“A long time ago, in a galaxy…” …on the other side of the planet

Melbourne University Maths (and Stats) Society logoOne Earth year ago, give or take, this site wrote about the Australian tradition of online puzzle hunts, just before the start of the 2014 edition of the Melbourne University Maths (and Stats) Society‘s annual puzzle hunt. It’ll not come as that big a surprise that the 2015 edition started today – and, as befits an event starting on May 4th, this year’s edition has a very loose Star Wars theme.

The Australian tradition (though other hunts like the USC Puzzle Hunt of South Carolina do similar things) is to release one round of four puzzles per day, for each of five days. Solving the puzzle on the day it is released earns five points, so a perfect score is a hundred. A day later, a hint is released for the previous days’ puzzles, but their value drops by a point – to a limit of three hints and a value of two points, though they can still remain extremely challenging even when triply hinted. Last year spawned a “behind the scenes” document which was a great read; fingers crossed for another one this ear.

The MUMS hunt has rules limiting teams to ten members, which is a higher limit than that of its counterparts; Sydney’s SUMS hunt is open to teams of up to five and Canon’s CiSRA hunt is open to teams of up to four. This might point to it having a higher difficulty ceiling on its puzzles than the others; this year’s day one is a particularly difficult example of the same, looking at the score table and noting the relatively low scores; for instance, the team with the name most like that of last year’s winners have only solved two of the first day’s puzzles so far. Definitely no-holds-barred, black diamond difficulty. (On the other hand, if you find these horribly hard, particularly if you’re solving alone, rest assured that the counterpart puzzles at Puzzled Pint, DASH and elsewhere are deliberately much more accessible.)

There are some other familiar (and British?) names missing from the score table, but good luck to anyone who takes part. Another hunt still in progress is the Escape Reviewer puzzle contest, in collaboration with two other review sites from the Greater Toronto Area. Pots of local prizes to be won – but there have been enough completing (at least the first level of!) the hunt to show that it really is up for grabs.

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