BANG 21 Postscript: The UFO

We drove home, solving CRANEA's countdown puzzle and discussing our frustration with BANG 21's meta. As we reached the Marin headlands, conversation petered out and I was content just to gaze out the window at the clouds rolling by, glad they hadn't rained on the experience.

I noticed one cloud in particular was slightly darker than the rest and oval-shaped. Hmmmmm, I though, amazing that all the random iterations of cloud formations could throw up such a uniformly shaped cloud. It moved along with the other clouds, seemingly normal.

Suddenly, it moved... against the wind current. Then it started moving along again. I thought it might be my imagination, until it did it again. It moved back and forth in a completely improbable way for a cloud to move. Not a believer in flying saucers, I tried to come up with a rational explanation.

"Somebody tell me," I said somewhat shaken, "that that cloud isn't what I think it is."

Mark, Rob, Jonathan, and Given all looked, and a sort of stunned silence decended upon the vehicle. For several moments, we just looked at the round mass as it grew closer and closer. Could rationality have gone out the window and aliens had traveled to visit us? I really couldn't believe it, but my eyes were showing me something that, if constructed, was nothing that had been made on Earth.

Finally, Jonathan broke the silence. "It's amazing," he said, "what a flock of birds can look like if there are enough of them."

And as they grew closer, we could see he was right. Little black specks stood out and the manuevers were clearly those of birds. But there were so many of them, they looked like one homegenous shape from a distance. Even as they flew over the van, they still looked like nothing less than a giant ameoba floating in the sky.

Coming of Age at BANG 21, Part 2 of 2

As we left the 21 Dots puzzle site (see Part 1), Jonathan remarked that coed astronomy had left five minutes before us. This was an important fact because we had arrived at pretty much the same time, even walking with them briefly and asking about reason behind Jan's sudden commitment to GCing (scheduling conflicts leading to playtesting leading to aforesaid conflicts disappearing... "Or at least, that's what we told her," japed Justin). There's a running joke on our team that in one event or another we've managed to come in ahead of most teams... except coed astronomy. Thus, their team has become kind of an unofficial barometer as to how we're doing.

Our next clue went quick. While we sat outside some restaurant to solve, Mark and Rob went and grabbed some grub. By the time they got back, we were all but done. Admittedly, they were complaining about a long line, but the word search for anagrams of mixed drinks names wasn't tough. The clues for the anagrams version of the adult drinks weren't helping much and I said we were spending too much time trying to match them up. But Jonathan insisted on filling in the available spaces, just in case it mattered (it didn't). The left over letters gave Jonathan the answer before I had even separated the words in my mind. Of course, I was sitting on the other side of the table and everything was upside-down. That's my excuse and I'm sticking to it.

The corner park that that solution took us to next had a large amount of people gathered around what we assumed was GC. Whatever was happening was blocked from view by those bodies. When we finally got there, we found Wei-Hwa dealing blackjack from a makeshift shoe. Now this looked like like fun.

Sadly, though, there were only a few spots for people to play, and only one person per team. All the spots were filled, so I hopped on a nearby table for some aerial recognizance. Just as I did, a spot opened up and Rob sat down. So I took a quick video and tried to keep the shaki-cam syndrome to a minimum.

Eventually, we had seen all the chips, each with a message, and seen all the cards, each with some letters. The chips told us to only pay attention to the letters prime number cards and to fit them into the pattern "_ _ _ _ _ - _ _ - _ _". The letters that were on the prime cards ("V", "ING", "TE", "T", "UN") obviously did not make a word when fit into the spaces in that order. So we focused on figuring out what the next step actually was. Mostly, we tried rearranging the letters in different patterns to make them fit. Eventually, Rob pulled out his iPhone to run some anagramming software. I was depleted of thought. We were stumped.

