The 2015 USC Puzzle Hunt began today and will run for the next two weeks. Teams will compete to solve a series of puzzles in order to move on in the competition.
The first Puzzle Hunt was in 2012, Christopher King’s first year at USC. He began the competition and is now the founder and editor of the hunt. As the fourth Puzzle Hunt begins, King, a math student, is seeing participation at an all-time high.
With 48 teams registered and 214 people in total on those teams, this year’s hunt has the largest amount of participation they have seen to date.
Five metapuzzles will be released throughout the first week of the competition and each will link to the next day’s puzzle. After working their way through these multiple layers of puzzles that form clues, the winner of the Puzzle Hunt will eventually be led to a prize somewhere on USC’s campus.
The Puzzle Hunt welcomes both teams from USC and international and ‘remote’ teams from around the country to participate in their event. Currently there are 18 teams registered from USC and all the others are from around the world. Teams from California, the Philippines and China have participated.
“It’s pretty cool imagining that some puzzle solvers in China who have never stepped foot on our campus is trying to solve a puzzle that features the buildings of the Horseshoe is a word search,” King said.
Although these remote teams aren’t eligible for the on-campus prizes, they play for the fun of the hunt.
Inspired by MIT’s Mystery Hunt, the competition gives teams a large set of puzzles that are surrounded around a central theme.
“When I was in high school, I discovered the MIT Mystery Hunt, which is the premier puzzle hunt in the world,” he said. “After browsing and seeing what amazing things could be done with puzzles, I was determined to start a tradition at USC.”
King had the opportunity to participate in the MIT Mystery Hunt in 2015 and won with his team, giving them the opportunity to help write the puzzles for the 2016 competition.
“I have been fascinated with puzzles my entire life and now it comes full circle,” King said. “I started with a book of crosswords when I was 7, and now I write a new crossword each week for my blog.”
King finds that the best things about the competition are knowing that people are out there working on puzzles that he put together as well as allowing him the opportunity to meet others who share in his ‘puzzling’ passion.
The puzzles in this year’s hunt will fall under various categories identified as both “conventional and non-conventional” by the Puzzle Hunt’s website. They will not only encompass traditional puzzles, but some that are more involved and thus require a wider berth of knowledge.
“The puzzles themselves come in all shapes and sizes,” King said. “While some puzzles might come in the form of a word search or crossword, many times you have to figure out what is the solving mechanism.”
Although this is King’s final year at USC, he hopes that the tradition he began four years ago will continue to persist.
“The Puzzle Hunt has been a highlight each year I’ve been at USC, and I look forward to this year’s Hunt and hopefully the Hunts in USC’s future,” King said.