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Author Topic: MIT Mystery Hunt Dominion Puzzle  (Read 5365 times)

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ehunt

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MIT Mystery Hunt Dominion Puzzle
« on: January 15, 2012, 04:34:34 pm »
+2

Pretty fun! You may need a password to log in for the next few hours. (I am giving away a little when I say it's a Dominion puzzle, but it would not have taken any of you very much time to figure that out...)

(new link posted in post below)
« Last Edit: January 16, 2012, 02:02:15 pm by ehunt »
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AJD

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Anon79

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Re: MIT Mystery Hunt Dominion Puzzle
« Reply #2 on: January 17, 2012, 03:04:18 am »
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Took me forever to recognise just Harvest, Moneylender and Jester (which is a pain to distinguish from Swindler), although Trader was easy to spot. After a while I just searched CouncilRoom for the game log.

To those who have solved this, how do you recognise Festival without referring to the game logs? Seems impossible.
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ehunt

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Re: MIT Mystery Hunt Dominion Puzzle
« Reply #3 on: January 17, 2012, 03:29:57 am »
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@Anon -
this probably isn't how you're supposed to do it, but the way we figured it out involved the fact that the card title had to be 8 or more characters to make the answer to the first meta-clue at the bottom a positive number. i think the solutions guide on the website (click upper right corner) explains how you can deduce it without gaming the system.
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Qvist

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Re: MIT Mystery Hunt Dominion Puzzle
« Reply #4 on: January 17, 2012, 04:07:32 am »
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Well, that was fun. Who made that puzzle? Someone of this forum?

How I solved it:

The base cards were pretty obvious, especially as they were in order.
I: Trader was the next card, as it is the only trasher that can react to attacks.
Then I looked from turn to turn.
E: Moneylender was the next card as it has to be a card that gives $3 for trashing a copper in turn 4 of player 3.
G: In turn 6 of player 3, he bought a card with $6. As we see in turn 9: It's nonterminal.
So Grand Market came to my mind, and I looked and realized that it was bought with Copper in hand, but not in play. So, this was clear too.
A: This one made me curious. It seemed like a card which you let reveal always 4 cards of your deck and gives at least $4 as turn 15 of player 3 shows. I thought and thought and had to look in the card list. The only card that fit is Harvest.
C: was the best card in the puzzle. Of course it's nonterminal. In turn 19 of player 1 it gets drawn by the Grand Market and than itself draws two Silver. So I thought it  has to be Laboratory. But then turn 17 of player 3 made me curious, as it gives $1 and a buy too. It took a while, but then I realized, it could be a level 3 City. I counted how many Cities where bought: all 10, so I was pretty sure now.
D: This one was hard too. It costs $2 as turn 1 of player 4 shows. It turn 12 of player 4 we see that it is non-terminal and draws a card (F wasn't in hand before).
And it has a option (with ^ and without). First I thought it is Native Village, but this didn't made any sense, especially in this turn, where he needed to put the cards from the mat in hand 2 times in a row. So this had to be Pearl Diver, which also took a while.
F: In turn 15 of player 4 we see that it gives a buy and at least $1. In turn 12 we see it's nonterminal and it gives at least 2 coins. Only Festival fits this criteria.
The attacks I try to solve at the end.
H: Turn 6 of player 2 showed a cursing attack that draws 3 cards. Only Torturer fits.
J: This had to be an attack which let everybody reveal a card and can also give junk to the opponents. Turn 5 of player 4 showed that it gives at least $2.
So it has to be Swindler or Jester. This was hard as the notation doesn't show which card the opponent got. But as player 4 had an 5/2 start I concluded this has to be Jester.
B: I know this is a cursing attack, which only got bought once for $5. In turn 13 of player 4 it draws at least 2 cards, so this is Witch.

BTW: At the time I was trying to solve the last card B, I found out that there is a solution link. That's kinda funny. So my walkthrough is somehow useless now. Nevermind. At least there is better solution for J.
« Last Edit: January 17, 2012, 06:34:04 am by Qvist »
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ycz6

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Re: MIT Mystery Hunt Dominion Puzzle
« Reply #5 on: January 17, 2012, 06:31:12 am »
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I worked on this puzzle with rspeer and roed. It's a slick puzzle; we never did figure out how to distinguish between Jester and Swindler. The main gripe we had was that ATZERODTORVOLOKHEG really does not look like anything.
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Anon79

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Re: MIT Mystery Hunt Dominion Puzzle
« Reply #6 on: January 17, 2012, 07:54:19 am »
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I worked on this puzzle with rspeer and roed. It's a slick puzzle; we never did figure out how to distinguish between Jester and Swindler. The main gripe we had was that ATZERODTORVOLOKHEG really does not look like anything.
With Jester you gain cards in your deck that you never bought.
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ycz6

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Re: MIT Mystery Hunt Dominion Puzzle
« Reply #7 on: January 17, 2012, 01:37:41 pm »
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Yeah, I read the official solution. Wasn't too much of an issue, we just had to check all the cases.
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AJD

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Re: MIT Mystery Hunt Dominion Puzzle
« Reply #8 on: January 17, 2012, 07:47:50 pm »
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We didn't even notice that Swindler was a possibility during the Hunt. At least, when I joined in working on this puzzle, my teammates—who had already been working on it for a while and figured out some of the notation—said "Hey Aaron, what's a $5 card that makes opponents reveal a card from the top of their decks" and I said "Jester" and they were like "Oh okay, that's why player so-and-so on a later turn plays a Silver they never bought" and we were like "cool". They didn't notice till much later that what they should have asked me was $5 or less, and by that time we were already happy with Jester.