We didn't seem to be the only team in that predicament. I saw a few teams just studying their notes, no longer playing blackjack, but not moving on yet. I heard someone call my name and found Kiki of Blood and Booze saying hi. She had been tremendously kind during the MSPH playtest when I had decided to see which would break first, my back or her living room steps. It was good to see her again. I had actually taken her for a puzzle-widow so was surprised to see her in the field. We talked for a little while before I went back to hair pulling with my team.

Rob finally got back to us with the results of the anagram search: VINGT-ET-UN, which was exactly as it was if the letter groups had been written down in order. "Oh!" I said, "That's French for '21'". "Why didn't you say so earlier?" Jonathan fumed at me good-naturedly. "The only reason we keep you on this team is for your knowledge of French!" I protested with the weak excuse of not actually having seen the letters in their proper order; it seemed like our entire team assumed that the order that they were in could not be the answer. The solution seemed anti-climatic; I guess I had assumed some sort of Scrabble-like ban on foreign words. We headed out, and we noted a few teams that we had passed. The fact that they had the answer and just didn't know it didn't seem right.

A lengthy walk took us to the last puzzle before the meta. It didn't seem like much time at all had passed and yet we were nearly done. Hopefully, that meant we were doing pretty good. We arrived, grabbed our clue and lay down on the grass to begin figuring it out. Two sheets of paper presented a series of four numbers that needed the proper arithmetic signs between them to make 21. We split them up, with Jonathan and I working on one, and Given, Rob, and Mark working on the other. Jonathan's fast at math, but I found myself matching his speed (or he slowing down to mine) as I worked from the top of the list and he from the bottom. We started converting to letters and were able to make some good guesses as to what letters, and thus which operations, went in the more difficult ones. It took a bit, but we finally finished and had the message ORONEONEEIGHTTHIRTEEN.

Obviously, it was the second half of the message, so Jonathan concentrated on helping the other half of our team. I tried to make sense of the message. I thought of several theories, but by the time I hit upon the one that seemed most likely — having to come up with the operations for those four numbers — the first half of the message had been deciphered: FINDALLFOURSOLUTIONSF. Jonathan and I quickly found the four possibilities and anagrammed them into SIGN.

We were feeling pretty good at this point. We had cruised through the puzzles, hardly being stuck at all. That was all about to change.

Looking at the backup, handwritten log as we arrived at the site for the meta, it looked like we were in about seventh. We didn't see the Judean People's Front, so we figured we were slightly ahead of our sometimes teammate Eric. As we sat down at a picnic table, CRANEA headed out in a hurry (which makes me think our officially recorded arrival time is off). Blood and Booze was there along with a few other teams. We felt good about our position.

There were two parts to the puzzle: Squares and somewhat-triangular quadrilaterals. Two grids were given to us to place them on, so Given and I started work on the squares, while Jonathan, Mark, and Rob worked their quads. Given and I made little progress; it seemed like there were too many possibilities for our minds to handle. I figured that once we had the squares in place, we could use the numbers on the side to index into the solution word each square represented (a little picture was in the corner of each square). Frustrated and unable to go further, my brain began to crash.

Luckily, the quads got completed and the rest of the team used the information they provided to complete the interlocking square puzzle. (I read that at least one other team was able to solve the squares without the quads.) We tried the indexing theory, but it didn't work. We tried other things, but they didn't work either and we kept coming back to the index theory. It just seemed to make the most sense.

Around four o'clock, I began to push for a hint; we'd already been there a half hour. Jonathan argued against it, since we had over an hour before the hunt was over. We finally compromised and agreed to get data verification to make sure our square was correct.

I saw Blood and Booze get up to leave as I walked over and asked GC Thomas Snyder (who I'd met briefly while volunteering for Ghost Patrol) to come take a look at our square. He did and explained that he had only playtested it, but as far as he knew, there was only one way to put the square together correctly. Since our square was together correctly, it must be correct. We thanked him and kept trying to come up with new theories.

