(WARNING! My security software is flagging the site.)
The archive site you're describing is the May Day Mystery archive (maydaymystery.org / maydaymystery.org/mayday), created by Bryan Hance.
It perfectly matches your details:It hosts scanned images of cryptic full-page advertisements (plus related letters, emails, packages, and "corrective" notices) that have run in the Arizona Daily Wildcat (University of Arizona's student newspaper) every May 1 since 1981 (with some earlier 1980s examples). These ads are elaborate ciphers, logic puzzles, mathematical encodings, historical references, multilingual messages, maps, symbols, and artwork—exactly the kind of "cipher and logic puzzles" you mentioned.
Bryan Hance (a UA student who worked on the newspaper's online edition in the mid-1990s) stumbled upon the ads while at the paper. The information about who placed them and why was otherwise private/obscure (they're paid ads from an anonymous/reclusive individual or group, often linked to a lawyer named Robert Truman Hungerford acting as intermediary for "The Orphanage" or similar). He spent time digging through back issues/microfiche, compiled everything, and launched the site around 1997 as a straightforward, clunky late-90s-style personal web archive of image scans and text transcriptions.
It also includes user-submitted/forwarded adjacent material (Hance received 100+ emails, couriers, packages, and calls from solvers, theorists, and even the puzzle creators themselves, some of which he posted).
The name "May Day Mystery" is very close to the "MYSTERYMAYHEM" phrasing you recalled (likely a memory blend of "May Day" + "mystery" elements). The site has been referenced in articles, Reddit discussions, YouTube videos, and puzzle communities for years as the central hub for these scans and analysis.
There's also a modern community wiki that organizes the same material: https://maydaymystery.com/ (or the older Wikidot mirror).
If the direct links have changed or some images are mirrored elsewhere (the site is old-school and low-maintenance), a quick Wayback Machine search on maydaymystery.org will pull up the full historical image gallery. This is the exact resource you were thinking of—no other site matches the combination of university newspaper cipher ads, 1980s+ scans, editor/archivist backstory, and mid-90s image-hosting vibe. Enjoy diving back in!
It's a neat site to deep dive down. Predates Q, Cicada, et al.
There's some off topic and adjacent cipher and conspiracy stuff (e.g. Toynbee tiles puzzles) but one thing can be taken from delineating all of the old archived scans is that institutions of all types have been using cipher/puzzle/psyops to both recruit and confuse individuals for at least 40 yrs.
Also segways with the inception of the GATE/GT public school program, which is also a data collection recruitment tool.
I ran this past Grok. Is this it:
(WARNING! My security software is flagging the site.)
The archive site you're describing is the May Day Mystery archive (maydaymystery.org / maydaymystery.org/mayday), created by Bryan Hance.
It perfectly matches your details:It hosts scanned images of cryptic full-page advertisements (plus related letters, emails, packages, and "corrective" notices) that have run in the Arizona Daily Wildcat (University of Arizona's student newspaper) every May 1 since 1981 (with some earlier 1980s examples). These ads are elaborate ciphers, logic puzzles, mathematical encodings, historical references, multilingual messages, maps, symbols, and artwork—exactly the kind of "cipher and logic puzzles" you mentioned.
Bryan Hance (a UA student who worked on the newspaper's online edition in the mid-1990s) stumbled upon the ads while at the paper. The information about who placed them and why was otherwise private/obscure (they're paid ads from an anonymous/reclusive individual or group, often linked to a lawyer named Robert Truman Hungerford acting as intermediary for "The Orphanage" or similar). He spent time digging through back issues/microfiche, compiled everything, and launched the site around 1997 as a straightforward, clunky late-90s-style personal web archive of image scans and text transcriptions.
It also includes user-submitted/forwarded adjacent material (Hance received 100+ emails, couriers, packages, and calls from solvers, theorists, and even the puzzle creators themselves, some of which he posted).
The name "May Day Mystery" is very close to the "MYSTERYMAYHEM" phrasing you recalled (likely a memory blend of "May Day" + "mystery" elements). The site has been referenced in articles, Reddit discussions, YouTube videos, and puzzle communities for years as the central hub for these scans and analysis.
Main original archive (still referenced and partially active with the classic scans/texts): http://www.maydaymystery.org/mayday/ (or directly to the mystery page: http://www.maydaymystery.org/mayday/mystery.html)
There's also a modern community wiki that organizes the same material: https://maydaymystery.com/ (or the older Wikidot mirror).
If the direct links have changed or some images are mirrored elsewhere (the site is old-school and low-maintenance), a quick Wayback Machine search on maydaymystery.org will pull up the full historical image gallery. This is the exact resource you were thinking of—no other site matches the combination of university newspaper cipher ads, 1980s+ scans, editor/archivist backstory, and mid-90s image-hosting vibe. Enjoy diving back in!
u/LoneWulf that's it! Kek... i spent an hour scrolling yandex and never thought to use AI. Derp! Thank you fren!
Click here: Hyperlink to the archive
It's a neat site to deep dive down. Predates Q, Cicada, et al.
There's some off topic and adjacent cipher and conspiracy stuff (e.g. Toynbee tiles puzzles) but one thing can be taken from delineating all of the old archived scans is that institutions of all types have been using cipher/puzzle/psyops to both recruit and confuse individuals for at least 40 yrs.
Also segways with the inception of the GATE/GT public school program, which is also a data collection recruitment tool.