VT Hunt

The VT Hunt (Virginia Tech Hunt), notated with the symbol ᚖᚌᚖ, is an annual puzzlehunt at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. This competition typically has hundreds to thousands of participants, with the 2019 Hunt attracting roughly 1800 participants on 550 teams (allowing sizes of only 1 to 10 members). The team completion rate for the 2019 challenge was 12.3%, according to the official statistics page.[1] That year, the VT Hunt team raised $6,500 for Relay for Life, and an additional $500 in individual donations on its behalf.[2]

VT Hunt 2019 Announcement
Rekam Eulc (orange tophat) places first clue in the Burruss Hall

Background
Laser-etched plaque awarded to 2018 VT Hunt finishers

There is no set date for when the event begins, though symbols (ᚖᚌᚖ) typically appear throughout campus and on social media one week prior to the commencement. The Hunt begins at midnight seven days after the first symbol or flier is found when the (host organization) Septagram Society's figurehead Rekam Eulc places the first clue in the tunnel below Burruss Hall.

The VT Hunt was first released to the public in 2018 by Jamie Simon, a then-undergraduate physics and ESM student, and Bennett Witcher, a graduate aerospace engineering student.[3] The first Hunt began with a barrage of fluorescent-colored flyers placed throughout the university showing a geographic puzzle and the ᚖᚌᚖ logo. In total, there were 13 clues, counting the initial flyers that were sprinkled all over campus, on Reddit[4][5] and Facebook. The clues lead all over campus. Each clue provides hints to the next riddle.[3] The winners of the VT Hunt receive an acrylic laser-etched trophy in addition to other undisclosed awards.[6]

Puzzles

The puzzles of the VT Hunt are typically abstract and involve a broad range of locations and challenges. Past puzzle solutions include Morse code using long and short vowels, a song on guitar that spelled out a word on the grid of the fretboard, mapping countries to top-level domain codes to the periodic table, a temporary local radio station, an electronically augmented piano that revealed its secrets when the right tune was played, and a clue hidden on an island in the middle of the Duck Pond.

Past VT Hunt solutions


gollark: I'm pretty sure I've seen diagrams of pronounceable things of some kind, but they're more complex than just permutations of "high tone, low tone" and do not conveniently map to concepts.
gollark: What do you mean "all of the possible forms of a square diagram with two or more sides"? There are infinitely many of those. And how do I just pronounce a diagram without a predetermined mapping?
gollark: Also, I have no idea what an "objective → semantic buffer" is and I think you're underestimating the difficulty of implementing whatever it is.
gollark: I can't actually source this, having checked *at least* two internet things.
gollark: In any case, I am not a linguist, but I think it's technically possible to produce an AST from English, or something like that, but really impractical. There is no regular grammar, words can't be cleanly mapped to concepts because they carry connotations pulled in from common discourse and the context surrounding them, many of them mean multiple things, you have to be able to resolve pronouns and references to past text, etc.

References
  1. "Solutions". www.vthunt.com. Retrieved 2019-09-10.
  2. "Relay For Life | Cancer Walk | Cancer Fundraising Events". secure.acsevents.org. Retrieved 2019-09-10.
  3. contributor, Rachel Kiser, lifestyles. "Finding the prize in the VT Hunt". Collegiate Times. Retrieved 2019-09-10.
  4. "r/VirginiaTech - SOLVE THE VT HUNT". reddit. Retrieved 2019-09-10.
  5. "r/VirginiaTech - ᚖᚌᚖ IT HAS BEGUN! - Solve the VT Hunt [VTHUNT.COM] ᚖᚌᚖ". reddit. Retrieved 2019-09-10.
  6. "Puzzling student scavenger hunt to return in April". www.vtnews.vt.edu. Retrieved 2019-09-10.
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