Twenty minutes later, we heard "See you, Jonathan!" coming from Eric as he and the Judean People's Front headed towards the finish line. It wasn't long after that that we completely ran out of new ideas and agreed to a hint. Since hints were free after a half hour, there was no penalty. Thomas said he was kind of surprised we hadn't solved it yet and thought a hint was a good idea.

He came over for a second time and we went over the puzzle. After explaining what we'd tried, Thomas nudged us enough so that we realized we had been able to transpose the square. It still worked and was a valid solution, it just didn't work with the index number. So we fixed the square, got the final message SECOND PERSON SINGULAR, which indicated that the solution was YOU.

That experience left a sour taste. It seemed it was no one's fault, nothing could have been done about it, and it was just one of those things. We talked about how if there truly had been only one way to make the square we could have been done thirty minutes earlier. In each subsequent retelling, the length grew by five minutes, until we probably would have been able to solve the puzzle before we had arrived on site.

Somewhat dejected, we headed to the end location. Looking at the standings, we figured without the square snarl we probably would have ended up in 8th, just after Blood and Booze. As it was, we ended up in 14th. Oh well. At least we'd contributed a kick-ass prize: A bottle of wine trapped inside a Don't Break The Bottle wooden puzzle.

In the end, I really appreciate the Burninators putting it on and all the work they put into it. The production values had some very nice touches. I would imagine it was a great introduction to puzzle hunts to new teams and I think it provides a great example for other teams to emulate should they want to put on their hunt. For my own tastes, I would have liked a little more challenge and could have easily done without the problem at the end, but all in all, it was a good BANG.

Coming of Age at BANG 21, Part 1 of 2

Arriving on time to a puzzle event is not a normal occurance for the Smoking GNU, quite the opposite in fact. However, when Rob, Mark, Given, Jonathan and I set out for BANG 21, the 1.5 hour trip from Santa Rosa to Menlo Park went smoother than expected and we actually showed up a few minutes before registration even opened. As other teams followed, we took it as a good sign that those who had survived BANG 22 were still willing to talk with us.

We got our materials and there was some discussion over the handwritten note included. Since it was a secret message purporting to give us and only us the answers to the first puzzle, it set our minds wandering. "Maybe," Jonathan joked, "they're trying to reward us for hosting the last BANG." Consensus was against this hypothesis, as other teams had similar papers fluttering in the wind. "It's an awful lot of writing to go to for so many notes," I remarked. Being the lazy sort, I probably just would have found a satisfactory handwritten font and printed it in blue.

I got lost trying to find the library (and its restroom) but made it back in time to see Corey from the Burninator's begin the presentation. I held back from joining up with my team, opting to take some pictures from higher ground instead. Corey described the rules, how the answers matched up with a numbered crossword clue, and warned us not to open the tiny envelope except in an emergency (we would later find out the emergency was in case of rain or if the sheriff across the street got wind of what, from their point of view, could be considered a flash mob). He then turned the show over to Wei-Hwa.

And by show, I mean, the first puzzle, based on the quiz show Twenty One. Dressed sharp as the confident game show host, Wei-Hwa began reading the questions, one after the other, as three of his teammates showed boards with the text of the question around the circular fountain. I scribbled down a few answers, waited until the first round was done, and as they began to repeat the questions, I rejoined my team.

Who had, of course, most of the answers down. We worked on filling in the gaps and walked a little ways away so we could concentrate. All the answers to the quiz questions were one letter different than the cheat sheet we'd been given. So we tried using all sorts of different ordering and extraction methods until we finally hit upon the right one. The answer matched one of the crossword clues on the map and we headed off to another part of the park.

We grabbed our second puzzle, consisting of a large amount of laser cut black plastic letters in a sandwich bag and skinny sheet of crossword clues. For solving, we picked one of the few pieces of unclaimed territory: A small bleacher. There was some concern at first that the pieces would fly all over the place in the wind, but they were heavy enough that it didn't matter.

