Puzzle Hunts

I love puzzle hunts! (although I'll also freely admit I'm not very good at them)
I think puzzle hunts are a criminally underrated puzzle format whose niche appeal comes partially from the fact that the people who like doing them have built up a resistance to them and only want the really hard stuff. While at college (the student accomodation, not the mini-university you have to go through in America to put you in more debt), I made a series of puzzle hunts to try and get others as interested in the hobby as I was. If you see my team Stooth Moves participating in a hunt, know that that name comes from an incorrect index in the first puzzle I ever published at my college.

Most of these hunts are preserved as .zip files, though I'm working on adapting them for the web.

Introductory Hunts

These hunts were designed to be accessible to new solvers.

Boot Camp was my third ever puzzle hunt, and specifically designed (with some help from my friends) to be a beginner-friendly way to get into puzzling.

The Easter Hunt was a seasonal hunt I designed for a year that was otherwise largely puzzle-less. The puzzles were originally hidden throughout my college, with a large chocolate rabbit hidden away and waiting to be found by the winners.

The Macquarie Labyrinth was inspired by Notpron. My mum and I enjoyed solving it together, and it inspired me to make a similar hunt for my highschool (I made it for my school house's term, and said house was Macquarie House). This hunt involves solving a series of esoteric puzzles which each provide a keyword you can use to unlock the following one.

The Macquarie Labyrinth Redux is nothing like the Macquarie Labyrinth. I made it on request to make a new labyrinth when my younger sister started attending my highschool (though I don't believe it ever got used). It's a more standard puzzle hunt that reuses some puzzle formats from my other hunts.

College Hunts

While these hunts weren't specifically designed for beginners, they were designed to be solved by college students.

Of Utmost Importance was my first ever puzzle hunt. It's theme is that each round's answer is what's most important to a specific area of college. I'd apologise for several puzzles now being unsolvable owing to their requirement of college-specific knowledge, but MIT pulls that nonsense every year in their Mystery Hunt and I want to get back at them for it.

Tournament Arc was the second of the hunts I made at college, which I did with the help of some of my friends. It's themed after an anime tournament arc, where each puzzle is a foe you must face off against in your journey to become the new champion.

The Student Hunts are each themed after helping one of four uni students with a problem they're suffering from. This culminates in The Final Exam, a meta-hunt which never got run because everyone ended up busy with their real life final exams. Poetic. Student Hunt

The Jailbreak Hunts unfortunately faired worse than the student ones. They're themed after a dramatic jailbreak in which you must befriend four characters who helped build your prison (shamelessly inspired by the 2013 MIT Mystery Hunt, I will never not be upset that the 'obstacles' component of that hunt is completely undocumented). Its opening round and first two sub-hunts made it, the remaining two and the runaround hunt did not. Perhaps one day I'll go back and finish it, for now this is all you get.

Major Hunts

These are hunts that I've made since college. Several of them are in development.

Lost in Translation is an Outer Wilds-themed puzzle hunt. Playing the game isn't necessary to solve it, and the puzzles are very spoiler-light, but do yourself a favour and play one of the best games of the decade. Don't look up anything about it, it'll all spoil it for you. Just buy it and play it. You won't regret it.