PHENE

[renewherself]

LN Hunt: Puzzlehunting in Another World with My Absurd Skills

Side to Side - Instantly identified puzzle as being about Minecraft parody songs

Lost in Translation - Identified 4 of the 10 pairs of wasei eigo

when the puzzle explains the joke in the video - Immediately identified puzzle as being about ProZD YouTube skits and was well on the way to solo solving before I got sniped 😤

Cutting Onions - Solved for WINTerberRY and HEResies

Start Here - Identified Monogatari with great hesitancy

Three is a Gang - Figured out that the members of the Oxymorons gang were formed by adding a letter to each set element

Flex Tape - Helped solve the rows garden

Biological Wordfare - Identified 9 of the 19 mashed-up organisms

Did You Mean... - Figured out that rule 1 required the input to have a length that is a prime number

Concert - Identified 6 of the 12 Vocaloid songs

I really love... - Painstakingly identified 3 of the 5 songs despite the best efforts of various search engines to drive me insane - Extracted the Japanese characters from the music videos of the songs after receiving a hint as to what to do

Going Home [Meta Meta] - Served as the oracle whisperer for our team mascot that passed on the message of "MEW" to our team and led someone to submit "MEWTAKEUSHOMEPLEASE" before we solved the puzzle and it was revealed that it is in fact Mew that runs us over with Truck-kun to send us back to the original world

[renewherself]

Panda Magazine: Puzzle Boat 12

I See You Optometrists - Solo-solved

High's Theaters - Figured out 12 of the 26 movie titles

Mallrats - Identified the Lost Boys gang

Surly Table - Solved some crossword clues and the gimmick clues: + “These drop scones taste burnt!” - SCORCH PANCAKE + “I have a nit to pick with this dessert!” - LICE PUDDING

Max Factor - Figured out the gimmick that the answers to the clues comprised pairs of X-Men codenames

OIive Garouden - Solved 9 out of the 12 punny clues

Diary Queen - Figured out the aha that the diary entries were formed from substrings taken from pairs of keys and doors, with one letter missing

Crack of Dawn - Helped solve the grids

Opening Night [Meta] - Figured out that each clue solved to a word that could be formed by taking half of a feeder answer and changing the "I" sound to an "A" sound

[renewherself]

Mark Halpin’s Labor Day Extravaganza 2025: Look! Up in the sky!

Cat's Revenge - Figured out that the images were cluing movies that have animals in their titles, but with the respective animals changed to cats.

Chandra - Solved a quarter to a third of the clues. - Figured out that some of the answers had to be input in reverse into the grid.

The Stolen Elixir - Solved a little under half of the clues.

Wu Gang - Figured out that pairs of answers shared common substrings.

[renewherself]

Galactic Puzzle Hunt 2025: Terraforming

Four Pieces - Solved two-thirds of the clues.

A Confusing Journey - Identified the locations Zoo Atlanta and The Gateway.

A Student's Diary - Immediately realised this was a puzzle about Schoolhouse Rock without even looking at the flavor text because I watch those videos too much. - IDed all the Multiplication Rock and Grammar Rock video descriptions and the indicated words.

Multiverse of Mixups - Figured out that the puzzle involved the multiple roles of each actor.

Four Square - Assembled and solved the clues without realising they were meant to be arranged in a square.

Debbie Downers - Figured out that some of the cryptic clues solved to "verb forms" of surnames that end in -er. - Solved over half of the cryptic clues.

Across the Pond - Solved the cryptic clues "Reportedly must-have massage," "Spanish bishop's inside job is polytheism," "Leisurely-sounding pop star," "Joint and muscle vaccination," and "Oddly broad physique," as well as some non-cryptic clues.

Turtles All the Way Down - Solved over half of the crossword clues. - Assembled most of the crossword grid. - Figured out that there were names of famous turtles/tortoises hidden in the grid.

Dream Team - Figured out that the clue answers were in the format of UN(Verb) THE (Noun that rhymes with the verb). - Solved nearly two-thirds of the clues before knowing the nouns were names of League of Legends characters. - Parsed the clue phrase, found the correct VOD, and extracted the final answer.

