Early on in the pandemic, I left my job at Verily which was hitting some growing pains while at the same time expecting everyone to work long hours on its new covid testing program. At my new job, a coworker asked what I did for fun. Since my wife and I had been doing a lot of jigsaw puzzles I mentioned, "Puzzles?" and they said something like, "oh you mean like puzzle hunts?".
And with that, I was nerd sniped! The rest is history.
A puzzle hunt is a collection of puzzles, often with certain shared characteristics like metapuzzles (that require the answers to previous puzzles to solve) and answers that are short phrases or words.
Brian Chen's Introduction to Puzzlehunts provides an excellent background.
I've done several hunts so far with my wife and friends, typically under the caffiends alias. I would consider myself to be squarely in the "novice" category. I can do the intro puzzles and maybe get a meta, but I still have a ways to go.
2022-08-26 - Galactic Puzzle Hunt 2022 (solves)
2022-07-02 - 2022 Truzzle Hunt
2022-06-18 - Huntinality 2.0 (solves)
2022-03-11 - glyph 2
2022-01-14 - MIT Mystery Hunt 2022
2021-12-11 - Silph Puzzle Hunt (solves)
2021-10-01 - Teammate Hunt 2021 (solves)
2021-08-21 - Puzzle Potluck 4 (solves)
2021-07-23 - Galactic Puzzle Hunt 20/20 Vision (solves)
2021-01-30 - Inexact Puzzle Hunt
2021-01-15 - MIT Mystery Hunt 2021
puzzlehuntcalendar.com is the definitive place to find upcoming puzzle hunts.
Puzzled Pint also has a monthly release of themed puzzles.
The Puzzle Hunt Toolkit is a collection of tools I've found useful while solving hunts.