We start with:
- 10 "mini" puzzle answers from the mushroom puzzles
- 5 "main" puzzle answers from the longer puzzles inside the hut
- a giant pentagram
The pentagram consists of 5 yellow circles at its vertices and 10 red arrows along its edges, starting at a smaller circle and ending at an enumerated label. Matching the counts, each of the 10 mini answers must correspond to a red arrow, and each of the 5 main answers corresponds with a yellow vertex node.
The enumerated red blanks don't quite line up with the mini answer lengths, so the mini answers must be the starting points of the arrows. Furthermore, each of the 5 main answers sounds like a transformation — we infer that we have to transform each mini answer twice, following the arrows, to get to another word that matches the final enumeration of the corresponding arrow.
| Main Answer | Transformation |
|---|---|
| GO DOWN | Physically move "downwards" (e.g., on a keyboard or a map, but not always south) to reach another location |
| ANTITHESIS | Take opposite/antonym |
| START OF THE EXPANSION | Convert an acronym into the first word of its expanded form |
| THREE AFTER | Go three steps forward in a well-known sequence |
| OFF LIMITS | Remove the first and last letters |
Conveniently, each intermediate and final word should also be a reasonable word or phrase. Occasionally, a different definition/interpretation of the intermediate is used to reach the final word, but the final word is always coherent.
Some common starting points are:
- Noticing that STABS → TAB → CAPS LOCK fits nicely into the (4 4) enumeration
- Using the positions of the transforms from CAPS LOCK to fit OPINE → PIN → PERSONAL
- Noting that RADAR and LASER are both acronyms
- Trying to apply THREE AFTER or OFF LIMITS to the mini answers (though TIN → IODINE → ODIN is a red herring)
The diagram with labeled transformations and filled-in final words looks like this:
The ten intended transformation paths and explanations are listed below:
| # | Start | Transform 1 | Intermediate | Transform 2 | End |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | AFGHANISTAN | GO DOWN | PAKISTAN | START OF THE EXPANSION | PUNJAB[A1] |
| 2 | TIN | GO DOWN | LEAD | ANTITHESIS | FOLLOW[A2] |
| 3 | LASER | START OF THE EXPANSION | LIGHT | ANTITHESIS | DARK[A3] |
| 4 | RADAR | START OF THE EXPANSION | RADIO | THREE AFTER | VISIBLE LIGHT[A4] |
| 5 | LIFE | ANTITHESIS | DEATH | THREE AFTER | TOWER[A5] |
| 6 | DELUGE | ANTITHESIS | DROUGHT | OFF LIMITS | ROUGH[A6] |
| 7 | MU | THREE AFTER | OMICRON | OFF LIMITS | MICRO[A7] |
| 8 | GEORGE III | THREE AFTER | VICTORIA | GO DOWN | TASMANIA[A8] |
| 9 | STABS | OFF LIMITS | TAB | GO DOWN | CAPS LOCK[A9] |
| 10 | OPINE | OFF LIMITS | PIN | START OF THE EXPANSION | PERSONAL[A10] |
[A1]: Going down on a map (south) from Afghanistan leads to Pakistan.Yes, Pakistan is an acronym — while it does have the popular etymology of "land of the pure," this is in fact a backronym! The original coining of the name "Pakistan" by Choudhry Rahmat Ali is an acronym composed of parts of the different regions of Pakistan: Punjab, Afghan, Kashmir, Sindh, and Baluchistan. The alternate spelling of PANJAB yields the same letters needed for the next step.
[A2]: Going down a row on the periodic table from tin leads to lead. The common antonym of "lead" is "follow," though this necessitates a change in pronunciation.
[A3]: The term "laser" originated as an acronym for "light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation."
[A4]: "Radar" is an acronym for "radio detection and ranging." On the electromagnetic spectrum, three after "radio" (radio waves) in the only direction we can proceed (shorter wavelength) is visible light. The common puzzle hunt dataset lists that we've referenced in the FAQ list these as RADIO and VISIBLE LIGHT, which is what we use here.
[A5]: In the list of major arcana (tarot cards), The Tower (XVI) comes three after Death (XIII). Articles of the major arcana are dropped in the common puzzle hunt dataset lists that we've referenced in the FAQ, so we drop them here as well.
[A6]: Online thesauruses will hopefully yield that the most sensible antonym of "deluge" (a lot of water in one place) is "drought" (a lack of water in one place).
[A7]: Three after mu in the Greek alphabet is omicron. Removing the first/last letter cutely results in MICRO, the SI prefix represented by mu.
[A8]: In the list of British monarchs, three after George III is Victoria. Going down on a map (south) from the Australian state named after her leads to the Australian state of Tasmania. Fun fact: Victoria and Tasmania do share a land border, located on an 85-meter-long island in between Tasmania and the Australian mainland.
