Monday, March 30th, 2009
MUMS Puzzle Hunt Day 1 Yesterday I received an IM from one of my "puzzle friends"...that is, someone I know strictly through the world of puzzling.

"You participating in MUMS?" he asked. "It starts in an hour."

"Not that I know of. That competition is always off my radar until it's over."

"Well, you're free to join with our team if you want."

MUMS stands for Melbourne University Mathematics and Statistics. As in Melbourne Australia. Every year, they put on a week-long puzzle competition in which they release 5 puzzles a day for 5 days. Each puzzle is worth 5 points regardless of difficulty. Teams consist of 1-10 members. I had never participated, as I said, because I always forgot it existed until it was over. The puzzle quality, like that other Australian puzzle competition CISRA runs every spring, tends to be all over the place, but at least they try to make their puzzles original.

Turns out the team I've joined up with is Hard. Core.

It consists of *several* members of the team that won the MIT Mystery Hunt this year. They are extremely efficient, and knock puzzles down in no time flat. I kinda feel like the weak link, actually, though I have had a few "aha" moments that have helped the team.

The competition started at 8:00 PM yesterday and the next set of 5 will be released tonight, same time. We finished the first 5 by midnight, and were the first team to do so, currently putting us at the top of a 4-way tie for first place.

Click here to see our progress. We're Team Plugh.

http://www.ms.unimelb.edu.au/~mums/puzzlehunt/teamstats...

On a side note, the CISRA competition has started as well, and I'm on a completely different team than the one I'm on for MUMS. We've decided on the name Team Last Place so that anything better would be a nice surprise. Although we've only solve 1 out of 4 puzzles thus far, our name is already a misnomer. :)