Microsoft Puzzle Hunt
Encyclopedia
The Microsoft Puzzlehunt is a quasi-annual Microsoft
tradition started in 1999. It is a puzzlehunt
in the same vein as the MIT Mystery Hunt
or The Game
. The hunt is a team puzzle
competition which challenges each team to solve a large number of original puzzles of all different kinds. The answers, when used in conjunction with the meta-puzzle
, lead to a hidden treasure concealed somewhere on the Microsoft campus. Teams spend the weekend solving original and unique puzzles, usually created by the team that won the last hunt. Puzzles may be anything from traditional puzzles like crossword
s, word search
es, cryptogram
s, jigsaw puzzle
s, word play
and logic problem
s to wandering around campus to find landmarks or puzzles that have to be solved on location. Teams are no larger than 12, at least 4 must be current Microsoft employees, and at least 6 must be current or former employees.
The Microsoft Puzzle Hunt takes place over a weekend at the Microsoft campus in Redmond, Washington
, usually lasting approximately 32 hours from beginning to end.
Microsoft has a rich tradition of puzzle events, including Microsoft Puzzle Safari
, Microsoft Intern Puzzleday and Microsoft Iron Puzzler, but Microsoft Puzzle Hunt remains the "main event" for puzzle solvers in the Microsoft community.
Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...
tradition started in 1999. It is a puzzlehunt
Puzzlehunt
A puzzlehunt is a puzzle game where teams compete to solve a series of puzzles at a particular site, in multiple sites and/or via the internet. Groups of puzzles in a puzzle hunt are often connected by a metapuzzle, leading to answers which combine into a final set of solutions...
in the same vein as the MIT Mystery Hunt
MIT Mystery Hunt
The MIT Mystery Hunt is an annual puzzlehunt competition at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. As one of the oldest and most complex puzzlehunts in the world, it attracts about 1,000 people annually and has inspired similar competitions at Microsoft, Stanford University, Melbourne...
or The Game
The Game (treasure hunt)
The Game is a non-stop 24–48 hour treasure hunt, puzzlehunt or road rally that has run in the San Francisco Bay and Seattle areas since 1973. Its teams use vans rigged with power and Internet access and drive hundreds of miles from puzzle site to puzzle site, overcoming often outrageous physical...
. The hunt is a team puzzle
Puzzle
A puzzle is a problem or enigma that tests the ingenuity of the solver. In a basic puzzle, one is intended to put together pieces in a logical way in order to come up with the desired solution...
competition which challenges each team to solve a large number of original puzzles of all different kinds. The answers, when used in conjunction with the meta-puzzle
Meta-puzzle
A metapuzzle is a puzzle that unites several puzzles that feed into it. For example, five puzzles that had the answers BLACK, HAMMER, FROST, KNIFE, and UNION would lead to the metapuzzle answer JACK, which combines with all of those words to make new words and phrases.A "meta-meta" unites several...
, lead to a hidden treasure concealed somewhere on the Microsoft campus. Teams spend the weekend solving original and unique puzzles, usually created by the team that won the last hunt. Puzzles may be anything from traditional puzzles like crossword
Crossword
A crossword is a word puzzle that normally takes the form of a square or rectangular grid of white and shaded squares. The goal is to fill the white squares with letters, forming words or phrases, by solving clues which lead to the answers. In languages that are written left-to-right, the answer...
s, word search
Word search
A word search, word find, word seek, word sleuth or mystery word puzzle is a word game that is letters of a word in a grid, that usually has a rectangular or square shape. The objective of this puzzle is to find and mark all the words hidden inside the box. The words may be horizontally,...
es, cryptogram
Cryptogram
A cryptogram is a type of puzzle which consists of a short piece of encrypted text. Generally the cipher used to encrypt the text is simple enough that cryptogram can be solved by hand. Frequently used are substitution ciphers where each letter is replaced by a different letter or number. To solve...
s, jigsaw puzzle
Jigsaw puzzle
A jigsaw puzzle is a tiling puzzle that requires the assembly of numerous small, often oddly shaped, interlocking and tessellating pieces.Each piece usually has a small part of a picture on it; when complete, a jigsaw puzzle produces a complete picture...
s, word play
Word play
Word play or wordplay is a literary technique in which the words that are used become the main subject of the work, primarily for the purpose of intended effect or amusement...
and logic problem
Logic puzzle
A logic puzzle is a puzzle deriving from the mathematics field of deduction.-History:The logic puzzle was first produced by Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, who is better known under his pen name Lewis Carroll, the author of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland...
s to wandering around campus to find landmarks or puzzles that have to be solved on location. Teams are no larger than 12, at least 4 must be current Microsoft employees, and at least 6 must be current or former employees.
