The winner of MIT Mystery Hunt 2020, ✈✈✈ Galactic Trendsetters ✈✈✈, flies over to an alternate campus during the COVID-19 pandemic!
In this MIT Mystery Hunt, the kick-off is a conference presentation of Yew Labs that announces the discovery of parallel universes. However, Barbara Yew got trapped in one parallel universe home to the Perpendicular Institute of the World (⊥IW). Teams first hooked up the Projection Device in Yew Labs to enter the parallel dimension themselves, which is in the format of an MMO game. However, the parallel dimension itself has a lot of problems and interferences due to the presence of items from another universe, so solvers traveled around the area to solve problems. The teams later found Barbara Yew and recovered a coin, causing the universes to stop interfering with each other.
The first team to do so was Palindrome, who went on to do MIT Mystery Hunt 2022.
- Alternate Universe: The universe with ⊥IW serves as a parallel, err perpendicular, universe to the real-world MIT.
- Animate Inanimate Object: In the storyline of "Squee Squee"
, the Piggy Bank that teams got comes to life to join the team in the puzzlehunt, and teams interact with it in multiple ways to solve that puzzle. - Fetch Quest: Naturally arises from the MMO-like format of the Projection Device.
- Students need to be found in the overworld in order to unlock the corresponding puzzle from the Students round.
- One of the puzzles, "Can You Deliver 80 Eggs?", is a virtual egg hunt.
- Grid Puzzle: The puzzle "Fun with Sudoku" has a lot of sudoku and its variations.
- Infinite: Taken literally with the alternate universe version of the real-world Infinite Corridor.
- Justified Tutorial: According to the writer's notes, the intro-round puzzle "Hey, Can You Give Me A Hand With This Puzzle?" serves as this.
- Ludicrous Precision: A major premise in the puzzle "Exactly". Solvers need to complete clue phrases that solve to one of the numbers in pop culture displaying this very trope.
- Rebus Bubble: A major premise in ✏️✉️➡️3️⃣5️⃣1️⃣➖6️⃣6️⃣6️⃣➖6️⃣6️⃣5️⃣5️⃣, which include actual expressions and equations to solve and need not involve mathematical symbols.
- Room Escape Game: The puzzle "Escape! Hayden Library" is a digital version of an escape room that takes place in the Projection Device.
- Scavenger Hunt: The puzzle "MIT/⊥IW Experimental Evidence" serves as this, where teams submit photos or videos of things representing various things related to actual things from the MIT campus.
- Self-Care Epiphany: Mystery Hunts have gotten so long and extensive to the point that there are yearly reminders to stay healthy, hydrated, and get enough sleep during the hunt. This year also has the puzzle "Stay Hydrated", where the premise is entirely a second reminder to do just that in the middle of the hunt.
- Sequence Breaking: Backsolving has been a common approach to puzzle solving, but one round is entirely built on that. The ⊥IW.giga round has the metapuzzle already solved from the start, but one feeder puzzle is essentially blank. To progress in the round, solvers need to back solve that feeder puzzle based on how the metapuzzle would have been solved.
- Take My Hand!: The puzzle "Don't Let Me Down" is based on this very trope appearing in other media.
- Teamwork Puzzle Game: The puzzle "So You Think You Can Count?" is a riff on the classic team exercise on counting to a certain number without skipping or repeating numbers. However, all user screen names involve an adjective and an animal, so coordination is needed in order for a miscount to not happen, and there are also automated trolls that also have the naming convention that can interfere with the progress, such that even those attempting solo still need to contend.
