Note from Prof. Emit

This was the Hunt Beginner's Luck won, following in the footsteps of such well-known teams as Palindrome, Setec Astronomy, Physical Plant, Kappa Sig, and The Evil Midnight Bombers What Bomb at Midnight.

As most of you probably remember, the 2009 Hunt was based on the board game Escape from Zyzzlvaria, invented especially for the occasion. Solvers had to first collect the pieces of the game by solving metapuzzles in the first phase of the Hunt ("Inner Zyzzlvaria"), and then use those game components in solving metapuzzles in the second phase ("Outer Zyzzlvaria").

Virtually every piece of the game was used in some meta or another, except for the escape pods (seen here, and here in their starting arrangement on the board). An extra round has been found in the archives, set after all of the crew of the Brass Rat have been rescued from their various predicaments throughout Zyzzlvaria.

Core reactor round

Captain Blastoid: Okay, that's all of us accounted for.
Zoe: Sweet! Now let's open up that flight recorder and figure out what the heck is going on!
Ernie: Yes, let's. Who has it?
Captain Blastoid: Oh, I gave it to President Flash for safekeeping.
(pause)
Algernon: Um... does anyone know where he is?
(pause)
Ralph: Well, he shouldn't be too hard to find, right?
Harold: Captain, I'm getting a distress signal. It's from President Flash.
Ralph: See?
Captain Blastoid: Oh, no. Where is he?
Harold: Looks like he's gotten himself lost in the Core Reactor.
Leah: The Core Reactor? That's the most volatile region of Zyzzlvaria of all!
Scotchy: That bumbling fool is in the Core Reactor unsupervised? We're doooomed!
Captain Blastoid: No, no, stay calm, everyone! I'm sure between the eight of us we'll find him in no time. Just... everyone stick close to an escape pod in case he does manage to set something off, okay?