The Microsoft Puzzle Hunt takes place over a weekend at the Microsoft campus in Redmond, Washington
Redmond, Washington
Redmond is a city in King County, Washington, United States, located east of Seattle. The population was 54,144 at the 2010 census,up from 45,256 in 2000....
, usually lasting approximately 32 hours from beginning to end.
Microsoft has a rich tradition of puzzle events, including Microsoft Puzzle Safari
Microsoft Puzzle Safari
The Microsoft Puzzle Safari is a one-day team letterboxing event held annually on the Microsoft campus in Redmond, Washington.There are a maximum of four participants per team. The event takes place over the course of two rounds. Each round, the teams receive a batch of puzzles and a logbook, each...
, Microsoft Intern Puzzleday and Microsoft Iron Puzzler, but Microsoft Puzzle Hunt remains the "main event" for puzzle solvers in the Microsoft community.
Puzzle Hunt I: The Microsoft Games (August 13-15, 1999)
- Theme: Olympics
- Participants: 35 teams, 275 players
- Hosted by: TLA (Bruce Leban, Dan Westreich, Gordon Dow, Jason Woolever, Matthew Kotler, Roy Leban, Sam Sherry, Sarita James, Scott Ruthfield, and Shannon Talbott)
- Won by: Killer Bees
- Awards: Gold, silver and bronze medals
- Memorable Events/Puzzles: This first hunt was a three-day hunt, running Friday afternoon to Sunday night. The event was three rounds (Bronze, Silver, Gold). Killer Bees won the Gold round, the Silver Round, and the hunt. United Farm Workers won the Bronze round.
Puzzle Hunt II: Age of Puzzles (April 1-2, 2000)
- Theme: Age of Empires - The puzzles from this hunt can be found here: http://puzzlehunt.isetv.com/default.asp.
- Participants: 27 teams, 305 players (1 team finished)
- Hosted by: Killer Bees (Eric LeVine, Kenny Young, Dana Young, Steve Bush, Christine Chang, Jeff Reynar, and Todd Roshak)
- Won by: Cracking Good Toast
- Awards: T-shirts
- Landmarks: First hunt with computer scoring and a point system.
Puzzle Hunt III: You Don't Know Puzzles (November 4-5, 2000)
- Theme: Game showGame showA game show is a type of radio or television program in which members of the public, television personalities or celebrities, sometimes as part of a team, play a game which involves answering questions or solving puzzles usually for money and/or prizes...
s - Participants: 28 teams, 344 players (1 team finished)
- Hosted by: Cracking Good Toast (Jack Bridges, Jennifer Gosnell, Mark Lambert, Alex Mogilevsky, Tom Powers, Briand Sanderson, Peter Sarrett, Ken Wong, and Mark Engelberg)
- Won by: Killer Bees
- Awards: Computer games
- Memorable Events: Three live, massively multiplayer game show events, each of which concealed a puzzle which the winning team didn't need to solve.
- Landmarks: First hunt with a team limit of 12 at a time (substitutions allowed). First hunt with live events. First repeat winner.
Puzzle Hunt IV: Clue (November 3-4, 2001)
- Theme: Clue board gameCluedoCluedo is a popular murder/mystery-themed deduction board game originally published by Waddingtons in Leeds, England in 1949. It was devised by Anthony E. Pratt, a solicitor's clerk from Birmingham, England. It is now published by the United States game and toy company Hasbro, which acquired its U.S...
and filmClue (film)Clue is a 1985 comedy mystery film based on the board game of the same name . The film is a murder mystery set in a Gothic Revival mansion, and is styled after Murder by Death and other various murder/dinner parties of mystery... - Participants: 38 teams, 416 players (4 teams finished)
- Hosted by: The Usual Suspects (Jennifer Cockrill, Giovanni Della-Libera, Meredith McClurg, Brooke Nelson, Andrew Ryder, Peter Sagerson, and Kenny Wolf)
- Won by: SCRuBBers
- Awards: T-shirts, and each of the 4 finishing teams got their choice of one of the weapons
- Landmarks: First hunt with no substitutions (hard limit of 12 team members). First hunt which had multiple teams finish.
Puzzle Hunt V: Mission: Impuzzible (September 21-22, 2002)
- Theme: Mission: ImpossibleMission: ImpossibleMission: Impossible is an American television series which was created and initially produced by Bruce Geller. It chronicled the missions of a team of secret American government agents known as the Impossible Missions Force . The leader of the team was Jim Phelps, played by Peter Graves, except in...
