Puzzles with a Stroke of (Evil) Genius
JOIN THE ANTI-CLUB REVOLUTION! proclaims one poster in bold red lettering. Another implores passing students: PROTECT THE CLUBS!
Has civil war erupted over the school's student organizations? No—it's all part of the elaborate setup for the 2022 Commonwealth School Puzzle Hunt, an interactive problem-solving event that's one part escape room and one part MIT Mystery Hunt, with a hefty dose of Dungeons and Dragons–style character improv. Before the end of this year's hunt, there will be messages to decode, (mock) explosives to defuse, and a final choice on the fate of clubs at Commonwealth.
What kind of person has the mind and meticulous organization skills to put such an event together? An Evil Genius, of course. Get to know the student group behind one of Commonwealth's most creative new traditions, and learn how its members brainstorm their plots...
Evil Genius Origin Stories
Don't let the nefarious-sounding name fool you—Evil Genius Club is a collective of inventive, friendly Commonwealth students. Their name comes, in their words, from being "the evil geniuses that make heroes possible" through their puzzle hunts. Hunt participants progress through levels of a larger narrative by finding the answers to a series of challenges. The "solvers"—club parlance for the community members who take part in each event—test their wits in exercises like cracking a message using a cipher or discovering information through a game of chess.
This February's hunt theme was "The Clubs Are Gone," which began with a recess reenactment being interrupted by anti-club agents, played by Evil Genius members. (Past years' themes have included a murder mystery and candy factory.) Two teams of Commonwealth students were tasked with investigating club meetings and learning information through puzzles to uncover the disruptors' plans.
Students' boundless creativity and zany plots have animated each puzzle hunt since Evil Genius Club's inception around 2019, but the group has evolved over the years. When Avery ’22, the club's current senior member, first joined several years ago, things were "rickety," he says. Hunts were short-notice, one-time activities organized for Commonwealth's yearly Hancock retreats. Now, event design can take a full semester—but for members, the intensive planning process is all part of the thrill.
The Making of a Puzzle Hunt
The Evil Geniuses begin designing their hunts by mapping out a narrative arc before brainstorming puzzles. "It's easier to fit puzzles into a story than fit a story into puzzles," Dava ’24 explains. Inspiration can strike from anywhere. This year's theme arose from Commonwealth's Anti-Club Club—a sporadic gathering of students at lunch—and the influx of student organizations that formed in fall 2021. (The growth may have come from a post-pandemic eagerness to gather in person, an inordinately active student body, or both; in any case, it made clubs an unlikely hot-button topic around campus.)
Ideas for puzzles, which can appear as numbers, codes, wordplay, or scavenger hunt—like searches, emerge from numerous sources, too. Jay ’24 cites his experience taking part in the MIT Mystery Hunt, "the father of all puzzle hunts," each year, and borrows often from their complex brainteasers. It's easy to see the connections between the Evil Genius Club's challenges and recent Mystery Hunt puzzles, like deciphering emoji-filled messages or geometric diagrams.
"The way I do puzzles, personally, is typically to think of whatever complicated thing I'm interested in at the time and find a way to make it into something that someone can figure out," Avery says. His work for the most recent hunt was based in his Computer Science 3 class at Commonwealth, where he had studied NP problems, "problems that are straightforward to solve one way and really hard to solve the other way." Teacher Matthew Singer helped him adapt one such problem as a binary-code creation, which concealed a passcode.
Appropriately, listening to an Evil Genius talk through a puzzle is not unlike hearing a programmer explain a user's options in an app they've designed. Students think critically about how the answer to each puzzle leads to the next branch of the event. "When I approach [puzzle writing], I think first, what do solvers need to get from this puzzle?" Dava reflects. "Would a logic puzzle or process-of-elimination-type thing be better for this? Encoding in binary or cipher? Physically trying to find an object with a set of clues?"
For that reason, a good Evil Genius also has the narrative skill of an author or dramatist—an ability frequently needed as they try to fit the pieces of the hunt together. "Sometimes it's hard to figure out where to put the puzzles," Eliza ’24 says. "Right after we had the main plot [for this year] set up, we were coming up with all these videos to further it. And then we [realized], 'Wait, we don't have any puzzles!'"
"There's actually quite a lot of storytelling that it takes to string things together into something followable," Avery adds. "And most of us are not actors, so it's definitely interesting trying to make that work."
Finished puzzles are subject to intense focus testing between club members and then refined with an eye for how solvers might interact with them. An important juncture in this year's puzzles—the subject of much discussion—was how to present the hunt's final choice: whether to support the anti-club rebels or student org protectors.
Given the healthy appreciation for eschewing orthodoxy at Commonwealth, Avery says, "if [solvers] started with the establishment and were presented with the opportunity to betray it for the rebels, every single team would have been guaranteed to pick the rebels. But when you start with the rebels and are given the opportunity to betray them for the establishment, [solvers] actually have an incentive to pick [between] both."
"Eve [’24] suggested starting with the rebellion side and having that be the default. And I thought that was the most genius thing," says Eliza. Because puzzles aren't just built on logic—solvers' behavior keeps the story moving forward.
Plotting Their Next Moves
Now that the posters are down, the calculations have been wiped off the classroom white boards, and the status of clubs at Commonwealth (for now) is safe, what will these Evil Geniuses do next?
With this February's hunt finished, members are hoping to organize a spring puzzle hunt before the school year ends, perhaps at Hancock. But regardless of how their plans unfold, there's sure to be reflection and tinkering to make future puzzles even more brain twisting. "Each hunt is used to improve on the next," Avery comments. "This was our first in-person hunt after two years of online hunts. And I think we took a lot of lessons and implemented it really well."
"I feel like our understanding of what teams are going to do with the story and the improv has also improved a lot," Dava says. "We know now which events to script and which events [participants will] listen to and play along with, and which ones are honestly just better without being on paper."
Recruitment and promotion also top the club's priorities. With six Evil Geniuses currently in the club, the organization has grown to its largest size yet, but members are always on the lookout for fresh insight from new puzzle planners. They're hoping to draw an even greater number of teams to the next hunt, too.
And as always, deep in the pages of confidential Google Docs, members are exchanging their wildest story ideas. A forbidden romance? A surprise appearance by unofficial student mascot "Dobby in the Lobby?" You'll just have to come by the next puzzle hunt to see what these Evil Geniuses have been scheming.