City was what took us the longest to figure out, largely because we spent a long time thinking Harvest was Scout because we didn't notice that it was giving +$. So we saw Card C had to be giving +card, +action, +$, and +buy, and Grand Market was already taken, and we were like, well, Market's the only other card that does that...! Fortunately eventually we figured out Harvest, which is terminal, which meant card C had to be +2 actions, which solved it for us.
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Anon79

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Re: MIT Mystery Hunt Dominion Puzzle
« Reply #9 on: January 18, 2012, 12:50:37 am »
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All this "full solution" thing kinda took me aback a little. I would have thought the more natural way of "solving" it - especially for people who frequent here - is to check CouncilRoom after figuring out a few cards (in the off-chance the game was played on isotropic)? Unless the rules of the Hunt somehow forbids that?
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AJD

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Re: MIT Mystery Hunt Dominion Puzzle
« Reply #10 on: January 18, 2012, 12:56:14 am »
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All this "full solution" thing kinda took me aback a little. I would have thought the more natural way of "solving" it - especially for people who frequent here - is to check CouncilRoom after figuring out a few cards (in the off-chance the game was played on isotropic)? Unless the rules of the Hunt somehow forbids that?

The rules of the Hunt certainly don't forbid that, and in fact that's a really clever think-outside-the-box way of solving the puzzle. That said, my team at least obviously totally didn't think of that—in fact, it didn't even occur to us that this might be a real game of Dominion that had actually ever been played, on Isotropic or elsewhere; we pretty much assumed it was a model game constructed for the purpose of the puzzle.
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Qvist

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Re: MIT Mystery Hunt Dominion Puzzle
« Reply #11 on: January 18, 2012, 07:40:11 am »
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After that puzzle, I ask myself, if it would be nice to have a standardized short notation for Dominion turns like in Chess ("e2-e4")
That would have the profit, we could log games relatively quick in real life games too.
And after a little time if you're already accostumed with the notation, a short notation may even be easier to read, as it is shorter and maybe more clearly arranged.
I think the biggest problem would be define short codes for 157 cards instead of 6 in chess. Maybe we define only short codes for the base cards and redefine fitting letters to the kingdom cards individually like in this puzzle. I mean, even it was the first time reading it, I could read it really fast and if I would have known what each card is, it would be even easier.

What do you think? Maybe this is just a crazy idea, I don't know.

GendoIkari

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Re: MIT Mystery Hunt Dominion Puzzle
« Reply #12 on: January 18, 2012, 09:35:20 am »
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After that puzzle, I ask myself, if it would be nice to have a standardized short notation for Dominion turns like in Chess ("e2-e4")
That would have the profit, we could log games relatively quick in real life games too.
And after a little time if you're already accostumed with the notation, a short notation may even be easier to read, as it is shorter and maybe more clearly arranged.
I think the biggest problem would be define short codes for 157 cards instead of 6 in chess. Maybe we define only short codes for the base cards and redefine fitting letters to the kingdom cards individually like in this puzzle. I mean, even it was the first time reading it, I could read it really fast and if I would have known what each card is, it would be even easier.

What do you think? Maybe this is just a crazy idea, I don't know.

Well I don't think you can redefine letteres for each Kingdom... you would have to have standardized notation. If you use 2 letters to describe a card, that allows for up to 676 different cards. However, you'd have to use meaningless letters for many of the cards. I would allow up to 3 letters per card. That keeps it short, while allowing you to actually tell what card it is. All the base cards would be just 1 letter, though. C, S, G, E, D, P. Curse would have to be 2 letters though.
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AJD

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Re: MIT Mystery Hunt Dominion Puzzle
« Reply #13 on: January 18, 2012, 01:31:55 pm »
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After that puzzle, I ask myself, if it would be nice to have a standardized short notation for Dominion turns like in Chess ("e2-e4")
That would have the profit, we could log games relatively quick in real life games too.
And after a little time if you're already accostumed with the notation, a short notation may even be easier to read, as it is shorter and maybe more clearly arranged.
I think the biggest problem would be define short codes for 157 cards instead of 6 in chess. Maybe we define only short codes for the base cards and redefine fitting letters to the kingdom cards individually like in this puzzle. I mean, even it was the first time reading it, I could read it really fast and if I would have known what each card is, it would be even easier.

What do you think? Maybe this is just a crazy idea, I don't know.

Well I don't think you can redefine letteres for each Kingdom... you would have to have standardized notation. If you use 2 letters to describe a card, that allows for up to 676 different cards. However, you'd have to use meaningless letters for many of the cards. I would allow up to 3 letters per card. That keeps it short, while allowing you to actually tell what card it is. All the base cards would be just 1 letter, though. C, S, G, E, D, P. Curse would have to be 2 letters though.

Well, or you could use something like X for Curse.
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