- Participants: 45 teams, 469 players (2 teams finished)
- Hosted by: SCRuBBers (Troy Barnes, Josh Benaloh, Steve Dupree, Matt Lyons, Becca Olsen, Deborah Pierce, Jon Pincus, Dan Simon, Terence Spies, Dave Thaler, Jay Thaler, and Jeff Wallace)
- Won by: Cracking Good Toast
- Awards: Mission: Impuzzible portfolios
- Landmarks: First and second place teams were separated by 11 minutes.
Puzzle Hunt VI: TimeCorps (May 17-18, 2003)
- Theme: Time travelTime travelTime travel is the concept of moving between different points in time in a manner analogous to moving between different points in space. Time travel could hypothetically involve moving backward in time to a moment earlier than the starting point, or forward to the future of that point without the...
- Participants: 40 teams, 439 players (4 teams finished)
- Hosted by: Cracking Good Toast (Andrew Becker, Rolf Buchner, Thomas Coon, Greg Hermann, Victor Kozyrev, Mike Marcelais, Don Munsil, Peter Sarrett, and Roger Wolff)
- Won by: TLA Lovers Anonymous
- Awards: Hourglasses
- Memorable Events/Puzzles: Puzzles were given in three waves, with the puzzles in wave three having the same names as those in the first two waves, but a slightly different puzzle in keeping with the idea that the villain went back and changed time. Chicago Fire, a crossword puzzle on red construction paper, was a memorable puzzle in that it required pouring water on the puzzle to reveal the Scotch-Guarded squares.
- Landmarks: Largest win margin in hunt history (8 hours).
Puzzle Hunt 7: Alice in Puzzlehunt (March 20-21, 2004)
- Theme: Alice in WonderlandAlice's Adventures in WonderlandAlice's Adventures in Wonderland is an 1865 novel written by English author Charles Lutwidge Dodgson under the pseudonym Lewis Carroll. It tells of a girl named Alice who falls down a rabbit hole into a fantasy world populated by peculiar, anthropomorphic creatures...
- Participants: 51 teams, 558 players (1 team finished)
- Hosted by: TLA Loves Alice (Brett Roark, Bruce Kaskel, Bruce Leban, Chip Brown, Darren Rigby, Elan Lee, Gordon Dow, Ken Jordan, Kiran Kedlaya, Mike Koss, Paul Grimes, Roy Leban, and Scott Ruthfield)
- Won by: Staggering Geniuses
- Awards: Framed mirror with image of a playing card showing Alice as both Queen of Hearts and a chess queen
- Memorable Events/Puzzles: The actual Sunday New York Times crossword puzzle was part of the event. Roy Leban, the puzzle creator and a New York Times crossword contributor, coordinated with Will ShortzWill ShortzWill Shortz is an American puzzle creator and editor, and currently the crossword puzzle editor for The New York Times.-Early life and education:...
, the puzzle editor for the New York Times, to have his puzzle published on that particular Sunday. Other memorable events included the Puzzle Special pizza that had to be ordered from the local Pizza Hut and Washington State House Resolution No. 4717 PDF officially recognizing March 20-21st, 2004 as Alice in Puzzlehunt Weekend in the State of Washington. - Landmarks: First, second, and third place teams were searching in the same building (but not on the same floor) as time was about to expire.
Puzzle Hunt 8: The Hard Way (February 19-20, 2005)
- Theme: Las VegasLas Vegas StripThe Las Vegas Strip is an approximately stretch of Las Vegas Boulevard in Clark County, Nevada; adjacent to, but outside the city limits of Las Vegas proper. The Strip lies within the unincorporated townships of Paradise and Winchester...
, complete with showgirls and a time-share presentation - Participants: 57 teams, 643 players (6 teams finished)
- Hosted by: Staggering Geniuses (Amanda O'Connor, Mark L. Gottlieb, Sean Trowbridge, Mike SelinkerMike SelinkerMike Selinker is a game designer whose design credits include Pirates of the Spanish Main and Fightball with James Ernest, Axis & Allies Revised Edition with Larry Harris, the Marvel Super Heroes Adventure Game, and Risk Godstorm. He was a creative director for the 3rd edition of Dungeons & Dragons...
