MIT Puzzle Club and the ✈﻿✈﻿✈ Galactic Trendsetters ✈﻿✈﻿✈ are thrilled to announce that the 41st annual MIT Mystery Hunt will begin at noon ET on Friday, January 15th, 2021! Read the announcement and the frequently asked questions.

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The MIT Mystery Hunt is a puzzlehunt competition that takes place on the MIT campus every year during the Martin Luther King, Jr. Day weekend. The hunt challenges each participating team to solve a large number of puzzles which lead to an object (called a “coin”) hidden somewhere on campus. The winning team gets to write the subsequent year’s hunt.

Mystery Hunt was launched in 1981 and is widely regarded as one of the oldest and most complex puzzlehunts in the world. It attracts more than 2,000 people every year and has inspired similar competitions at universities, companies and cities around the world.

This site serves as a record of the Mystery Hunt’s history and an archive of past hunts. We hope that it inspires you to join in on the fun and become a master puzzle solver.

If you are just starting as a puzzle solver, welcome! Check out the “Resources For Beginners” to read about the art of puzzle solving and get started with a few hand-selected puzzles, and take a look at “Puzzle tools and how-tos” for links to various tools that make the process easier.

Support the MIT Mystery Hunt

Donate to support the Mystery Hunt

The Mystery Hunt is an ASA-recognized group (reach the student club at puzzle-club-exec@mit.edu) which receives some funding from Finboard, the Large Events Fund, and other sources at MIT. The group also typically fundraises annually to help cover the costs associated with creating, producing, and running an activity of this size and scope. With your support, we can put the Mystery Hunt in a more stable financial position for the future.

As an MIT student activity, we can accept donations to our operating fund through MIT's donation mechanism. If you would like to donate, you may do so at the link above. Any money that you donate will go into the student group's account and will help defray the cost of this year's Hunt. Any surpluses from this year will roll over to future Hunts. If you or your company would like to make a non-monetary donation to the Mystery Hunt (server space, food for event puzzles, caffeine pills to keep us awake) please email puzzle@mit.edu and let us know how you wish to help.