A Cryptic Has Arrived! - Solved standard cryptic clues such as "A headless Golang reversed is a type of horror" and - Figured out that the keyword "half" clued taking half of a Japanese onomatopoeia and solved clues including: + Washington city is half warm and comfortable surrounded by three cardinal directions = SPOKANE + Witch needs character that is you and half a noisy crowd = BABA YAGA + Stopping sparkly half Newton in background = BRAKING - Figured out that the animation frames and onomatopoeia were taken from the Vocaloid music video "Akari Has Arrived!"

True Colors - Remembered a puzzle from MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 where I learned that "Big Foot Feet" is the name of a Crayola color and had the realisation that all the crossword clues would solve to color names. - Knocked out all sixteen crossword clues.

Mazes - Realised there were extra books inserted into certain iterations of the Hardy Boys book sets. - Suffered through performing the binary searches necessary to identify most of the extra books. - Got really annoyed that the A1Z26 extraction wasn't going to output MINOTAUR. - Never want to look at another maze for the rest of my life. - Realised during the meta solve that we would need the remaining extra books and screamed before begrudgingly tracking down the rest save one.

Places - Realised that there were certain pieces that contained instructions for indexing. - Injured my wrist manually clicking through to find more of these pieces. - Figured out those pieces contained coordinates that corresponded to planets along the Solar System Trail that borders Port Melbourne Beach.

Your Very Own Island! [Meta Meta] - Figured out that the only non-metapuzzle not touching its corresponding metapuzzle had to be in The Crater round. - Went back and parsed the meta solves for The Crater and The Atoll in order to determine the order of the pieces.

Kero's Workshop [Bonus Round] - "Solved" all four feeders and the meta.

[renewherself]

Penchant Puzzlehunt

Ladders - Figured out the rules of adding/removing the substring "ONE", shifting the position of one letter, changing one letter, adding/removing one letter, shifting by one in a known set, shifting by one phoneme, e.g. + WROTE -> ROVE + OX -> TIGER + BARONET -> BART

Rereading - Solo-solved first half, getting the first clue phrase - Began solving puzzle again with new clues as indicated by first clue phrase, but then had to leave :(

Reportedly - Solved half of the phonetic cryptic clues, including: + Swear to vacuum upon returning -> CUSS + Prophetic rodent emerges from filth, mostly -> PHIL + Cite uplifting Tchaikovsky overtures and the like -> SUCH - Solo-filled the numberless grid

Playing With Places [Meta] - Figured out the corresponding London Monopoly locations for the feeder answers: + POLARITIES -> Northumberland Avenue + OSTRACIZE -> Coventry Street + BYGONE -> Old Kent Road

[renewherself]

Microsoft Puzzlehunt 24

Submit License Applications (Remote) - Suffered through the first half of this puzzle solo

Review Liftoff - Effectively solo-solved after teammates got stuck and then abandoned the puzzle

Examine Nuts & Bolts - Solved most of the puzzle - Figured out the answers to the bolt clues - Figured out the gimmick for the light nuts and the final extraction

Initialize IP Addresses - Figured out the final extraction

Calibrate Celestial Coupler - Filled out the crossword - Figured out that the Cs in the crossword needed to be connected to the seas marked on the map of the moon, and the numbers the lines intersect were indices

Re-treat Micro Cables (Remote) - Solo-solved

Find Zero Crosspoints - Solved cryptic crossword clues, including: + "Tally Dracula for one" = COUNT + "Villain I abandoned before now" = AGO + "Early sketch of a medic at the back of a ship" = DRAFT

Prime Flex Capacitors - Helped solve some of the capacitors

Align Planetary Gears - Pieced together and solved the clues: + "Rock Instrument" = GUITAR + "Volleyball Defender" = LIBERO + "Ear Infection" = OTITIS - Figured out the final answer from the cluephrase "BASE THREE SPOCK SPECIALTY"

Monitor Audio Recordings - Solved the audio clues for: + POP GUN + GONG WITH THE WIND + JURASSIC BARK + FIDDLER ON THE HOOF - Extracted the final answer

Clear Circuit Board - Figured out how to extract the cluephrase "ORDER TRAINS YPBPRGBYGR" - Figured out how to extract the second part of the answer using the trains and Wingspan tokens after unlocking a hint.

[renewherself]

Find someone who can play The Piano Guys' cover of "What Makes You Beautiful".

