"Greetings! You're just in time!" As you walk into the Laboratory for Olfactory Science, the head researcher is running around in a frenzy, with an insane gleam in his eye. "The secret project is just about complete!"
Each time he runs by you, you start to speak and then hesitate. You don't have the heart to tell him that, since The Team Your Team Could Smell Like is changing its name to Too Big To Fail, the entire laboratory is due to be torn down and replaced by a morally ambiguous investment firm.
"All right, here we are!" The researcher suddenly transforms from a rapidly moving blur into a deranged man standing in front of you with a collection of test tubes. The tubes are filled with various ingredients, and despite the fact that half of the test tubes are upside down, none of the ingredients seem to be falling out.
"Now, we just combine the ingredients, and we'll create the odor which all of the other Mystery Hunt teams will be smelling by the end of this year's Hunt!" You begin to ask him who told him he was supposed to be doing that, and who authorized the budget for the complex machinery scattered around the room, but before you can do either, he pours all of the tubes into one vat. There is a huge explosion, and when the smoke clears, the researcher is gone, and all that's left in the room is a bizarre odor.
But what odor is it, exactly? Your curiosity gets the best of you, and you pick up the ingredient list from a nearby desk, wondering if you can work out precisely what the researcher created...
Combine ingredients using A Series of Tubes.
1. Palindrome
2. Eric Prestemon
3. Jonathan McCue
4. Joe DeVincentis & Paul Melamud
5. Nathan Curtis & Ken Levin
6. The Just-Us League
7. Mark Halpin
8. Francis Heaney
9. Thomas Snyder
10. Shrenik Shah, Dan Collins, Charles Steinhardt, Dan Gulotta, Tom Yue, and John Lesieutre
Hi folks, and welcome to my 2012 Mini-Hunt. This set of puzzles was designed to give my team some practice before the MIT Mystery Hunt, but after the Hunt it will be posted on the web for public consumption.
Your goal is to determine what the researcher created. In order to do so, you will need to solve the puzzles linked in the recipe. This year's mini-hunt does not have an automated answer check system, but if you want to check a puzzle answer, e-mail me at thedan-at-alum-dot-mit-dot-edu, and I'll let you know whether you're right. If you have a final answer to the mini-hunt, you can send it to the same address, and I'll confirm it (and offer hearty congratulations if applicable). The first ten solvers are now immortalized above. The leaderboard is now full, but I'm still happy to confirm answers.
I'd like to offer my thanks to Jackie Anderson for solving these puzzles as I created them, and to Chad Brown, TK Focht, Mark Gottlieb, Jeff Marman, Tanis O'Connor, Mike Selinker, and Gaby Weidling for testing the entire set in one day once it was finished. Both stages of testing provided valuable feedback, and I hope the final product is better as a result. (Though I did not necessarily take all of their advice, so they should be credited for positives but not blamed for negatives.)
Also, I am certainly not the only one producing online puzzle suites these days, and so I'd like to plug some of my favorite compatriots:
If you enjoy these puzzles, and you'd like to contribute to my tip jar, you can do so via PayPal by clicking the "Donate" button below. I spend many hours constructing a mini-hunt each year, and it's getting harder to do so now that I have an actual job. If you think the end result is worth a few bucks, and you're feeling generous, I'd be very grateful for any contributions. Thanks!