Puzzle hunts and puzzle competitions right about now

Here Comes The Sun! ...from a T-shirt credited to "Pablo Bustos aka Wirdou"
That rather fun image (adapted, without permission, from this shirt credited to “Pablo Bustos aka Wirdou”) sets the tone for some of the things happening at the moment which may be of interest.

It’s Labor Day, without the u, in the United States today. As he has previously done for nine of the ten previous Labor Days, Mark Halpin has posted an extravaganza: a hunt-like collection of puzzles to solve at home. They are principally word and picture puzzles; Mark has a glorious reputation for setting devious cryptic crossword variants. E-mail individual puzzle answers to Mark for verification; one team who solves within the first two and a half weeks, chosen at random, will win a $25 gift certificate prize. (Alternatively, e-mail Mark for hints and tips.) The theme for this year’s hunt inspires the title of this article.

If this hunt doesn’t fit into your schedule, or if you want a hunt designed for a larger team and with possibly a slightly broader style of puzzles, then a good option is the mezzacotta puzzle competition taking place from Monday 10 October, 2016 onwards. This is the direct descendent of the CiSRA puzzle hunt which gave a great deal of fun to many people over the years. The format is expected to be very similar to the CiSRA hunt, as well as the MUMS and SUMS puzzle hunts of the mathematics societies of Australian universities; many people are looking forward to seeing the precise specifics of the form to be taken by this year’s hunt.

Alternatively, there are some competitions which test the ability of a solver – or a team – to set puzzles, as well as to solve them. This post comes too late to feature timely details of Iron Puzzler of Southern California, just over a week ago, but Germany will be hosting the Puzzle Decathlon competition in Wuppertal (just east of Dusseldorf, so not far from the Dutch border) in November. Some rounds feature puzzles to solve; other rounds see you set puzzles for your fellow competitors!

One thought on “Puzzle hunts and puzzle competitions right about now”

  1. Hi Chris! Thanks so much for the very kind mention. I thought it might be worth noting that, while I stop maintaining the Leaderboards on the Labor Day extravaganzas after the deadline, all of the puzzles remain available for solving in perpetuity, and I’m happy to respond to questions or hint requests at any time. Thanks again!

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