[renewherself]

Huntingale

BREAKING NEWS! - Figured out the aha of the puzzle being about bowling splits.

Cassette Remix - Painfully solo-solved

Marked Gingers - Solo-solved

Hunting Ale - Had the aha of the puzzle being about previous Puzzled Pints

[renewherself]

Puzzle Hunt CMU 2025: Soup Hunt

(Missed the first half of the hunt)

Travel Fatigue - Figured out that the number of question marks corresponded to the number of words in each challenge prompt. - Figured out the extraction method of plotting the geographical location of each challenge on a map and reading the indexed letters from left to right, beginning in Alaska.

Until I'm... - Solo-solved through some stubborn Googling ("Big Ideas" + "soup") and realising that this was not the Veggie Tales puzzle I had become halfway convinced it was.

This Puzzle Is About Time - Had the 'aha' that this puzzle was about levels and hubs in Crash Bandicoot 4: It's About Time. - Figured out that the first half of each blurb clued the hub and the second half clued the name of a level from a different hub with one letter altered, e.g. "Dino Sash" rather than "Dino Dash."

New Grad Positions - Had the 'aha' that the last sentence of each job listing described the company's logo, while the first indicated the type of service the company provided.

semilunar (post-hunt) - Figured out that the binary digits had to be joined into one 64-digit long chain before conversion into decimal and A1Z26.

X-Treme Alphabet Soup [Meta] (post-hunt) - Spotted the image on the main hunt page/puzzle index that linked each vegetable to a specific feeder puzzle and extracted from there.

[renewherself]

Teammate Hunt 2025: Matt & Emma's Deep-space Disaster

Pangram - Solved/helped solve the pangram clues: + Top-notch tulip = FINE BULB + Way to identify which of these celebrities mugged you = VIP LINEUP) + Underwhelming siege weapon = MID CANNON) + "Toss me a Coke!" = YEET A COLA + Occasion for a fishy funeral= TUNA DEATH

Stock→Pile - Solved the relationships for: + HOT Leaf LIQUID (b) = TEA + Candid (p) & Liquid (p) = ATE + Half Name Sonic Villain (b) = EGG & MAN + Dynamic (p) & Sol (p) & SPACE (p) = AERO + DOUGH (g) & RAY (g) = DO & RE (o) = MI

A Day at the Park - Solved the clues for TINY HABITS, RYAN BEATTY, MEGAN MORONEY, ZEDD, and STRAY KIDS.

Super Puzzle RPG - Data-gathering.

Hull Breach (Meta) - Figured out that the background of each card contained a visual indicator of the tarot suit of the card.

(Cryptics Round) - Solved random cryptics, including + Bandit hit with flu, studying finals = THUG + Irish symbol made of fake stone = SHAMROCK + Separate grain next to ancient doorway = THRESHOLD + Fantasy series has a lot of resistance = LOTR + Means of mass communication through T-shirt sizes = MEDIA + One noodle at a place to relax next to the slum = SPAGHETTO + Common quarantine status on Wednesday, Friday, and Thursday, but not Tuesday = WFH + Utensil acts like a bowl = SPOONBILLS

Paingram - Noted that the middle letter of each pangram is substituted with the middle letter of another pangram for each clue, with each letter used only once per pangram. - Solved more than a third of the pangram clues, including: + Paper entitled "The Morality of Jumping Off Me Out of a Pit" = YOSHI'S THESIS + What I prefer about dating a mime over my last boyfriend = HE TALKS LESS + What might have happened to Willem Dafoe and Alfred Molina, if the movies gave Spider-Man a gun = SHOT BY TOBEY + [Image: A close-up photo of a piglet sticking out its tongue.] This blep? = PORK MLEM

Matt & Emma's - Figured out the "aha" for extraction: the commonality shared by the answers connected with red wires was that they all contained substrings of words from titles in A Series of Unfortunate Events.

Make Your Own Metapuzzle - Figured out the Scryfall search parameters for the Magic: the Gathering subpuzzle. - Figured out that the denominators of the fractions extracted from each subpuzzle answer were enumerations and not indices.

In Due Course - Solved the clues for the idioms "GRASPING/GASPING AT STRAWS" and "GOLDEN NUGGET/NOUGAT."

