Hello all. My name is Mark. I'm looking for people who might be interested in meeting up to do puzzle hunts, primarily MIT Mystery Hunt, here in the UK. The full pitch is in the linked Google Doc along with an invite to the Discord. Not asking for any commitment of course so feel free to join if you'd like to know more.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1elb ... sp=sharing
Looking for puzzle hunt fans in the UK
Re: Looking for puzzle hunt fans in the UK
Hmm a few random thoughts:
There’s a little bit of an overlap between the “core” UKPA interest, which is sudoku and logic puzzles and puzzle hunts - but I don’t know how big that overlap is. E.g. for the more hardcore puzzle hunts the various “misremembered apple/banana” etc teams are quite serious (or last have been over the years). If I’m not wrong I believe they are mathematicians based in Cheltenham. Otherwise I don’t really have a sense for how well puzzle hunters in the UK are organised, or even if the UKPA should think about doing something in that direction.
The maths connection I think has been reasonably strong to UK puzzle hunting. When I was a PhD student at Warwick there was a guy there from Sydney who helped to organise SUMS back when there was a ton of Aussie-based online hunts. This is 10-15 years back now, at the time I remember Manchester maths as being particularly keen.
With regards to the UKPA - some of us in London have done DASH previously, and we also go along to puzzled pint. Obviously that’s a little less hardcore. Possibly there’s an untapped audience here.
Via some of my US connections, I did a bit more involved solving last January (2026). I did this at home - travel for me in January is a bit limited - but maybe I could join in something in person over at least one day of the weekend for 2027 if it’s London based. On the other hand I guess any solving that I do end up doing would (probably?) be tied into the team I’ve found myself roped into.
There’s a little bit of an overlap between the “core” UKPA interest, which is sudoku and logic puzzles and puzzle hunts - but I don’t know how big that overlap is. E.g. for the more hardcore puzzle hunts the various “misremembered apple/banana” etc teams are quite serious (or last have been over the years). If I’m not wrong I believe they are mathematicians based in Cheltenham. Otherwise I don’t really have a sense for how well puzzle hunters in the UK are organised, or even if the UKPA should think about doing something in that direction.
The maths connection I think has been reasonably strong to UK puzzle hunting. When I was a PhD student at Warwick there was a guy there from Sydney who helped to organise SUMS back when there was a ton of Aussie-based online hunts. This is 10-15 years back now, at the time I remember Manchester maths as being particularly keen.
With regards to the UKPA - some of us in London have done DASH previously, and we also go along to puzzled pint. Obviously that’s a little less hardcore. Possibly there’s an untapped audience here.
Via some of my US connections, I did a bit more involved solving last January (2026). I did this at home - travel for me in January is a bit limited - but maybe I could join in something in person over at least one day of the weekend for 2027 if it’s London based. On the other hand I guess any solving that I do end up doing would (probably?) be tied into the team I’ve found myself roped into.
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