, Matt Ruhlen, Greg Lewis, Jason Alcock, Matt Dixon, Ron Giesen, Matt Jones, Chris McBride, and Chris Pearo) - Won by: Cracking Good Toast
- Awards: Giant dice
- Memorable Events/Puzzles: Teams were given a "Las Vegas" (transformed Microsoft Campus) travel brochure at the opening ceremony with seven puzzles and a metapuzzle embedded within. Each of the seven puzzles gave an instruction for cutting out and taping together buildings, cutting holes in the buildings, positioning them on the map, and shining a light through the buildings from a particular position over the map to cast the shadow of a phone number, which kicked off your meeting with the nefarious Mr. Big.
- Portions of this hunt appear in the November 2005 issue of GAMES World of PuzzlesGAMES World of PuzzlesGames World of Puzzles is a puzzle magazine published bimonthly by Games Publications, a division of Kappa Publishing Group. It is a spinoff of Games magazine focusing solely on pencil puzzles. A centerpiece section contains a feature puzzle or puzzles, such as puzzles from the World Puzzle...
. - Landmarks: Second largest win margin in hunt history (? hours). First three-time winner. First hunt to have a team (not the winning team) to solve all puzzles.
Puzzle Hunt 9: Doomsday (November 5-6, 2005)
- Theme: American Comic Books. Before the hunt started, the title was "Countdown".
- Participants: 62 teams, 708 players (6 teams finished)
- Hosted by: Everyday Heroes (Karen Babcock, Stephen Beeman, Nick Gedge, Dave Heberer, Sharry Heberer (Claypool), Jesse McGatha, Brett Roark, and Richard Rowan)
- Won by: Cracking Good Toast
- Awards: Keys to the city and Captain Micropolis/Puzzler coins
- Memorable Events/Puzzles: Captain Micropolis, the superhero defender of Micropolis, announced his retirement, then flew off for one last challenge, where he unfortunately met his doom at the hands of evil super-villain The Puzzler. The opening round was a newspaper distributed immediately after the opening event, ending with the first meta. There were 8 meta puzzles, with the final one being six rebus puzzles (gotten from the intermediate six metas), which each fed into a final rebus meta puzzle. At the end of the hunt, it was learned that Captain Micropolis was really The Puzzler and the winning teams saved him from a fate worse than death.
- Landmarks: First hunt to use an unlocking scheme (solving a puzzle gained you another puzzle), with no bonuses for first solves. First four-time winner.
Puzzle Hunt A: Atlantis (February 10-11, 2007)
- Theme: AtlantisAtlantisAtlantis is a legendary island first mentioned in Plato's dialogues Timaeus and Critias, written about 360 BC....
- Participants: 75 teams, 864 players (12 teams finished)
- Hosted by: Buzz Lime Pi and Friends (Chris Battey, Mike Burk, Jeremy ElsonJeremy ElsonJeremy Elson is a computer researcher specializing in wireless Sensor Networks. He is also the creator of the popular CircleMUD. Elson received his Ph.D. from UCLA in 2003. He is currently working at Microsoft Research, in the Distributed Systems and Security group within Systems and Networking...
, Carrie Emmerich, Nick Emmerich, Jon Howell, Jay Lorch, Evan McLain, Sora Werner, Chase Stephens, Robert Stewart, Michelle Teague, Dana Young, Kenny Young) - Won by: Death of Dr. Zero
- Awards: Atlantis "Access Tokens" (laser-etched acrylic disc)
- Memorable Events/Puzzles: A puzzle that used an interactive Virtual Earth map to locate items hidden on campus (two members of the organizing team had to fly an airplane over the Microsoft campus with a high-resolution digital camera to get the level of detail down to 3cm per pixel, allowing each puzzle answer to indicate a 6-foot square region where an item was hidden). A puzzle that had you build a quinoaQuinoaQuinoa , a species of goosefoot , is a grain-like crop grown primarily for its edible seeds. It is a pseudocereal rather than a true cereal, or grain, as it is not a member of the grass family...
-powered analog computer that produced a phone number. - Landmarks: The top three teams finished the hunt separated by only 16 minutes. First hunt with automated web answer submission system. First hunt to have a dramatic end-of-hunt spectacle at the closing ceremonies (in previous hunts, end-of-hunt storyline was only seen by finishing teams).
Puzzle Hunt 11.0: Caught in the Net (October 6-7, 2007)
- Theme: TronTron-Film:*Tron , a franchise that began in 1982 with the Walt Disney Pictures film Tron** Tron , a 1982 science fiction film by Disney, starring Jeff Bridges, Bruce Boxleitner, Cindy Morgan, Dan Shor and David Warner...
