Introduction to the Hunt
Old hand at this? We’ve helpfully bolded the items which you should read anyway.
Max and Leo of The Producers fame are up to their usual shenanigans, trying to make money by putting on bad musicals. They plan to raise more way money than necessary and then produce the worst shows possible, so when they flop no one will audit them. They’ll take the extra money and retire to Rio. Sure, the last time they tried this they went to jail, but that’s because they weren’t thinking big enough. This time, instead of one terrible musical, they’ll produce lots of terrible musicals! What could go wrong?
You are a theater company helping Max and Leo in exchange for a cut of their profits.
In order to secure the rights to produce each show, you’ll need to prove to its writer that you understand the creative vision of the show. For each one, you’ll need to examine the writer’s materials in order to suggest some addition to the show. (Of course, these suggestions should make them even worse!)
Everyone knows that a review from an influential theater critic can make or break a show! We’ve managed to learn who will be reviewing each show. To ensure that they’ll write bad reviews, we also want to do something that will really annoy the critic reviewing it. We’ve done some research on these critics. In addition, the critics have interacted with these writers before. Using a combination of what you learned from the writers’ materials and our further research, you’ll need to figure out a way to annoy the critic.
After figuring out both a way to contribute to the creative vision for a show and a way to annoy the relevant critic, you’ll have an opportunity to perform the show!
Solving the Hunt
The Hunt consists of a series of puzzles, each of which has a word or short phrase as an answer. When you’ve solved enough of the puzzles in a round, you can combine their answers, possibly using additional information provided as part of the round, to solve that round’s metapuzzle. Metapuzzle answers will be words or phrases, describing a terrible addition to a musical or a great way to annoy a theatre critic. (The main page art for each round is for your enjoyment only and is not part of the metapuzzle.)
When you think you’ve solved a puzzle or metapuzzle, use the “call in” link on the puzzle’s page to check your answer with us. Just like last year, you will be prompted for your attempted answer and a phone number, and we will call you with the results. Also, like last year, we are tracking which answer attempts are backsolves (answers derived primarily from metapuzzle information rather than directly solving puzzles). Marking an answer as backsolved has no effect other than letting us gather statistics, so please do so accurately.
Productions
Once you’ve solved the two metapuzzles associated with each musical, you should get ready to perform it! Your performances should be 3-5 minutes in length, be appropriate for the show’s title, and reflect both metapuzzle answers; other than that, feel free to do whatever strikes your fancy. Performing your show will help you unlock puzzles and let you see the critic’s review of your show, which you might find helpful in the endgame...
When your production is ready, use the Contact HQ link to request an appointment to perform. We’ll call you with a time and place.
You will never receive credit for your production less than 45 minutes after calling in your second metapuzzle answer. Therefore, there’s no need to rush your preparations or join the production queue before you’re ready.
Unlocking more puzzles
As time goes on, and as you solve your way through the hunt, we will release more puzzles for you to work on. Each puzzle you solve, each metapuzzle you solve, and each production you complete gains you an increasing amount of chutzpah. Acquiring more chutzpah accelerates the release of your next group of puzzles. Your current chutzpah and the time of your next release are displayed in shortcuts dropdown at the top of each page. The set of puzzles you have available depends only on your chutzpah and the time elapsed since kickoff, and puzzles, metapuzzles, and productions each count equally.
If you’re interested, here are the details. Your nth solve or production gains you n2 chutzpah. Each release group has a maximum release time T and a chutzpah conversion rate r. A batch is released if the elapsed hunt time t is greater than the maximum release time, adjusted by your current chutzpah c:
t > T - r * c
T increases and r decreases from group to group, so you will never receive puzzles out of order.
Events and Their Rewards
We are hosting five events over the course of the weekend. We hope you’ll come to these, as they should be lots of fun, but they are entirely optional. Going to events and doing well at them gives you bupkis. Events will be announced on the front page of the hunt.
Fortunately, bupkis is exactly what it takes to get free answers around here! Each event will give you approximately 50-100 bupkis, and every 100 bupkis can be exchanged for a free answer to any normal puzzle.
We have dispensed with the slow, error-prone process of crediting you bupkis manually. Instead, you will leave each event with paper tokens worth bupkis. Go to the URL on each token to record your bupkis in the system.
To spend bupkis, use the normal answer call-in link, but select the “buy this answer with bupkis” option. When we call you, you will have the opportunity to confirm your decision, and then the answer will be given to you and displayed in the usual places.
Awards and Nominations
We’re going to be handing out special awards at wrap-up for extraordinary and amusing feats. Awards have no relevance to the Hunt itself.
Contacting Us
All communications with headquarters should use the Contact HQ link in the information bar unless a puzzle gives you a specific alternate means of communication. You should use this link to request objects for a puzzle, to set up an appointment to interact with us or deliver things to us, to set up an appointment for a production, and for all general inquiries. We will call you at the phone number you provide.
When using the Contact HQ link, please be sure to select the topic of your inquiry. If you are inquiring about a specific puzzle or round, please specify which. If you are calling because you believe a clue phrase directs you to interact with us, give the clue phrase verbatim in addition to the name of the puzzle and any other comments or questions.
We welcome error reports, although of course you should not necessarily expect a substantive response.
Ending the Hunt
The Hunt will end at 3:00 PM on Sunday, unless no team has finished at that time. We will inform you when the first team finishes the hunt, but we wholeheartedly encourage you to keep playing to the end!
Assuming the Hunt ends on time, we’ll have a big wrap-up meeting at 5:00 PM on Sunday in 26-100, followed by a reception.
Rules of Play
As usual, the Hunt assumes you have access to the full resources of the Internet, your local surroundings, and your friends and family. Please feel free to utilize these to the utmost. However, the Hunt is also for fun, and we rely on you to help us make it fun and to abide by standards of fair play. In addition to the following specific rules, if you ever suspect that you are about to do something that would not be in the spirit of the Hunt, please check with us first.
Do not do anything that would interfere with another team’s enjoyment of the hunt, and do not give information to or obtain information from another team. If you want to merge with another team, please check with us first.
If you feel that a puzzle requires you to do anything illegal, immoral, or fatteningly unsafe, please check with us.
Do not attempt to interfere with or gain access to any HQ systems or space, and when using the MIT network respect the Athena rules of use.
Several puzzles in this year's Hunt involve interacting with a remote computer. As always, we forbid attempting to breach server security (ours or anyone else's). In addition, please be mindful of our finite resources. We have planned to handle manual interaction coming from a reasonable number of people on each team. Please don't assign unreasonable numbers of people to interact with any puzzle. We do not forbid attempting to interact with our puzzles automatically, but please throttle any such requests to a rate comparable to a human solver (no more than one interaction per 2 seconds). If you do write a program, test the throttling before hitting the live servers. IP addresses generating problematic traffic will be banned first and then investigated.