HMMM #1 Solutions
This is a solution and recap to the meta puzzle Registration from the first HMMM (Harvey Mudd Mystery Marathon). If you don’t know what HMMM is, you can read about it here. If you are interested in a recap of the whole hunt (including other puzzles), you can read about that here.
The Puzzle
This is a puzzle created by Ricky Shapley. The full puzzle is reproduced below. If you are interested in solving it on your own, I recommend you right click the image and view it on in another tab or download it so that you can avoid seeing the solution.
Solution
The first step to solving this puzzle is to identify each of the images. These are produced below, along with the numbers to their left. Please bear with the lack of proper tables.
200 — FOOT — WORM
81 — VASE — VENT
73 — KITE — NEST
16 — MOON — EAR
-7– WIFI — VEST
The flavortext hints that spelling things might be helpful, so we’ll spell out the numbers given.
TWO HUNDRED— FOOT — WORM
EIGHTY-ONE — VASE — VENT
SEVENTY-THREE— KITE — NEST
SIXTEEN — MOON — EAR
NEGATIVE SEVEN– WIFI — VEST
It also hints about juxtaposition. What this means to convey is that you’re supposed to concatenate the words you get from the pictures, giving
TWO HUNDRED — FOOTWORM
EIGHTY-ONE — VASEVENT
SEVENTY-THREE — KITENEST
SIXTEEN — MOONEAR
NEGATIVE SEVEN– WIFIVEST
The concatenated words aren’t new words themselves, but if we look at their centers, we see the spellings of numbers.
TWO HUNDRED — FOOTWORM
EIGHTY-ONE — VASEVENT
SEVENTY-THREE — KITENEST
SIXTEEN — MOONEAR
NEGATIVE SEVEN– WIFIVEST
We haven’t yet used the spelled-out numbers on the left, so we try using the numbers we found on the right as indices, giving the answer WORST.
W — TWO HUNDRED — TWO
O — EIGHTY-ONE — SEVEN
R — SEVENTY-THREE — KITENEST
S — SIXTEEN — MOONEAR
T — NEGATIVE SEVEN– WIFIVEST
Notes
This was a puzzle that Ricky sent to our group chat probably at an ungodly late hour. He referred to it as “easy” and “simple,” and I, after looking at it for a few minutes, decided I had no clue what to do. This puzzle makes good use of self-reference, going from using numbers as words to using words as numbers.
During the hunt, we discovered an error in the puzzle: the last number was originally 9,000,000, which when indexed by 5 gave M instead of T. I realize now that it was simply an error of magnitude: Ricky likely meant for it to be 9,000. Thinking quickly at the time, he instead came up with -7 as a replacement, which made for a very humorous errata, where 9,000,000 was reduced to -7.
This puzzle made an appearance in the zeroth HMMM, a short puzzle hunt hosted for admitted students. Though initially designed as a standalone puzzle (and used that way in the first HMMM), this puzzle was the meta puzzle of the zeroth HMMM. Answers for the previous puzzles were used instead of the numbers on the left column.