[A9]: On most standard keyboard layouts, going down a row from the Tab key leads to the Caps Lock key.
[A10]: PIN is an acronym for "personal identification number." This is a reminder that if you say "PIN number," people will point at you and laugh.
We now have 5 words spelled out by the symbols in the double-transformation products.
| Symbol | Word |
|---|---|
| triangle | SOUTH PLATTE |
| spiral | WRONG |
| diamond | AIM |
| 8-pointed asterisk | KILO |
| 4-pointed star (X shape) | RELAPSED |
However, they don't match the 5 yellow "star" enumerations associated with each node, the only part of the diagram we haven't used yet. This hints that we have to transform them again, but how?
We note that we can use each transform properly for one of the answers, but the 5 resulting words still don't line up with the star blanks. However, if we keep transforming, we can use the same transformation twice:
| Start | After 1 transform | After 2 transforms | Transformation |
|---|---|---|---|
| SOUTH PLATTE | PLATTE | MISSOURI[B1] | GO DOWN |
| WRONG | RIGHT | LEFT[B2] | ANTITHESIS |
| AIM | AOL | AMERICA[B3] | START OF THE EXPANSION |
| KILO | NOVEMBER | FEBRUARY[B4] | THREE AFTER |
| RELAPSED | ELAPSE | LAPS[B5] | OFF LIMITS |
[B1]: The South Platte is a river, and in the context of rivers, "go down" means to go downstream or downriver: in other words, to follow the river to its mouth until we reach something else (i.e., another river). The South Platte River is a tributary of the Platte River, which is itself a tributary of the Missouri River.
[B2]: "Right" has two common antonyms in English, though the meaning changes.
[B3]: AIM is an acronym for a well-known messenger, AOL Instant Messenger. AOL is itself an acronym for America Online.
[B4]: In the NATO alphabet, three after KILO is NOVEMBER. (Note that we aren't using SI prefixes: there's no way to context-switch with the intermediates, six above or below KILO doesn't match the final enumeration of 8, and the fact that the direction of the sequence (bigger or smaller) isn't clear should dissuade us from pursuing the SI prefixes.) Switching context to months brings us from November to February.
[B5]: Noticing that RELAPSED → ELAPSE → LAPS is the most common break-in for this step.
These words finally match the five starred blanks. Each blank fits appropriately with the word resulting from using the transformation associated with the blank's node. Reading the starred letters in order tells us that the way to undo the witch's curses is to RECURSE YOURSELF, a fitting conclusion to all that transformation recursion we did.
Authors' Notes
Inspirations/Similar Metas (spoiler alert!)
This puzzle draws inspiration from lots of other metas involving transforms and/or pentagrams. Four of the most notable ones that we'd like to mention are:
Puzzle Potluck 4, Bulletin Board: Very cute, and a good reference for out-of-the-box transformations that worked cleanly. We wanted to do something similar to this for endgame with the main round meta answers as three more transformations. Unfortunately, the metas were in place and we ran out of time, so we opted for a slimmed-down runaround-style endgame instead.
Teammate Hunt 2021, Hall of Mirrors: Anyone who's solved both Hall of Mirrors and this puzzle will call out the similarities, and they would be right: this puzzle is heavily inspired by the transform chaining used in Hall of Mirrors. In fact, the final extraction mechanic of "do it again, again" came in large part from a path mentioned in the authors' notes that used the same transformation twice but didn't make it to the final version.
We tried our best not to overlap too much with anything directly used before, though. I hope that we built upon the idea enough for our puzzle to fall under "inspiration" and not "plagiarism." 😅
MIT Mystery Hunt 2023, Space Modules: Space Modules uses each pairwise combination of 5 feeder answers for 10 given entries. Early in our solve at MITMH, we thought that something might pop out if we noted associations with each feeder or along each combination, and the best way to visualize that would be to draw a giant relational diagram on a blackboard for the whole team to see. It just so happens that the diagram for (5 choose 2) relations is a pentagram.
This pentagram was not relevant. We tabled the combination idea (and the pentagram) for later, though.
Brown Puzzlehunt 2023, Bring Back Blueno: We realize that this wasn't the only hunt this year with a meta involving a giant pentagram, but we decided the mechanic was different enough to move forward with this idea. We also thought it would be funny to bring about yet another giant pentagram puzzle. Who doesn't like pentagrams?
Writing Time
This puzzle took two months to construct.
Early versions of this puzzle mechanic tried to use various ideas that were even more complicated, such as:
- longer transformation chains, like using different permutations of 5 transforms on each of a set of given words
- 6 or 7 transformations to give a round with more than 5 feeders, before we settled on the idea of handing out each starting point as a mini-puzzle answer
- using both orders of a transformation pair (and transforming 20 words in total)
All of these quickly proved to be super overconstrained.
