News

Students unlock the puzzle to find buried treasure

[ UniNews Vol. 13, No. 18  4 - 18 October 2004 ]

By Miah Gibson

A team of puzzlers named ‘Team Room 106’ were victorious recently when they solved the Melbourne University Mathematics and Statistics Society’s Mystery Puzzle Hunt.

The 10-member team uncovered a $200 cash prize, which they dug up at 2.42am on Monday morning in the System Garden on the Parkville Campus of the University of Melbourne.

The cash was the main prize in the week-long ‘Mystery Puzzle Hunt’, organised by the members of the Mathematics and Statistics Society for Maths Week 2004.

Competitors had to solve three or four puzzles released online each day, to lead them to where the treasure was buried in the grounds. The puzzles included cryptic crossword-style clues with visual, situational and decoding puzzles.

The upcoming election was the theme of the hunt, and the treasure represented a missing piece of a synchrotron which had been built under the University to raise people from the dead. Resurrected, their votes would then be used in the final poll. The hunt was open to all members of the public and attracted more than 200 teams and solo entries.

The winning members from ‘Team Room 106,’ which was comprised of statistics honours students, two statistics lecturers, a computer programmer and a musician, trekked into the University of Melbourne late Sunday night to combine forces to solve the last puzzle.

Once they had cracked the code, they rushed to the System Garden, found the treasure marked with a garden gnome, and started digging.