What Incarnation of Palindrome Are You?
By Jenny Gutbezahl and Scott Weiss (with coding assistance from Joseph DeVincentis)
Clicking on the quiz link leads solvers to a personality quiz. The first letters of the questions spell CHECK ARCHIVES. Going to the Mystery Hunt history page gave fake information about several "incarnations" of Palindrome (i.e. the team running the Hunt; its name changes to a different palindrome every year). The information (no longer available on the Hunt history page) is reproduced below:
Incarnations of Palindrome
2001: JIZIJ
A boisterous group, Jizij played relatively tenaciously. Also kind of stupidly. By gum, Jizij sucked. At last, other smarter teams won.2002: Postal at S.O.P.
FWIW, Postal At S.O.P. (or PAS) was Palindrome's second best MIT Hunt team to date. Cf. they were even worse than Jizij. P.S. they could not solve cryptics, word searches, etc.2003: Ball Lab
Ball Lab annoyed all teams. Its main attribute was a terrible buzz emitted virtually every thirteen seconds. Ball Lab followed in the footsteps of previous palindromic attempts – that is, they reeked of cluelessness.2004: Muium
Muium embodied serious suckitude. Lackluster performance emphasized Muium's deficits. Defeated, Muium disbanded2005: Bomb Mob
Bomb Mob was, let's think . . . a mob. No creativity was spent by the group, which even plagiarized its team icon. At some point, they even stole another team's pasta.2006: lol
lol was sadly lacking in couth and suavity. Nobody forgot lol's sad fiasco at runaround – losing a coin is bad, but sticking a coin in your right nostril is disgusting!2007: Sexy X'es
Sexy X'es thought they were a bunch of bad girls who'd leave the boys they were competing with bewitched, bothered, and bewildered. But – Surprise! – in the harsh light of day, these palindromic hags looked like dead things.
Each description has a different linguistic quirk, namely:
- Jizij: each sentence's words are in alphabetical order
- Postal at SOP: each sentence contains at least one abbreviation
- Ball Lab: each sentence contains at least one word with a double letter
- Muium: each word contains three syllables
- Bomb Mob: each sentence ends with the reverse of the three letters at its beginning
- lol: there are no E's
- Sexy X'es: each sentence contains at least one title of an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer
In the quiz, there is one answer choice for each question that matches one of the quirks. If you select all the choices matching a particular incarnation's quirk, you receive a message stating "YOU ARE ___" and giving a short "profile". The profiles are:
- Jizij Five random letters constitute a sad excuse for a palindrome. Similarly, the five words in your vocabulary constitute a sad excuse for conversation.
- Postal At S.O.P. A letter was sent to MIT administration about PAS's poor hygiene; yours leaves a lot to be desired, too.
- Ball Lab There’s a synonym for annoying that’s known only to Ball Lab members – and people who know you!
- Muium You are known for one thing, just as the element Muium is known for creating a hunt that ran too damned long
- Bomb Mob You come off as a cheap copy of better things, just as unoriginal as Bomb Mob.
- lol ur lol; go nao pls. k bai thnx!
- Sexy X’es You think you’re all that and a bag of chips; but honey, you’re just as haggish as the Sexy X’es.
Arrange the profiles in the order given in the archives page. Take the first word of Jizij's profile, the second of Postal's, etc. This yields the clue FIVE LETTER SYNONYM FOR A K A for the final answer ALIAS.