The fact that we took as long as we did on this puzzle is a testament to our second weakness as a team (our first being navigation): Organization. It takes us a few minutes to settle into our location and a few minutes to leave it. Responsibilities for the clue itself are random and half-hazard. Someone takes one part, another person takes another, and it takes a little time for everything to start to mesh.

One example with this puzzle — in which we discovered there were no "U"s (the 21st letter) and the answers to the crossword clues were in alphabetical order — was that the work could be easily divided: Half work from the bottom and half work from the top of the list and meet in the middle. I tried to encourage this but it didn't seem to take hold. Given and I were arranging letters, the "grunt" work I suppose, while the other three were solving. Finally, Jonathan took up arranging letters from the bottom half and we managed to solve the puzzle with the leftover letters.

Corey gave us kind of a sheepish grin at the next site, as the periodic table (prominently displayed on site) had figured into a couple puzzles in BANG 22. I saw Jan's OnLive t-shirt for the cool, newly unveiled product she'd been working on. I idly wondered why she was on GC again, but dismissed the thought as we settled down on the sidewalk to begin working.

A letter cascade accompanies a bunch of cards, all of which say "Like/Unlike [element], I am [description]" with one part a blank to be filled in. For some reason, we treated each card as its own seperate "Guess what I'm thinking of" game, instead of all of them being descriptions of the same element. By the time I did figure that out, we had already completed the letter cascade to get the final element (scandium), so I didn't mention it. Days later, I filled in members of the team as we discussed the puzzles.

Getting the element, though, wasn't the solution, as the index card stated. Instead, it was indexing into the appropriate word, which we had carefully taken note of when we started filling in information. From that point, the solve was quick. Overall, though, the puzzle slowed us down... mostly again due to disorganization. The twenty-one index cards were all over the place, shuffled around, and being answered by different players at different times. Too much overlap, not enough synchronicity.

Our next location gave us my favorite puzzle of the day. In a sheltered alcove, we sat down and started solving. Crossword-style clues on arrows abounded. Spaces to put short answers in a circle containing a single letter also abounded. Answers like "muumuu", "tutu", and "Wii" fitted with the spaces in the M, T, and W circles, quickly leading us to realize the answers consisted of words that only had the single constant plus a single vowel.

We started pointing clue-arrows to answer-circles and taping them together (thank goodness Rob had grabbed a roll before we took off). Hoping to create a single path, we were stymied briefly when that turned out to be impossible. Mark suggested maybe it was a 3D object, like the dome in BATH 4. The configuration would make a great cube, we realized. I suddenly realized that the "What a dark circle in this clue represents" clue didn't refer to the colored circles (duh) but to the large dark circles behind every constanant that for some reason hadn't registered in my mind. Obviously, with the a white cube, each dark circle was a pip! We finished assembly, found the constant on the opposite side of the die for each colored circle and came up with "B_XC_R" (there was nothing opposite the colored squares, hence the blanks) Obviously, it was "BOXCAR". Later, Wei-Hwa told us that each side of the die represented a vowel, so taking the the vowel opposite each square would have filled it in for us. Neat idea, but that part of the solve mechanism would take more effort and time than just mentally filling in vowels, and thus was useless to us.

Part 2 soon.

Photos from BANG XX, 21, and 22, plus One Video

I've finally had a chance to organize and upload photos from the past few events:

BANG XX
Many of these were at night, and thus didn't turn out the greatest. On top of that, we only got about halfway through the event.

BANG 21
Entirely coincidentally, I took 21 photos. Includes a video of one round of blackjack.

BANG 22 Scouting
From our first scouting trip to downtown San Rafael, with the comments that were made about usability. (The Falkirk Mansion was unfortunately being used the same day of our event.)

