Evan Broder
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ebroder.net
Evan Broder
@ebroder.net
Stereotypical nerd. Into distributed systems, cooking, cocktails, board games, escape rooms. Taking a break, previously at Stripe. https://ebroder.net
So like do you show up in a tux just in case?
November 16, 2025 at 10:31 PM
I'm mostly excited to go in blind, but any non-spoiler tips for getting the most out of it?
August 3, 2025 at 6:07 PM
The 2025 MIT Mystery Hunt might be the most ambitious project I’ve ever gotten to work on. I know that all of us are so proud of what we put together, and I’m excited that a little more of the Hunt than usual will live on in the archives. I hope you enjoy it! (12/12)
June 27, 2025 at 6:47 PM
- And of course, last but *certainly* not least, a full credits page recognizing the 166 supremely wonderful and talented people who worked for an entire year of their lives to bring the 2025 MIT Mystery Hunt to life: puzzles.mit.edu/2025/extras/... (11/N)
June 27, 2025 at 6:47 PM
- We had a professional videographer at Hunt all weekend, and have collated some of that footage. Since wrap-up, we've added video recaps from Control Room (puzzles.mit.edu/2025/hunt/pu...), the events (puzzles.mit.edu/2025/hunt/ro...), and the finale (puzzles.mit.edu/2025/hunt/in...) (10/N)
June 27, 2025 at 6:47 PM
We also updated the "virtual radio" page: puzzles.mit.edu/2025/hunt/vi... - while we can't generate the full WDNM 2π stream, you can still enjoy our DJ's banter - and collected the music that was composed and arranged for kickoff and in-person interactions (puzzles.mit.edu/2025/extras/...) (9/N)
June 27, 2025 at 6:47 PM
(I also probably wouldn't recommend it at scale >= 100) (8/N)
June 27, 2025 at 6:47 PM
- As promised, there's an extensive 4,500-word writeup on the radios: puzzles.mit.edu/2025/extras/..., with annotated schematics, source files, partslists, and assembly instructions. You could, in theory, use these to assemble your own radio, although at scale of < 100 I wouldn't recommend it (7/N)
June 27, 2025 at 6:47 PM
- There's an overall Hunt statistics page with customizable slicing-and-dicing across different teams: puzzles.mit.edu/2025/extras/..., along with per-puzzle stats. We also added some special stats and graphs for specific puzzles. Of course, a raw activity log is also available. (6/N)
June 27, 2025 at 6:47 PM
- Rather than a purely static render of the Hunt site, the archives will let you re-play the Hunt from the beginning, with a client-side port of our backend that is as complete as we could manage. Or just skip to the end and see the murder board in all of its strung-up glory. (5/N)
June 27, 2025 at 6:47 PM
There is, of course, variation in *how* post-solveable we could make puzzles, but in general we've never let practicality limit our ambitions. (I think puzzles.mit.edu/2025/hunt/pu... and puzzles.mit.edu/2025/hunt/pu... might take the cake for most ambitious adaptations) (4/N)
June 27, 2025 at 6:47 PM
- For puzzles which were previously only solveable weekend-of, in-person, or while we were staffing the email queues, we've updated them to be as remotely-post-solveable as we could. In total, we made *some* update to 42 (out of about 170) puzzles. Sometimes very minor, others quite major (3/N)
June 27, 2025 at 6:47 PM
Hopefully anyone at Hunt saw the amount of love that everyone on the team put into everything, and we wanted to do the best job we could of capturing that in the archived site. We've added a bunch of features and content to the archive site that we hope folks enjoy: (2/N)
June 27, 2025 at 6:47 PM
lol I guess we were doing blueprints before it was cool
June 3, 2025 at 5:42 PM
Not a game, but we did have a puzzle using the Spectre in this year's MIT Mystery Hunt: www.two-pi-noir.agency/puzzles/the_...
April 16, 2025 at 4:25 PM
I hope we didn't give you *too* hard of a time when you *did* eventually get to Half-Baked 😂
January 23, 2025 at 12:48 AM
Ah I saw that Palindrome struggled a bit with the extraction on the last step, and I regretted not stopping by to help out a bit more. But otherwise based on the parts of the hunt you enjoyed, I think it's possible that we should be friends 😃
January 21, 2025 at 1:19 AM
Also I wish Duolingo spent less time on transliteration. It is not helping me develop instincts when I can't tell if it's asking me about "vo" (i.e. "βο") or "νο" (i.e. "no"), especially when their Greek font seems to be intentionally chosen to be confused with Latin letters
November 29, 2023 at 7:32 PM
ohno I underestimated how different modern Greek is relative to Ancient Greek and English-speaking math Greek
November 29, 2023 at 3:20 AM