Looking Forward to 2009

At the beginning of 2008, things looked kind of bleak hunt-wise. There hadn't been a BANG since April of the previous year and I had no idea when this hunger created in me would be sated again. (I went so far captain a team in Chinese New Year Treasure Hunt to feed said craving; it didn't help.) Things look a lot different for 2009: Two BANGs and a Game have already been announced.

That's to say nothing of the strongly-suggested-but-just-short-of-required (as Joe put it) responsibility laid upon two teams to host a BANG; the one, hopefully two, Microsoft Puzzle Hunts; theoretically another Shinteki Decathlon; the MIT Mystery Hunt; and any other unannounced hunts that are still in the planning stages. I'm hoping for about ten puzzle events next year, up from the six or seven we participated in this year.

Of course, I won't be able to make all of them; any that require airfare will probably be out of reach unless my donations to the California educations system pay off. However, the GNU will hopefully be represented at each event. For example, Jonathan is planning to head to Boston again this year to rejoin the Silly Hat Brigade for the Mystery Hunt and Given is thinking to join in the MSPH fun next time it occurs.

I could always try remote solving for events I can't attend; however, the one time I tried it in the past, it didn't work out very well. Maybe it was because I work better in groups or because the one puzzle I'd really got a handle on ended up being solved by someone on site while I was working on it.

Also, it doesn't help that Colin Mochrie & Brad Sherwood's Third Annual Farewell Tour is on the January 16...

When Puzzled Zombies Attack (aka BANG 19)

A couple days ago, Team Goldfish, aka Golden Golems and Mystic Fish, brought Liboncatipu's SNAP vision to the Bay Area. Many thanks to all three teams for putting it on and all the hard work they put into it!

This was my second time captaining The Smoldering YAK. Although our roster wasn't confirmed until 8:30am day of, we ended up with all of the original YAK members except Matthew. Linda's Eric had had a documentary shoot with Stephen Baldwin that got cancelled due to weather, so he was able to meet us in Berkeley to be our fifth. The GNU had other roster problems, with two of their members being unable to make it as of Friday afternoon; however, I got them their final member, William, by Friday night.

(What few pictures I took of UDC are here.)

Zombie Horror Picture Show
I was impressed with the production values of the first puzzle. Whoever designed it went to a lot of trouble to animate the letter "Z" attacking a bunch of other letters through sixteen security cams. It was definitely a cool way to start a BANG and kind of put the "night" element back in the BANG, if only briefly and at the wrong time.

There were a few drawbacks to the clue, though: We pretty much had the right idea from the start, but it took us quite a while to keep track of all the information going on in sixteen screens simultaneously. It didn't help that three of the left-hand cams were so dark it was practically impossible to tell what was going on. And it was definitely a challenge to keep track of which letters went into which cubical in the upper-right hand cam. We were so packed in that it often seemed like we were bouncing ideas off of the team behind us: "Look the 'I' is getting killed now." "No no, it's a 'T'."

Finally, we took Andrea's idea of dividing the cams into quadrants, having one team member watch a quadrant, and then simply saying when a letter got killed, while I wrote them down. Even after that it still took us several times to get it done right.

Zombies in the Underground

I have to admit I'm not especially fond of clues requiring large amounts of data collection within a small space. In the Downtown Berkeley BART station, the space to collect from was exceedingly small: The BART schedule pamphlet. Luckily, Eric and Andrea were really into it and speedily got the data out; meanwhile, Linda and Lori worked on the longest zombie trip. That left me as ideas man, trying to figure out how to pull it all together. I had many ideas, but none seemed to work. We ended up taking a hint, which told to basically concentrate on the simplest of my theories. Someone spotted we were using the wrong data (i.e. the station names as they were called out instead of those on the clue sheet), corrected, solved, and moved on.

It's somewhat ironic that I made a mistake on the second puzzle very similar to the mistake I made on the second puzzle of BANG 16. To wit: I tried an idea and the data came out as "UNDPAB". That almost looks like "UNDEAD", I thought. But since it wasn't, I ended up discarding the right idea.

Ghostbustin' Under a T-Rex

Our next clue took place on campus. Lucky for us, Linda was a graduate of UC Berkeley and knew exactly where the building we were going to was. The clue consisted of 8 mini-logic puzzles that were used to solve a nonogram. Even though most of my team hadn't had much experience with the mini-logics, I had tested nonoriddles on them thoroughly enough that they at least knew how to do the nonogram. Specifically, Andrea was all over it, being able to complete it when we only had three or four of the mini-logics solved. She was telling us what the answers to the other ones were before we could complete them.