Recovered Notes on Puzzle Flaws

Whilst away at BANG 21, my wife decided to clean the office and figured a stack of papers that had been untouched for many moons was ripe for recycling. When I got home I found a chunk of my old notes set to be set out for the city to take away. I did finally go through them and recycle about half. One thing I found in the half I'm keeping was an attempt at a list of what I was thinking of as the "Seven Deadly Sins of Puzzle Creation". In reality, though, they're just a list of some of the irritating things I've come across in my scant three years of solving these encoded data reduction puzzles (as I believe one person referred to them). Anyway, I though I'd write them down here so I can recycle the paper.

Ambiguous Flavor Text
Flavor text always seem to be tricky: Don't include any and there's no way to get any traction with a puzzle; include some and you run the risk of people taking every little word the wrong way. I think BANG 22 caused this latter problem more than once, unfortunately. A story was trying to be told about a trapped time-traveler while at the same time giving information about the puzzle. In hindsight (and with enough time), they should have been kept separate.

Extensive Data Collection
I'm not talking about writing down a list of the fifteen people who graduated with honors from the Silly Walk Academy. I'm thinking of having to search a football stadium to find 93 post-its (and using the seat number as a player number, indexing into the player name by row, etc.). There's a certain point where exploring your environment becomes a chore instead of challenging and fun. Where that point is seems hard to define: I've been on an hour-long collection that kept me entertained the whole time, as well as being on a fifteen minute one that I was bored and frustrated after five minutes.

Brute Force Puzzles
These are kind of rare in my experience, but I have seen puzzles written where the *only* way to solve it is to brute force the possibilities. No fun, unless you count writing the program to do it for you as enjoyable.

Gibberish Solves
Usually gibberish is a good indicator that whatever your idea was, it isn't working. But there are puzzles that have solved to seemingly random text and then expect you to find out how to translate that string into the solution. Bad form.

Single Word Extractions That Aren't the Solution
Kind of a minor gripe, especially since it's very rare to be charged a penalty for a wrong answer. But it still irks me a little when we've gotten a "single word or short phrase" that isn't what the puzzle creators want. This is almost always in recursion-style puzzles, so the next step is usually obvious. But still. Another one we did in BANG 22.

Guess The Encoding Method
Many times it's obvious that once you've gotten so far in a puzzle, the rest of the way out is through a common encoding. Even code methods that are now second nature (first letter acrostics, alphanumeric, etc.) may be obvious. But I've seen puzzles where the only aha is that bolded vs. unbolded vs. capitalized letters in text is a ternary encoding. What fun is that? (Well, in one case it was kind of fun.) There shouldn't be any puzzle where just decoding a message is the goal. Which is one reason why we had the extra bits for the salad puzzle in BANG 22.

And there, apparently, I ran dry. However, since then I have decided on a seventh. It's kind of minor, but still it exists.

Anagramming Is Easier Than the Ordering Method
In some puzzles, you figure out how to get letters from a block of data and immediately you see that the letters form a word, say AMBROSIA. Type it in and that's the answer. Afterwards, talking with the puzzle creator, you find out they had this amazing method to order the letters by using the birthdate of the author of the book that was ghost written by listed author (hmmmm...). That's a lot of wasted effort that no team (okay, maybe one) is going to go to in order to rearrange the letters. I know of at least one team that this was true for the Chessmen puzzle in BANG 22.

I'm sure there are tons more out there and many exception to even these. But in general, if I come across a puzzle with one of these flaws, it's probably going to annoy me to some degree. Even with the best puzzle, it'd be like having the perfect martini with a cherry in it: I may end up remembering the flaw more than the quality.

And now, to the blue bin.

Shinteki Decathlon 5 on the horizon

I finally got around to finishing solving a Shinteki POTM from a few months ago and went to the website to check my answer. Just as I was navigating to the solution, I noticed that Decathlon 5 had been announced! Since it's in both May and June, that means apart from April, there's going to be one hunt a month for the first half of this year. And the Burninators have a BANG planned...

The Burninators got BANG, too

There are no details apart from the Burninators are planning on hosting BANG 21. That's what I get for using the BANG website as a launching point again...