- Participants: 71 teams, 830 players (14 teams finished)
- Hosted by: SCRuBBers (Troy Barnes, Josh Benaloh, Nat Dupree, Steve Dupree, Jessica Lambert, Matt Lyons, Dan Simon, Dave Thaler, Jay Thaler, Kaylene Thaler, Ian Tullis, Jeff Wallace, Roger Wolfson)
- Won by: The Usual Suspects
- Awards: Discs of Tron (illuminated flying discs)
- Memorable Events/Puzzles: Illuminated flying disks and puzzle spheres on the playfields in the dark. Balancing puzzles solves between conflicting goals -- keeping the MCP happy by solving his puzzles, while still working on solutions that would help the internet rebel forces and contribute to the Meta puzzle.
- Landmarks: Introduced an unlocking system that also tracked top 3 fastest solves per puzzle, based on unlock times. A web interface built in Microsoft SilverlightMicrosoft SilverlightMicrosoft Silverlight is an application framework for writing and running rich Internet applications, with features and purposes similar to those of Adobe Flash. The run-time environment for Silverlight is available as a plug-in for web browsers running under Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X...
which provided an immersive experience appropriate for the Tron theme. First hunt in which all finishing teams wrote a program to solve the Meta.
Puzzle Hunt 123: Jeopardy!/Puzzlehaunt! (February 28-March 1, 2009)
- Theme: Jeopardy!Jeopardy!Griffin's first conception of the game used a board comprising ten categories with ten clues each, but after finding that this board could not be shown on camera easily, he reduced it to two rounds of thirty clues each, with five clues in each of six categories...
morphing into a haunted puzzlehunt - Participants: 84 teams, 975 players in Redmond (1 team finished); 16 teams, 178 players in Bay Area (1 team finished)
- Hosted by: The Usual Suspects (Rich Bragg, Giovanni Della-Libera, Gordon Dow, Caroll Ferry, Douglas Ferry, Dave Fisher, Brent Lang, David Miller, Brooke Nelson, Andrew Ryder, and Peter Sagerson), Cracking Good Toast (Andrew Becker, Mike Marcelais, and Peter Sarrett), Dana Young, and Kenny Young
- Won by: SCRuBBers (Redmond); Demonic Robot Tyrannosaurs (the Burninators and coedastronomy, Bay Area)
- Awards: Jeopardy! plaques
- Memorable Events/Puzzles: Three-dimensional metapuzzles constructed of 30 paper rectangles forming a rhombic triacontahedronRhombic triacontahedronIn geometry, the rhombic triacontahedron is a convex polyhedron with 30 rhombic faces. It is an Archimedean dual solid, or a Catalan solid. It is the polyhedral dual of the icosidodecahedron, and it is a zonohedron....
, 20 truncated triangles (nonagons) forming an icosahedronIcosahedronIn geometry, an icosahedron is a regular polyhedron with 20 identical equilateral triangular faces, 30 edges and 12 vertices. It is one of the five Platonic solids....
, and 12 pentagons forming a dodecahedron, respectively, with a final meta using all of the pieces combined to form a rhombicosidodecahedronRhombicosidodecahedronIn geometry, the rhombicosidodecahedron, or small rhombicosidodecahedron, is an Archimedean solid, one of thirteen convex isogonal nonprismatic solids constructed of two or more types of regular polygon faces....
, on the surface of which participants had to solve a chess puzzle. "Daily Double" puzzles that encouraged the entire team to work together to solve a timed, interactive puzzle for additional points. - Landmarks: First hunt to be simulcast to the Bay Area. First hunt to have separate competitive and recreational divisions. New record for largest hunt with 100 teams and over 1100 players.
- Note: The combination of themes was a result of the teams planning hunts 12 and 13 merging.
Puzzle Hunt 14: Travel the Number 14 (September 10-11, 2011)
- Theme: Trains/Carmen Sandiego - The puzzles from this hunt can be found here: http://seattlepuzzling.com/ph14/.
- Participants: TBA
- Hosted by: Liboncatipu (Ben Andrews, Jen Chalfan, Jamie Eckman, Jeff Ford, Jonobie Ford, Drew Hoskins, Mike Janney, Jason Lucas, Chris Moore, Andy Rich, Rehana Rodrigues, Deanna Rubin, Adam Ruprecht)
- Won by: Death of Dr. Zero (Redmond); Friday the 13th Part VI (Bay Area)
- Awards: Individually personalized wooden train whistles
- Memorable Events/Puzzles: Four "whistle stops", each designed to be projected in a conference room and solved by the entire team
- Landmarks: First hunt with explicit rules governing how teams were provided with hints and data confirmation.