Major Contributions to MSPH 123, Plus Photos

I had meant to write up about my experiences playtesting Microsoft Puzzlehunt 123 a while ago, and eventually post some pictures (eventually, being now). I had gotten started, when my three year-old daughter snuck on to the computer and managed to publish only the whiny parts and none of the "I had so much fun!" parts (since I tend to analyze my mistakes or shortcomings before my accomplishments). I've made no effort to revisit that topic or include moments like:

Making sure the white flashes of the Jeopardy squares where random

The joy of finally solving Pink's Hot Dogs

Holding up a colored-in Honeycomb for everyone to take wild stabs at identifying

Dying every single time I played Hunt the Wumpus, without ever once killing the beast.

Larry solving Crown Royal in ten minutes after Dunn and I had worked on for a hour or so (I found out later from him that he built on our work, but at the time it looked as though he was able to bypass it completely)

Being ten seconds away from diving into Rich's pool if that invisible plastic thing slipped away one more damned time

The frustration of trying to solve Triple Sec back when all the clues were scrambled, not just the second and third layers.

My only contribution to the Daily Doubles ("The Princess Brine!")

The interesting and completely incorrect monster I constructed for the Lego puzzle

Attempting my first duck conundrum with Rich, a half-naked Chris, and Ed (hopefully got those names right) and some... interesting props.

Brainstorming supervillian occupations for Bad Boys with the team, though it took two more days and an extra large "What bloody path?" hint to solve.

Finally solving Time Corpse the day after the playtest, while on a dinner date with my wife, and the bemused look I received from her.

All that's past, but Larry's recent notes spurred me on to write, despite not having yet finished the BATH 4 story.

My main, important, exciting, without-which-it-couldn't-have-happened contribution to helping out at GC at Stanford was... providing the chess pieces for Terminal Jeopardy. Yep, hunt definitely would have been ruined without me.

Okay, okay, I did actually help out a little:

Set up Gmail Notifier to beep as loudly as possible whenever GC got email from teams, as it was a rare thing for the first 18 hours or so

Was one of the four or five people fighting for the chance to reply whenever said email did come

Tried to give the Terminal Jeopardy a little more of a dramatic effect by placing the globular structure in a vase, lit from below with my headlamp and turning off as many lights as I could

Here's a list of other things I was able to do while staffing, due to GC's impressive orginization and preperaredness, as well as that amazing admin app:

jam on Guitar Hero 2 with Matt, Simon, and Josh. I was even allowed to torture the people there with my vocal rendition of "More than a Feeling" and "The Middle" ("'The Middle'? What song is that?" "Don't worry, you'll recognize it." [song plays] "Oh yeah.")
- keep track of how Team 196 (Jonathan) and Judean People's Front (Eric and Given) were doing in relation to each other

provide miniature pool table entertainment

create the Smoking GNU website in preparation for announcing BANG 22

blog about BATH 4

So, it'd be easy to say that there would have been no problem if I had stayed home for the weekend, but really, I wouldn't have missed it for the world.