Hunts Upon a Time
View Puzzle

Solution: Front and Center

Answer: RADAR

Author: Bryce Cai

Dev: Bryce Cai

Artist: Bryce Cai

We are given 5 newspapers of the SEMI TIMES with missing enumerated headlines, along with a letter bank containing 5 mystery letters.

At first, constructing each headline from the subtitle alone seems like a daunting task. Upon further investigation, though, a few things stick out:

  • SEMI TIMES is a palindrome
  • The Mystery Hunt prologue hinted in the second prompt is STAR RATS, a palindrome
  • Said Mystery Hunt (and prologue) was authored by Team Palindrome

These suggest that each headline is a palindrome, a theory often confirmed by fully solving the second prompt (STAR RATS STATS STAR RATS, a palindrome containing palindromes).

With this in hand, we can more reasonably construct headlines. A solid strategy is to:

  • fill in a word or two of a prompt from certain keywords
  • reflect the word over the middle to get letters for more words
  • fill in more words from those letters and other keywords
  • repeat

The five full headlines are listed below:

A SANTA1 DEVIL2 NEVER EVEN3 LIVED4 AT NASA5

Investigation of Kennedy Space Center5 finds no evidence3 of any Christmastime1 satanic2 presence4

STAR RATS1 STATS2 STAR3 RATS4

Unsurprisingly, rodents4 feature3 in analytics2 of prologue of 2022 Mystery Hunt1

CIGAR1 TOSS2 IN EDEN3 IS SO4 TRAGIC5

Paradise3 damaged due to errant throw2 of Cuban export1, situation described as "extremely4 awful5"

"WAS IT1 A BANANA2 BAT3 I SAW4?"

Witness4 to purported sighting4 of fruit2-mammal3 hybrid still in disbelief, asks question1

MR. OWL1 ATE2 MR.3 METAL4 WORM5

Bird1 continues reign of terror after devouring child's Tootsie pop1, consumes2 iron4 wiggler5 colleague3

Most of these prompts are longer or mashed-up variants of well-known English palindromes, which might help in filling in the clues.

Extraction is hinted by a few things:

  • The crease on each of the newspapers bisects the T in SEMI TIMES
  • The word “Center” is in the title
  • The non-mystery letters in the letter bank each have an even count, and each headline has an odd number of total letters. While not necessarily forced, it's fitting for the given letters to fill the spaces pairwise, one on each side of a headline's center letter.
    • If we want to take one letter from each prompt (common for hunt puzzles like these), taking a letter that doesn't disrupt any parity would be ideal.

These all hint to take the middle letter of each headline, giving us the answer RADAR, which is another palindrome.

Authors' Notes

Writing palindromes is hard. I don't know how this guy does it. He should write for Mystery Hunt.

The third clue originally read:

Paradise damaged due to errant smoke throw, "Alexa play Despacito" laments God

...but this was changed after enough testsolvers couldn't get the zoomer meme clue.