I had a wonderful time with Brown Puzzle Hunt (BPH) 2026. My wife and I solved with a great group of remote friends and regulars at the local Puzzled Pint, many of whom were doing a longer-than-Puzzled-Pint hunt for the first time. I thought the puzzle quality was quite high with elegant ideas and clean execution, even if the overall structure didn’t have the same magic I felt from BPH 2025.

Here are my favorites! (Bold = an all-time favorite.)

Metas, ranked

1. Anthropology of Computers
   • Sam wrote a puzzle involving the 2 core mechanics for the Bay Area High School Puzzle Hunt back in 2010-2011 days, with the flavortext “better luck in the next iteration of life”. I’m surprised to not have seen those ideas executed as a meta until now! I ended up writing code to solve it, which was helpful for cycling through hypotheses of how the puzzle worked.
2. Theological Chemistry
3. Bar Exam
   • wife had a good time mostly solo-ing it!
4. Underwater Basketweaving
5. Cubist Linguistics

Favorite regular puzzles I worked on, ranked

1. Itty Bitty Kitties: A Bi-Nya-ry Study
   • what a clever, simple puzzle!
2. Multi-Clef Composition
   • I loved the sheet music puzzles in both BPH 2025 and 2026.¹ This one and Identify the Piece (BPH 2025) can be my go-to music puzzle recommendations for now.
3. Herculean Math
4. Mischievous Literature
5. Going in Circles
   • ah, when watching 3Blue1Brown finally pays off. Got to do this one with another former math Olympian.
6. Topics in Guard-Door Theory
7. Collaborative Chorale
8. Editing Practice

Regular puzzles I didn’t work on but seemed cool

1. Serialized Storytelling
2. Linesman Training
3. Advanced Logical Cooking Techniques

Thanks to Brown Puzzle Club for another excellent hunt!