Students raced in teams to be the first to solve a series of puzzles during the Puzzlehunt Club’s annual Pi Day Hunt, which lasted from the week of March 28 to April 4.
Puzzlehunts are competitions where solvers attempt to be the first to solve various puzzles whose topics range from logic to pop culture to sports. Puzzlehunt at RM is a longstanding tradition and traditionally, two events are held annually: the Pi Day Hunt and the Mole Day Hunt. The leadership team, which consists of juniors David He, Serena Wang, Audrey Dinh and Catherine Yang is responsible for writing the puzzles, sending out emails and organizing the logistics of the event. “This year we had just the Pi Day Hunt, not the Mole Day Hunt,” He said. “But we’re hoping next year we can get both Mole Day and Pi Day.”
In order to come up with puzzles, Wang says that she often takes inspiration from bigger puzzlehunt events outside of the school. “We like to take inspiration from like outside puzzle hunts made by outside organizations, like universities like MIT and Brown, or just other groups like Galactic Puzzle Hunt,” she said. “I think a really significant part of both writing and solving is creative thinking or thinking outside of the box. You have to think of creative puzzles to write or creative solutions.”
Dinh first heard about puzzlehunts from her sister who also attended RM and participated in the tournaments. “I saw some of the examples online, and they look pretty interesting for me,” she said. In 2022, along with Wang, she placed first in the Mole Day hunt. She says she was inspired to join after realizing the potential to bring her passion in other subjects such as art and design. “I think writing is interesting because you can incorporate a lot of other interests into it. For instance, I like to design things, so I think it’s fun to make puzzles that look visually interesting,” she said.
This year’s Pi Day Hunt consisted of two rounds. The first required solving five puzzles, and the second, the meta round, combined the answers from round one to obtain the final answer. Wang says she advises students attempting puzzlehunts to use the internet and all available resources. “A lot of times the stuff in a puzzle is easily googleable and then from there, you can work on it,” she said. “It does help to have more teammates working on a puzzle, because you have more minds.”
While there are many other established puzzlehunt events scattered around the country, the RM club aims to be tailored towards first-time solvers. “Especially for round one, a lot of the puzzles are easier and they teach a lot of the basic mechanics,” He said. “Most people’s introduction to puzzlehunts is the RM hunts. Obviously, one goal of the hunt is to be accessible to people who are just starting out and to get them invested.”
He described the environment during a hunt as chaotic. “You’ve got a ton of people spitting out ideas and sometimes, you’re getting led down on false paths annoyingly by your teammates,” he said. Ultimately, his favorite part is watching people solve the puzzles he creates. “As writers we have access to their work documents and it’s very interesting to see how they’re approaching the puzzle and what kind of things they do.”
When solvers finally reach the answer, Wang says it’s very satisfying. “Usually people have to go through a lot of trial and error and continue on different options until they finally figure it out. It’s just really satisfying and makes you want to continue.”
This year, the first team to finish were the Dabdevils which was composed of juniors Ojas Bailey, Keshav Ramaswasmy, Oren Egnal, and Derek Wang. In second place, and only two minutes behind were the AP Chinoz whose members were juniors Kat Xue, Sophia Li, Sophie Huang, and Katie Diao. Both teams were awarded mini pies and mole keychains.
Dinh says that prior skill level doesn’t matter and strengths in any subject area can help solve puzzles. “I think it’s something everyone can enjoy, because there are puzzles that are more like logic puzzles and others that are more about words,” she said. “Depending on what subjects you’re interested in, there’ll be a puzzle that’s for you.”