[renewherself]

An Overly-Detailed Blood on the Clocktower Postmortem

"I think you were at a pretty big disadvantage from the very beginning, with how the roles were distributed."

"Agreed. With the first thing that went wrong being me rolling the demon."

"It did net you your first demon win!"

"But at what cost? I mean, my sanity. That was an obvious one, I think. Anyway, go on. Stroke my ego."

"You had a Shugenja two seats away, with a ping on you. And to make matters worse, they were the Grandmother's grandchild, which was already going to ensure that the Grandmother was going to trust them. And then to really rub salt in the wound, the Grandmother was sat next to an active Tea Lady, ensuring that the Tea Lady, the Grandmother, the Shugenja, and the Moonchild on the Tea Lady's other side all became part of a trust circle once they started accruing circumstantial evidence that the Tea Lady's two neighbors were continuing to stay alive."

"It's funny in retrospect that my first two picks were the Grandmother and their grandchild. Not that either death went through for the Grandmother."

"And that got you valuable information in that it put you on your guard about the possibility of the Tea Lady player being a Tea Lady. Which you were entirely correct about."

"Good thing I didn't try to discredit the Shugenja. I mean, that was just due to my usual lack of desire to argue with people, but it was good that I didn't."

"But instead, you sowed a lot of seeds of doubt in a far more, dare I say, insidious way. I see you smiling."

"I don't know what you're talking about. It's definitely not the case that I like how that word sounds."

"Of course not, dear. You know, you say constantly you're not good at thinking on your feet, but you dealt with the curveballs that game threw at you so well. When the Exorcist found you on the third night, you made sure they were present when you asked the Storyteller the next day what changes he had made to the default Bad Moon Rising script, while expressing surprise at how many ways there were of preventing a night kill on the script you were all playing. All to downplay the possibility that the Exorcist would suspect that they were the reason no kill happened the previous night. We don't know if that made any difference or not in the Exorcist's mind, but it was a good preemptive strike."

"It was extremely lucky that the Exorcist wasn't in the trust circle."

"Well, if they had been, I think that game could have safely been called a wash, because the deck would have been outrageously stacked against you, even more than it already was. You already had four out of the six good players in a trust circle that was just shy of being outright confirmed by the mechanics of the game. And even then, you found a way to engender just enough distrust that the Tea Lady didn't vote for you because they were struck by the sudden fear that it was a Legion game. I think you also made the right call to double down on your Innkeeper bluff when told you were in a double claim, because it fostered a little bit more doubt that you were the demon, given how rare it is for a demon to be in a double claim with anyone."

"Did you like my Hail Mary of eating my own minion's corpse on the off chance the Storyteller might resurrect them, and they might be a Mastermind and could keep the game going were I to be executed the next day?"

"I loved it, and I'm sad that it did not come to pass."

"I mean, we know now that it wouldn't have worked because my minion was not a Mastermind. I really should have just checked with them."

"Given the Drunk-Professor had noticed the few whispers you sent to them, contacting them again might have lent too much credence to the theory that you were the evil pair. Heh, it's like we're talking about Spy Party. Pairing and one too many conversations being the nail in your coffin."

"Ravenswood Balcony. If I'm ever asked what my weapon of choice is in a future game, I'm going to say banana bread."

"Spy Party, but the Sniper throws a literal loaf of banana bread at the Spy when they contact the double agent."

"Out of sheer frustration that they keep apparently requesting it. ...I just realised that, to be safe, I should have killed the Exorcist on the night I ate my minion's corpse, instead of the Tea Lady. There would have been no risk of them exorcising me again on that final night, if I had done that."

"With the benefit of hindsight and calm analysis, sure. It worked out regardless. And I don't know that the Exorcist felt that it was urgent to try to block you on that final night. From their perspective, there's the argument to be made that you, as the person with the most suspicion on them, would definitely be the execution pick the next day and so they should actually block the second-most suspicious person on the off-chance that you were not the demon. And you certainly did lull them into a false sense of security that they had one more day to work with. And while you didn't deliberately engineer the circumstances that led to people not knowing what type of demon was in play, you took full advantage of the opportunity when it arose and people started dismissing the possibility of a Shabaloth or a Po due to the lack of multi-kills. You oh-so-innocently pointed out that it would be a risk to execute with four players left then, unless the good players were absolutely certain about which player they thought was the demon. And they bought it, even coming from the player that was their top suspect for being the demon. Amazingly done, love."