Brainless Chess

The next one was done before I knew it. Linda took down the information from the follow-the-zombie's-infectious path while I took advantage of the nearby restrooms. When I came out, Eric had sketched out what Linda told him to and it looked like "FEED". Larry, manning the site, gave me one of those "You're so close but I can't tell you that" expressions, so we went back, re-drew the paths, and came up with "FLEE". Larry was then fairly strict in interpreting the "write the answer on the solution sheet and show it to the staffer" portion of the rules, but we were out quickly after that.

A Soggy Poetry Reading

The funny thing about the next clue, which consisted of finding poem titles on plaques scattered on both sides of a city block, was that arriving after a little later worked to teams' advantage. Before entering the jazz club, it was fairly obvious that other teams were studying the plaques and thus were the key to the puzzle. Jonathan told me that The Smoking GNU arrived at the site approximately in third, and they hadn't even seen the plaques coming in. Thus, staring at the clue, they really had no idea what to do. Eventually, they found a clever solution: Googling some of the phrases lead them to a book. Upstairs from the jazz club was a bookstore. Unbeknownst to GC, in the bookstore was the book and it contained a listing of all the poems and their authors. The GNUs didn't even get wet solving it.

We did. We diligently gathered the data — which was spread out enough and interesting enough — and headed back into the club. We transcribed the poems and authors and tried to figure out what to do next. Nothing came to mind. I kept concentrating on the "III" in the title of the poem; it was the only piece of data we hadn't used. How, I thought, would I have designed this clue if had been me? I would have used the "III" to indicate to use the third letter. "Okay, everybody be quiet!" I hushed my compatriots, as there were a lot of other teams around us. They huddled around me protectively as I started scrawling out my theory. It worked like a charm and we got out of there ahead of many teams that were there when we arrived. It was a great moral booster.

Game Store Tactics

We definitely had fun with this one. Clues that can be divvied up among teammates are good at creating a sense of unity and accomplishment. At least for us. The "Interlaced Video" sub-title made it pretty clear to us what to do, as we found common words amongst joined film, song, and TV show names. Which we then did again with the newly interleaved names that the puzzle solved to. I was in the midst of de-interlacing the fourth new title when Eric urgently whispered "It's 'Wild West', let's go!" So we did.

A Zombie Feast

At some sort of children's brain center (my team stole the location information after the hunt, so I can't be more exact than that), we got a bunch of pictures of things zombies had been dining on lately. Looking for a place to sit, we spotted a couch and zoomed to it. We also failed to spot any other teams, which is kind of discomforting. Are we last to arrive? Slightly ahead of the curve? First? (Highly doubtful.)

We set about deciding what each of the pictures were. Andrea was just noticing that most of our identifications contained the letters "B" and "R", which should have lead us in the right direction. Another team arrive and camped out nearby. Sound carried well in that building, so we ended up in a good-natured shushing match with them, with a few bit of very obviously wrong information spoken loudly.

Still having no idea what to do, apart from having to take out letters from each word the pictures identified to leave a specific number of letters left, I wrote down the first word, "RAINBOW", and the second, "BANNISTER", and crossed off what they had in common. This gave us the proper number of letters left and looking closely I realized that the letters I'd crossed off anagrammed into something very thematic as well as something that should have been obvious from our location. (Talking to Jonathan later, he described how the GNU asked themselves, "So what do zombies eat?" and the answer was immediately obvious).

We YAKs were feeling pretty good at that point. We had hit our stride and had zoomed through the last few puzzles. We were on our way to the eighth and final puzzle, confident that we were going to have a decent finish time.

We Fold

In Mel's Diner, it seemed like there were a lot of teams there, so I guess we were middle of the pack or so. The Smoking GNU was there and we stopped by to say hi, noting that they hadn't yet finished the final puzzle. That both gave us hope and dread: Hope that we could pull off a fast solve and end up ahead of some of the teams already there; and dread that if they hadn't solved it by now, how could we get a fast solve?

We found a large enough table and sat down with our colorful clue/newsletter. Again, it consisted of several sub-puzzles that we split up. Andrea and I worked on the crossword, but she seemed to be speeding through the clues faster than I could think. Linda handled the Morse code ("This side up") and Eric and Lori worked on other ones on the back.

I noticed the dashed lines around the clue and figured at some point we'd have to cut it out. I don't know if I had subconsciously spotted other teams making them, but I somehow knew we'd end up folding the paper into an airplane. Thinking that the sub-clues would give us specific directions on how to fold it (I figured all the bull's eyes would line up), we solved them, only to find out that the first two were "AIRPLANE" and "FOLD".

Some "sparing pairings" indicated they would give us directions on how to traverse the maze, but even after solving all of them, we still had no idea how. We tried many paths but got nowhere.

