A puzzle hunt features a chain of puzzles, usually strung together by an over-arching theme or story. Many puzzle hunts are events that take place in a specific area, and the puzzles lead solvers from one physical location to the next. Other puzzle hunts can be played solely online.

Here is a list of puzzle hunts with archives of their past puzzles that you can solve and enjoy.

2-Tone Game online puzzle hunt2-Tone Game

The 2-Tone online puzzle hunt is loosely themed around 2 Tone Records, a ska and reggae label from the 1980's.

BANG - the Bay Area Night Game puzzle huntBANG

BAPHL - Boston Area Puzzle Hunt LeagueBAPHL

Berkeley Mystery HuntBerkeley Mystery Hunt

The UC Berkeley student- and alum-run Berkeley Mystery Hunt is a 12-hour competition patterned after the MIT Mystery Hunt. Past hunt puzzles are available online:

CiSRA Puzzle CompetitionCiSRA Puzzle Competition

The Canon Information Systems Research Australia Puzzle Competition was an annual hunt that ran from 2007 to 2013. The hunt was free and open to everyone, with only Australian students eligible to win prizes. Designers from the CiSRA hunt went on to design puzzles for mezzacotta (see below), a hunt which has apparently also ended.

Most of the CiSRA puzzles are archived at the hunt's website archive:

    Microsoft College Puzzle ChallengeCollege Puzzle Challenge

    Prexcyt/Cryptex QuestCryptex (Prexcyt) Quest

    The Cryptex Hunt was a 2018 online puzzle hunt designed by a team of escape game enthusiasts. The grand prize was a fancy gold-inlaid cryptex.

    The point of entry for the Cryptex Hunt is hidden in this video:


    DASH - Different Area, Same HuntDASH (Different Area, Same Hunt)

    The Famine Game puzzle huntThe Famine Game

    The Famine Game was a The Hunger Games-themed puzzle hunt that ran in Washington DC in 2013. All of The Famine Game's puzzles are archived for you to solve.

    Galactic Puzzle HuntGalactic Puzzle Hunt

    The Galactic Puzzle Hunt is organized by the ✈✈✈ Galactic Trendsetters ✈✈✈, an MIT Mystery Hunt team.

    The Herald Hunt (formerly the Tropic Hunt)Herald Hunt/Tropic Hunt

    Formerly the Tropic Hunt, the Herald Hunt is co-created by humour columnist Dave Barry and two of his editor friends, Gene Weingarten and Tom Shroder. Named for the weekly Miami Herald magazine supplement Tropic in which Barry had a column, the hunt met its end when the supplement did, but was later revived by the newspaper and renamed the Herald Hunt.

    Originally a car rally, the hunt now takes place in a South Florida neighbourhood each year. Participants compete to solve a series of puzzles within a 3-hour window. Puzzles from the 1986 Tropic hunt are available online:

    The Game

    The Game is a series of puzzle hunts set in the San Francisco Bay and Seattle areas. These hunts feature next-level stakes and levels of extremity, and at least one person has been seriously injured while participating!

    This TED talk by The Game's founder Joe Belfiore provides an excellent overview, while revealing the anatomy of some of the puzzles:

     

     

    https://vimeo.com/39781894

     

     

    Mark Halpins Labor Day ExtravaganzaLabor Day Extravaganza

    The Master TheoremThe Master Theorem

    The Master Theorem is an online puzzle project by a team of solvers at Columbia University, headed up by the enigmatic M. While nothing new has been posted since the project spun off a board game company in 2016, all of the group's past "theorems" (puzzles) remain online for you to solve.

    The Master Theoremmezzacotta Puzzle Competition

    When Canon stopped sponsoring the CiSRA hunt, its puzzle designers ran the independent mezzacotta hunt. The mezzacotta puzzles are available online.

    Microsoft Puzzle HuntMicrosoft Puzzle Hunt

    The Microsoft Puzzle Hunt is a weekend-long event held quasi-annually at the company's Redmond, Washington campus. Teams of up to 12 solvers, half of whom must be current or former Microsoft employees, compete to discover a hidden treasure.