"I still hate playing as the demon."

"Yes, I know. Poor thing. Time for something relaxing that doesn't require lying to people? Maybe a cozy video game?"

"Papers Please, let's go."

[renewherself]

MIT Mystery Hunt 2025

Zulu Lima - Figured out that both ships were using the same flags, but one ship was using the ICS system and the other was using Marryat's.

On the Corner - Figured out that each answer for the MH1. subpuzzle contained the substring "MIT". - Figured out the people in the MH8. subpuzzle were all MIT alumni.

Battle Factory - Had the 'aha' that the rule for Abra's evolution was "second word of a magical incantation" and therefore the corresponding name was OPEN (SESAME). This was widely regarded by two other solvers during my "hear me out" as a "BRILLIANT" and "GALAXY BRAIN" move.

Broken Record - Figured out that the solutions to the crossword clues were all words that could be repeated to form well-known phrases, solving most of the clues as well, and then got stuck on the clue phrase BILLSJUMPINNO.

The Tunnels Beneath the Institute - Realised the puzzle was about The Magnus Archives from the description in record time and begged for a key to unlock the puzzle. - Matched all the TMA fears to each of the content warnings. - Figured out that the correct order in which to place the episode titles into the grid was the order in which the Fears are referenced in the incantation for the mass ritual in TMA, and then got stuck because of never remembering to check for things being spelled out diagonally and also missing the acrostic spelled out by the initial letters of the content warnings. - Made the other team captains tear their hair out as they sat there waiting for me to record my statement.

Weirdo Threaded Doodads - Figured out the first pattern created a barcode and how to transform the instructions into binary to be fed into an online converter through simple Notepad find-and-replace. - Knit the third pattern while also teaching the other solvers what each type of stitch looked like as they tried to translate the pattern into code (since we thought, like the first two patterns, the final product would need to be scanned in some way).

Do the Packing - Figured out that letters needed to be "packed" into the black squares of the crossword grid.

It's All Cheep And A Sheep To Me - Figured out what that godawful song was. - Figured out that the answers to the crossword clues were also animal sounds in another language (although thought it was just Italian at the time).

Passage of Time (post-hunt) - Figured out that the highlighted crossword solutions were all events that happened in a particular generation's birth range, in chronological order moving down the grid. - Solo-solved the crossword. - Figured out the extraction method of taking the letters in the squares that overlapped with the living cells in each corresponding generation of a Conway's Game of Life simulation.

Reuse and Recyclability (post-hunt) - Solo-solved, including getting stuck on the final clue phrase by interpreting it as a cryptic.

[renewherself]

EC Puzzle Hunt 2: Enchanted Castle

Street View Hunt - Solo-solved, including identifying 6/8 of the street view images

Trelawney - 90% solo-solved, up to the last step of figuring out which game had a Baron and which game had a Poisoner

Dichotomous Key - Figured out the method for filling out the "numerical" tree, including that nodes were inconsistent about which side 0 and 1 were on

Musical Numbers - Filled out roughly a third of the crossnumber puzzle - Found the contradictions in the crossnumber puzzle that were causing the team to use the wrong folk song for extraction - Solved the cluephrase SPRING THAT SENDS OUT WATER and figured out the final puzzle answer

Taskmaster - Provided 4/5 submissions that enabled us to solve the puzzle the slow and steady way - Received 5/5 points on task 3, with a bonus "holy shit"

Character Classes - Figured out that the missing letters were spelling out the names of Nethack monsters and that we needed to convert each monster into their in-game symbol/class

On-Site Only — Sorry! - Almost solo-solved, including figuring out the latitude of the on-site location through examining the astrolabe, figuring out the azimuth and altitude of Arcturus, using Wolfram Alpha to identify the on-site location based on that information. (Needed help to figure out extraction involved layering the three sets of letters and reading them interleaved)

The Lexicographer - Figured out the name of each enemy was an anagram of a famous author's name