The idea of using puzzle hunt-esque transformations for a meta had been floated around before the mechanic coalesced, which happened when we looked to Hall of Mirrors for inspiration. We didn't want to step on the toes of Hall of Mirrors and reuse any of their datasets or transforms, but doing so in a way that:
- didn't overlap with any existing dataset-based puzzle in our hunt (of which there are quite a few)
- had 5 transforms that could be clued cleanly and were different enough from Hall of Mirrors or anything already written in our hunt
- had 10 transform paths for each unique transform pair, preferably in the symmetric pattern seen on the final pentagram
- avoided valid red herring transform paths as much as possible
was prohibitively difficult.
It wasn't until a few things clicked (listing enough transform possibilities, discovering Pakistan was an acronym, seeing the do-it-again-again final mechanic in action) that we finally decided that there were enough puzzle mechanic parts and little discoveries along the way to make writing the puzzle worth it.
Much of the time was spent iterating after each testsolve to clean up one red herring / transform misinterpretation after another. The answer wordings were settled upon to minimize any misinterpreted meanings or paths, though this came at the cost of making some awkward word choices, like START OF THE EXPANSION and DELUGE.
It took 12 testsolves to iron it out into the version you're seeing today. Hopefully it paid off!
Unlock Conditions
This meta unlocks at 4/5 Witch's Hut puzzles plus any number of mushrooms and is gated behind solving the metas for the other two main rounds first, since we wanted to end the hunt with this as either the final or penultimate puzzle (before endgame). This led to a sensible story flow for most teams but tripped up teams who gunned for Witch's Hut puzzles first before solving the Creatures or Silence metas. I don't regret the gating, but I do regret not signposting this more. As we'll discuss in the wrap-up, signposting this was one of the lower-priority items that we ultimately couldn't incorporate due to focusing on just getting the site up and running (as best as we could).
When I first wrote the meta, I initially wanted to unlock it with more feeders unsolved. However, due to the placement of mushrooms throughout the hunt and this meta as the final puzzle (besides the runaround), most people rolled into the meta with 8 or 9 mushrooms in hand. The same was true for the full-hunt testsolves, where having lots of feeders made for an enjoyable buttery-smooth solve experience, so I ended up being okay with it. Sacrificing a bit of difficulty for fun was a tradeoff I was willing to make.
Imperfections
TIN → IODINE → ODIN: If you ran into this red herring, sorry! Given the nature of the puzzle, lots of sensible red herrings like this one popped up in the writing process. Unfortunately, getting rid of this one completely would've taken more time and work than we could afford and broken too many existing connections that we wanted to keep. Hopefully the enumerations were enough to dissuade you from keeping this. TIN → IODINE/LEAD → ASTATINE is tolerable enough to keep, though — while the enumeration overlap isn't ideal, noticing that ASTATINE gives garbage letters teaches solvers about the context switching that will be key for the final step of the puzzle.
The entire flavor text, especially "binding": Some teams during the hunt took this (along with "curse" and the general satanic theme) to be a reference to Binding of Isaac and went down a rabbit hole with BoI curses. Whoops! The flavor text is mostly thematic filler, and had we caught this sooner, this would definitely have been changed. I forgot that the game existed when working on the hunt. Maybe it was a mistake to switch from Northernlion to Bob Ross as my go-to sleeping aid.
SOUTH PLATTE: This is a weird clue that isn't super clean and followed from this chain of writing events:
- The final answer and other 4 double-transform paths are too good to get rid of, so the final product from double GO DOWN has to have the letters ORSU
- MISSOURI is the only location that seems clear enough to clue and might lend itself to a double GO DOWN
- MINNESOTA → IOWA → MISSOURI is too boring so we should clue the river
- No intermediates have a satisfying or clean switch-up so we'll have to settle with a tributary's tributary
- We need a tributary of a tributary of the Missouri River that is very clearly a river and nothing else
Many testers (and possibly your team too) tried to go south of the South Platte River to reach various results that didn't fit the enumeration and/or felt weak. Regardless, the other 4 double-transform paths are straightforward enough to give enough letters to wheel-of-fortune the answer.
LIGHT / VISIBLE LIGHT: The fact that the word LIGHT appears twice in the first part (or even the fact that VISIBLE LIGHT is there in the first place) is a bit icky. I wanted VISIBLE LIGHT to be VISIBLE to match the fact that "radio waves" is just RADIO, but SOUTH PLATTE was too demanding of the letters in LIGHT. This was made tolerable by the facts that:
- LIGHT is an intermediate and VISIBLE LIGHT is a final word
- VISIBLE LIGHT is listed in the "canonical" puzzle hunt datasets referenced in our FAQ
- we need to ship this puzzle and can't have 15 puzzle slots blocked on this for much longer
There are a number of other things that we could list, but to keep it short*, we needed to move on with writing the hunt and compromises had to be made. We hope the puzzle was satisfying enough to smooth over any bumps in the road that you might've encountered.
*oops