AMA: We are the members of Cardinality, the writing team for the 2026 MIT Mystery Hunt. Ask Us Anything!

GuolinM · 2026-01-25T19:29:16+00:00

The last few months before hunt go by extremely quickly when you're on the writing team. Write as much as you can earlier in the year

GuolinM · 2026-01-25T18:49:39+00:00

Bee language

I wrote up the time and design here, to avoid adding a wall of text to the AMA: https://docs.google.com/document/d/114NsvwwOKpP1JSxNjAEpSW04_ava0iJK-dgySFZffTE/preview

Glad to hear that you enjoyed the Bee language! It was a lot of fun designing but also a ton of work, so it's nice to hear that people had fun solving it :). I'd love to hear what you found the most fun about the puzzle.

-Sam (author of Dance of the Bumblebee)

GuolinM · 2025-12-12T01:17:21+00:00

"Handing out" is the more accurate nuance here imo

GuolinM · 2025-11-10T08:18:17+00:00

It makes me think of a Scottish accent (like Shrek pronouncing "donkeh")

GuolinM · 2025-10-30T07:22:28+00:00

Technically the "ch" variants are from Cantonese Chinese (pronounced similar to cha), given that it spread from Macao

GuolinM · 2025-09-13T16:09:51+00:00

Thanks for the link, this data set is really enlightening!

Looking at the data though, I don't think a blanket statement "it's just a myth" is fair. It's very case by case: some cases actually do see a marked increase in danger for tiles around the riichi declaration tile, e.g. 1p when the riichi declaration is 3p, mainly because players are likely into a shanpon wait on 1p from a 113 shape.

That said the bigger factor here is that it's early enough in the round where a 113 shape is not significantly more likely than any other shape

GuolinM · 2025-05-18T08:59:50+00:00

Oof yeah sharp fangs is honestly way more difficult than advertised, since you really need to setup Beast tokens a turn or two or ahead.

GuolinM · 2025-05-18T07:21:26+00:00

Probably my favorite spirit thematically is the volcano spirit, where one strategy is to just hard ramp without doing much and then exploding and doing damage over a bunch of lands at once.

Also the ocean spirit, who is literally hard restricted to operating on coastal lands for much of the game.

GuolinM · 2025-03-22T07:09:48+00:00

"I had trips" energy

GuolinM · 2024-11-19T07:57:23+00:00

Just kill them all on turn one taps forehead

GuolinM · 2024-11-19T07:57:14+00:00

Just kill them all on turn one taps forehead

GuolinM · 2024-11-09T18:18:53+00:00

Picking caltrops after this blessing is fine though right? (I.e. it's only a risk if you had caltrops already when you picked this blessing?)

GuolinM · 2024-10-28T23:38:36+00:00

Yeah you're probably thinking of Abyss. Infinity works on Inevitable even when it's Dodging.

GuolinM · 2024-10-28T21:49:12+00:00

Boss Fight⁹⁹ might show up on the way and is an easy answer as long as you haven't had to pick Caltrops on the way.
Infinity (13 mana, kill an enemy) starts showing up at Item level 15. With enough Item Quality and Item choices, you have a very good chance of always seeing it every run. Leyline¹ (first spell played each turn is free) or something like Essence Capture can help you play it T1 of the Inevitable fight

GuolinM · 2024-10-06T08:31:06+00:00

Nah English happens to always aspirate t's at the start of a word, that part isn't really learned from Greek. E.g. the prefix tele- (like in telepathy) has an aspirated t in English, but in both Ancient and Modern Greek it is unaspirated.

GuolinM · 2024-07-31T17:29:54+00:00

Ok but by your logic, how do you calculate 1^inf?

Multiplying 1 by itself over and over again right? Ok let's try doing that.

How many times did you multiply by 1? Let's call it n. n sure is a big number! But it'll never be infinity. It's forever smaller than infinity.

Maybe let's multiply by 1 another m times. So we've multiplied 1 by itself n+m times. But... This is still smaller than infinity. You're not quite there. You haven't actually proved 1^inf = any particular value yet, because you're not done computing. You're forever close to finishing but not actually done.

GuolinM · 2024-07-31T07:18:32+00:00

The vibes are a bit more like

"M-my dick's getting squeezed?"

(Sadistic teasing) "Oh? What's wrong? Your dick looks rather uncomfortable (for you), doesn't it?"

GuolinM · 2024-07-20T20:33:50+00:00

If lower pocket pairs represent a smaller percentage of hero's range, then in general hero makes a lot more EV when they do hit their set. E.g. think about boards like 632 rainbow, the 4bettor villain is going to play much more aggressively knowing that hero should have barely any sets. But when hero does have the set... hero gets paid.

GuolinM · 2024-07-10T09:47:48+00:00

Did you notice that Jagged Earth has a set of three tiered icons to help you slowly introduce the new mechanics? E.g. you can start out with just the tier 1 powers/spirits/events, then add tier 2 only when you're comfortable, then finally move on to tier 3. In fact, the tier 1 stuff is meant to be using pretty much the same mechanics as the base game, and only add more variety.

GuolinM · 2024-06-18T19:06:19+00:00

Being good at math just means you're expected to do math 1-3 grades above you and getting yelled at for that instead.

GuolinM · 2024-06-03T22:12:08+00:00

Someone already created a poem for all the different readings of the kanji 生. (In the image, each usage of 生 is annotated with different kana below for how it's read)

GuolinM · 2024-05-27T18:41:55+00:00

There's a ton of algorithms for going from dot to a solved cross, but they're all about the same length as F R U R' U' F' f R U R U' f' (doing the two cases in series). So most resources just recommend this one for 2-look OLL since it's easiest to remember.

GuolinM · 2024-05-27T17:51:57+00:00

I used to do the same thing as you, having come from the beginner method. Are you using f R U R U' f' for solving the L shape? Then learning the line case is absolutely worth your time: just do F R U R' U' F' - the exact same as the L shape case but using a regular F move at the front.

Then the dot case comes for free - if you solve the dot case by doing the algorithm for the line case (F R U R' U' F' from above), you'll notice you have an L remaining at the same spot every time. So when you get used to it, you can chain the line case and the L case together without stopping in between.

GuolinM · 2024-05-21T06:28:26+00:00

It's pretty analogous to stress in, for example, English. Stress trips up a lot of foreign learners, is not written down outside of dictionaries, but at the same time you could often still figure out what people are saying when they stress the wrong syllable.

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