    The puzzles from the second-ever Microsoft hunt are available to solve online:

    Mission Street PuzzlesMission Street Puzzles

    Mission Street Puzzles runs multi-month "seasons" of puzzles, which debut every Wednesday evening. The first two seasons centered around eateries and hotspots in San Francisco, while the third season focuses on Austin. The Misson Street Puzzles archives contain dozens of puzzles for you to solve.

    MIT Mystery HuntMIT Mystery Hunt

    The Massachusetts Institute of Technology runs an annual puzzle hunt on the Friday before Martin Luther King Jr. Day. The hunt is designed and organized by the previous year's winning team, and culminates in a hunt for a custom coin or tchotchke hidden somewhere on campus.

    The MIT Mystery Hunt puzzle archives date back to the 1999 hunt:

    MUMS Puzzle HuntMUMS Puzzle Hunt

    Since 2004, the Melbourne University Mathematics & Statistics Society has run an annual, weekend-long puzzle hunt that is open to the public and offers cash prizes, although the status of the hunt in recent years has been in question.

    All of the hunt's previous puzzles and solutions are available online. Follow the "The Puzzles" link in the left sidebar:

    The Order of the OctothorpeThe Order of the Octothorpe

    The The Order of the Octothorpe is a fun and satisfying online puzzle hunt about a fictional secret society themed around, of all things, the octothorpe (pound/number sign: #)!

    The Puzzle BoatThe Puzzle Boat

    The Puzzle Boat is a free, online puzzle hunt designed by Foggy Brume, the editor of PandA Magazine. Registration is required before you can get your mitts on the puzzles, but once you're in, the puzzles are plentiful! 

    PuzzleDonkey Puzzle HuntPuzzleDonkey

    PuzzleDonkey is a long-running online collection of 100 puzzles by a team of designers from the UK. The site has very British sensibilities. You've been warned.

    Puzzled PintPuzzled Pint

    Puzzled Pint is a free, beginner-friendly puzzle event that runs the second Tuesday of every month in participating cities. Solve a simple puzzle on the website to discover where the event will be held. Show up to the bar or pub, where you'll receive a set of usually four puzzles and one meta puzzle. Some months, bonus puzzles are included. A group of friendly game control volunteers are on-hand to provide hints. Although team standings are tracked just for fun, this is a non-competitive event.

    The Puzzled Pint website maintains an excellent puzzling basics beginners guide, along with an excellent archive of all past puzzles, which are free to download, print, and solve!

    REDDOThuntREDDOThunt

    Created in 2017 by Singaporean members of various puzzle hunt teams, this 48-hour online hunt offered prizes to solvers from Singapore, but its puzzles were/are available for anyone to solve.

    *Shinteki Puzzle of the Month

    For eight years Shinteki, a California-based puzzle design company, posted a new free puzzle every month. While they've retired POTM, all of the past puzzles are available in the Shinteki archives:

    Singapore Puzzle HuntSingapore Puzzle Hunt

    A relatively recent event, the annual Singapore Puzzle Hunt has made available its past puzzles for you to enjoy:

    SUMO Puzzle HuntSUMO Puzzle Hunt

    The Stanford University Mathematical Organization has begun running an annual hunt. Past hunts' puzzles can be solved here:

    ΣUMS Puzzle HuntΣUMS Puzzle Hunt

    The Sydney University Mathematics Society runs a free online puzzle hunt that takes place over 5 days. The hunt offers cash prizes to teams that have at least one Australian solver. The ΣUMS hunt has been running since 2010, and all of the hunt's past puzzles are available online:

    TOBORDABTOBORDAB

    This free online puzzle hunt is by LOST and Cloverfield creator J.J. Abrams's production company, Bad Robot.

    USC Puzzle HuntUSC Puzzle Hunt

    The annual University of South Carolina Puzzle Hunt began in 2013 and, like many college hunts, mysteriously stalled out in 2016. An online archive still has all of the playable puzzles from past hunts: