What's mentioned in all these books?
NEW GAME. I’m putting the finishing touches on my new table-based puzzle game, The Unknown Islands, and I’m running a couple final playtests this Thursday and next at the Chicago Design Museum. Buy tickets here. Or keep reading to win a couple of them for half-off…
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PUZZLE OF THE WEEK. What is mentioned…
- 55 times in Wuthering Heights,
- 35 times in Dracula,
- 3 times in Through the Looking-Glass,
- once in Anna Karenina,
- and never in War and Peace?
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CONTEST. Submit your answer here to the above puzzle by the end of day today. Two randomly chosen (correct) entries will win a pair of half-price tickets to either of the upcoming Unknown Islands games mentioned above.
Head Hunters: The 2018 MIT Mystery Hunt
The organizers of this year’s MIT Mystery Hunt have released all 150-some puzzles. Most you can do from home; a few involve physical props that were custom-made for the hunt. Some recommendations below…
Wolf in the Fold
Of the puzzles a) that I worked on and b) that are possible to do from home and c) don’t require information from other solved puzzles, this was one of my favorites.
Joyful Songs
![](https://puzzles.mit.edu/2018/assets/rounds/pokemon/images/icons/krabby.png)
Another favorite. To best emulate our solving experience on this one, do this at 3 in the morning, with a friend, out loud, as you try to suss out what the heck is going on.
Face Your Fears
A great example of a puzzle that nicely combines a little bit of internet research, a little bit of insight, and a fun theme.
Shoal Patrol
![](https://puzzles.mit.edu/2018/assets/rounds/pokemon/images/icons/rattata.png)
This one is a beast, but pure heaven if you’re a nut for logic puzzles. It’s a combination submarine puzzle / Slitherlink / Minesweeper. And there’s 7 of them. When you finish them, definitely don’t move onto Submarine Patrol, which is the same kind of puzzle, but in 3D. That latter one took a cohort of 6 people over 9 hours to solve. I worked on some of them for just a few minutes before handing them off to teammates, but I have deep appreciation of the form.
AMA with members of Life & Order, the writing team for the 2018 Mystery Hunt
Lots of good stuff in here about how L&O put on this year’s hunt.