What is "puzzlehunt"

n. A game where teams compete to solve puzzles, the answers to which reveal the location of a hidden treasure or allow the teams to accomplish a final goal. The puzzle answers are frequently combined in a metapuzzle.

A puzzlehunt is a puzzle game where teams compete to solve a series of puzzles at a particular site, in multiple sites or via the internet. Groups of puzzles in a puzzle hunt are often connected by a metapuzzle, leading to answers which combine into a final set of solutions. Some famous annual puzzlehunts are:

• the Great Puzzle Pursuit Austin, Baltimore, Boise, Columbus, Cleveland, Hartford, Gettysburg, Springfield, New York, Buffalo, St. Augustine, Washington D.C., Indianapolis, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia USA
• the MIT Mystery Hunt ( Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA),
• the Melbourne University Mathematics & Statistics Society (MUMS) puzzlehunt ( Melbourne, Australia),
• the Sydney University Maths Society (SUMS) puzzlehunt ( Sydney, Australia),
• the TMOU ( Brno, Czech Republic)
• the Microsoft Puzzle Hunt ( Redmond, Washington, United States),
• the Miami Herald's Tropic Hunt ( Miami, Florida, USA),
• the Washington Post's Post Hunt ( Washington, DC, USA),
• the Maze of Games ( Indianapolis, Indiana and Columbus, Ohio, USA),
• The CiSRA ( Canon Information Systems Research Australia) Puzzle Competition (here).
• The Phish.net Quest puzzle sequence (summary here).

College puzzlehunts include the aforementioned MIT Mystery Hunt as well as:

• PuzzleCrack ( University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA)
• College Puzzle Challenge (Multiple Locations, North America), hosted by Microsoft as a recruiting event on college campuses.
• Palantir's Puzzle Challenge, a recruiting event on multiple campuses hosted by Palantir Technologies
• Google Games, a multi-part competition that usually includes logic puzzles, coding, trivia, and building challenges that utilize materials like LEGO bricks
• Puzzle Hunt, put on every semester by a student organization called PuzzleHuntCMU at Carnegie Mellon University's Pittsburgh, PA campus
• Nova Quest, a campus-wide puzzlehunt organized by the Nova Quest student organization, taking place each spring at Villanova University
• Puzzle Hunt, open to all students and organized by the Rice University IEEE student chapter

Sometimes, the prize for winning a puzzlehunt is to create the next one.