The Great Hall [Meta] - Identified the Wyoming and Colorado locations clued by the feeder answers (save for the locations clued by Ziggurats, which we had not solved yet, and the locations clued by PREMIER LEAGUE TEAMS because sports)

Solution: Meta Bingo - Solo-solved the Training subpuzzle by coding a Python script to run through all possible bigram combinations

Duality - Helped to unravel and solve some of the entangled crossword clues, including: + "Clock change in excelsis _ inits" DST/DEO + "TLD for martial artist Jet Spain" - ES/LI + "HTML action symbolized by a red circle companion (abbr.)" CSS/REC

First You Go Down Broadway + Identified the productions, venues, and production dates up through step 33/37 post-hunt

[renewherself]

Mark Halpin’s Labor Day Extravaganza 2024: Ch-Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes

Actaeon

- Figured out the deer hooves were Braille dots - Figured out some of the images clued Best in Show winners from Crufts and that the paws translated to 6-bit binary

Icarus

- Figured out that the across answers that clashed with down answers in the grid all contained the substring "SOL" i.e. suns

[renewherself]

Puzzle Rojak 2

52 Instructions

- Solo-solved

Selective Sounds Detection

- Figured out that the puzzle title and flavor text were cluing seven-segment displays

tfeL oT thgiR

- Solved the clue "Give me a _ on how this heart device works" (RECAP/PACER)

Knaves and Knights

- Solo-solved the logic puzzles and extracted the intermediary clue phrase

40 Spaces

- Figured out each PDF page corresponded to a Monopoly board space

I Know My ABCs!

- Identified the Police Phonetic Alphabet, Tom Thumb's Alphabet, 1932 Phonetic Alphabet, and the School Song from Matilda the Musical

Zebra Puzzle

- Solo-solved the Zebra puzzle and extracted the intermediary clue phrase

Slide Away

- Solved 90% of the clues and identified that half of the answers were anagrams of the other half

Songs

- Figured out that the audio clips were of pairs of songs that shared the same name but were by different artists

东西

- Solo-solved (apart from consulting a Mandarin speaker on a few idioms), including: + Figuring out that the strings of words were literal translations of the Mandarin characters that formed classic idioms + Figuring out that idioms were missing the characters for animals from the Chinese zodiac

The Case of the Many Blanks

- Figured out that one of the book series was "The Cat Who..." series by Lilian Jackson Braun - Figured out that the answers to the minipuzzles were synonyms of Perry Mason novel titles and extracted the final answer

Citius

- Figured out that the answers to the crossword clues were words that formed common phrases when combined with the feeders, e.g. "WEATHER" as the answer to the clue "COME SAFELY THROUGH A DISASTER" and the counterpart to the feeder "INCLEMENT"

Disney

- Figured out that the Perry Mason novel titles from The Case of the Many Blanks described characters from the Disney movies, e.g. "Perjured Parrot" for Iago from Aladdin, "Dangerous Dowager" for Lady Tremaine from Cinderella, and "Spurious Spinster" for Vanessa/Ursula from The Little Mermaid - Figured out that we needed to redo the zebra puzzle grid from Zebra Puzzle with the correct information for the Disney characters to extract a new clue phrase

Six Flags

- Solved the transformations that had stumped the rest of the team: "DGHTEN" -> "TITAN", "GHUBASC" -> "CHUBASCO", and "GN GEIZN" -> "HIGH SEAS" - Figured out that the shapes and colors described flags used in the International Code of Signals

[renewherself]

Puzzle Hunt CMU 2024: Department Store Hunt

ABBA IS YOU

- Figured out words from the word bank had to be combined to form lyrics from ABBA songs in the style of Baba Is You rules, e.g. + "RICH MAN HAS WORLD" ("It's a rich man's world") + "NAPOLEON ON WATERLOO IS DEFEAT" ("At Waterloo, Napoleon did surrender")

Polyrhythms

+ Figured out the answers to the clues were all rhythm game songs

SKÄRIG

+ Figured out all the players' roles in the Blood on the Clocktower game and extracted

Helium Balloons

+ Solo-solved, including figuring out the stick figures represented people who had won Nobel and Ig Nobel prizes.

Forewords Lost in Translation

+ Solo-solved, including figuring out the stories were altered versions of Chinese chengyu (four-character idioms), with exactly one character of each idiom changed.