MIT/⊥IW Experimental Evidence

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Some of these should be easy for you to find. Others might take a bit more creativity.
confused, difficult, unsure

For more difficult-to-obtain items, like the Great Dome, try to find something that provides a visual comparison.

Yew Labs is trying to understand some of the problems at ⊥IW by comparing their versions of things to those at MIT. As with any experiment, they also need a control group to compare with. Below is a list of 70 things that we’d like examples of. We already have examples from MIT and from ⊥IW, so please bring other examples we haven’t seen before.

The number we’ll need depends on your team size; bigger teams need more research success to justify their work to funding agencies. We need at least \(\frac{n}{3}+\frac{\sqrt{n}}{2} + 13\) research points, rounded up, where \(n\) is your registered team size. (As a reminder, your registered team size is 10, so you need 18 research points.) Most items on the list are worth 1 research point, but a few are worth more and are indicated as such.

You may also present one of your items as a breakthrough discovery! If the committee agrees that it truly revolutionizes the field, they may award it up to 4 extra research points.

Prepare a Google Photos or Dropbox link containing picture or video evidence of each of your items. Each file must be labeled with the item number and depict the item as well as a member of your team holding a sign that says MYST2021. Once you’ve done that, your committee will schedule a Zoom call with you where the committee chair will share their screen and examine your evidence. Please be prepared to defend your findings. During the hunt, teams emailed their submissions to HQ and received the answer FIRST VOLUMES.

We ask that you avoid scheduling a call before you are fairly confident that you’ll pass. (You wouldn’t want to waste your committee’s time.)

Please do not do anything illegal, immoral, dangerous, or that would disappoint Professor Yew.

If you’re new around here, welcome! This is the obligatory MIT Mystery Hunt scavenger hunt. Traditionally, teams have to scrounge up creative submissions for the prompts using whatever they can gather around their headquarters. This year, we’re doing submissions virtually, but we still expect you to produce physical items. They don’t all have to be in one place; anyone on your team can contribute. In this puzzle, for as many of the below MIT-themed prompts as you like, you should produce a submission that you can pass off as that thing, without actually using the real thing on or from MIT campus. While we will be checking your score against the goal listed above, we’ll be lenient about accepting submissions as long as you’ve put effort toward satisfying the prompt and the rules. Good luck!
  1. the Great Dome
  2. Kresge Auditorium
  3. Stata Center
  4. Simmons Hall
  5. Infinite Corridor (+1 point if actually infinite)
  6. the Chapel
  7. fusion reactor (+1 point if functional)
  8. Media Lab
  9. Green Building
  10. Senior Haus
  11. Bexley
  12. Building 66
  13. stairwell
  14. library stacks
  15. door with a name painted on it
  16. fishbowl lab
  17. Kresge organ
  18. tunnel
  19. empty elevator shaft
  20. wooden roller coaster (+1 point if accompanied by valid building permit)
  21. moat
  22. a swivel chair going down a ramp
  23. The Sail
  24. Transparent Horizons
  25. Dollar Bill Lounge
  26. a dorm mural (+1 point if glow-in-the-dark)
  27. an MIT Museum exhibit
  28. Aesop’s Fables
  29. cat on a fire escape
  30. Media Lab art project
  31. The Alchemist
  32. Building 3 floor skull
  33. cow with a diploma
  34. drinking from a fire hydrant
  35. Caltech Cannon (+1 point if incorporating something from Caltech)
  36. No Knife
  37. Pumpkin Drop
  38. something measured in smoots
  39. thesis defense
  40. Steer Roast
  41. Splash (+1 point if including an actual middle or high school student)
  42. Mystery Hunt (+1 point if it’s specifically this year’s, or otherwise recursive)
  43. tour group
  44. LSC movie (+1 point if in stereo)
  45. Assassin’s Guild game
  46. CPW (+1 point if including an actual high school student)
  47. SaveTFP event
  48. Puppy Lab
  49. Bad Ideas (up to 3 points for distinct, innovative bad ideas)
  50. The Tech
  51. a sailboat
  52. SafeRide bus
  53. a poster for an a cappella concert (+1 point if accompanied by an actual [very short] a cappella concert)
  54. Mystery Hunt coin (to clarify, real coins from past Hunts do not qualify)
  55. boba tea
  56. free food (not boba)
  57. Krotus summoning circle
  58. equations on a blackboard
  59. bunk/loft bed
  60. rubber duck
  61. academic regalia
  62. Brass Rat (to clarify, real MIT class rings do not qualify)
  63. a large amount of caffeine
  64. someone solving a Rubik’s cube in less than 30 seconds
  65. someone on a roof
  66. a mascot named TIM
  67. guest lecturer
  68. career fair recruiter
  69. snippets from the course catalog (up to 5 points for distinct selections)
  70. Yew Labs (3 points)