When we had arrived at Mel's, Alexandra told us some information about what hints she would and wouldn't give. For some reason, I thought that she wouldn't give any hints on the final puzzle, much the same way as in BANG 16. However, one of the YAKs spotted one of the GNUs talking to Alexandra and overheard they were taking a hint. This was not only a sure sign that we could use a hint, but also how tricky the puzzle was.

From Alexandra, we were told to ignore the maze for now and focus on folding the airplane. Now I know several different ways to fold an airplane, including my own custom way (that only does a half-loop before falling to the ground), so I set about trying to line up all the bull's eyes and make an airplane. Eric tried with his copy. We got nowhere fast. Going back, Alexandra handed us a paper showing exactly how to fold it (it was a version of the classic dart). The main problem was none of the bull's eyes were used in the first fold; that was a frustrating development.

Once constructed, the folded airplane revealed a wheel that had "Lucky Charms" marshmallow symbols on it. "Semaphore!" we thought, but no such luck. At least not yet. Kind of taking the hint the wrong way, we thought the wheel would help us decipher the symbols in the maze, not the other way around.

The four o'clock deadline came. It was extended to 4:15.

Around 4:10, Jonathan wondered over and I told him of our continued problems. He set us straight: Solve the maze, then the wheel. However, we couldn't figure out how the "spairing pairings" were supposed to guide us through the maze. With only a couple minutes to go, he told us. I'm not sure we ever would have gotten that, but trying to get your brain to work in rush while your stomach is digesting diner food is not always the best environment for creative thought.

In Summary
We YAKs ended up not doing very well. We could and should have done better. The first two puzzles slowed us down more than they should have. We gained momentum on puzzles three through seven, but hit a brick wall figuring out how to fold an airplane. Not being able to solve that kind of left a sour taste in our mouths.

Or maybe it was just that the ketchup at Mel's Diner was rancid.

BANG 19 Weather Forecast

With all the unseasonably warm weather we've been having, I had kind of expected that the advice GC had regarding inclimate weather would prove useless. However, I checked the forecast for Berkeley today and found that rain is indeed called for.

Guess I'll have to find out where Natalie hid my umbrella.

On Picking Prizes

So far, selecting a prize to offer up for a BANG has usually been a last minute thing. For example, Jonathan and I were in a store at 11pm the night before one event, discussing the ins and outs of different possibilities before finally selecting something (a trivia book I think) and heading out as the store closed.

It's a balance of finding something intersting, unique, useful, and/or fun and of finding something in the ~$10 price range. Since I don't know any other team's taste (apart from, perhaps, puzzles), we try and go with something we'd like... especially if we're lucky enough to place high enough to get a prize and only have what we had brought as a choice.

This time, I decided to get BANG 19's prize out of the way early. Some things I've looked at and decided not to choose:

A 25-piece kitchen knife set (seemed dangerous)

A giant rootbeer keg filled popcorn that can then be used to brew rootbeer

A Sudoku cube

A digital sudoku hand-held game

The complete collection of Space Quest games (dunno if anyone besides me would use it)

A diamond-tipped circular saw blade (ditto)

A collection of burrs (did it last time)

A Halloween costume (it's the day after...)

I finally chose something I though was interesting, unique, useful, fun, and a drinking game to boot, and brought it home, safe in the thought that I wouldn't have to worry about it for the coming month. My wife then mentioned that the package looked a little banged up. I looked closer and saw it was taped shut over the original packing tape. Opening it up, I found that of the eighteen necessary parts to assemble this thing, all but seven were missing. I returned what had obviously been a return.

There weren't any others, so I selected something else with the store credit. Ah well. It may not be as interesting, unique or useful as the first, but I think it just might be fun.

BANG 19 vs Ghost Patrol

Looking at the current list of teams signed for BANG 19: UDC and comparing it against the team list for Ghost Patrol, the crossover looks pretty small:

Burninators

coed astronomy

Continental Breakfast

Space Cops

XX-Rated

But of course, two of the teams in GP are hosting this BANG (thanks Goldfish!) and five or so teams are out of area (but possibly playing in SNAP 4). Team Liboncatipu mentioned that one of the reasons they decided to host the weekend before Ghost Patrol was to give those who didn't get accepted a chance to do some puzzling (and those who did get accepted would have a warm-up). I wonder how many teams are taking advantage of that...

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...

The BANGs are Back in Town

I decided to update our event list after getting accepted into BANG 19: UDC and went to the BANG homepage to get the link. To my surprise, I found that XX-Rated is planning on hosting BANG XX: Get Lucky! next March. I think there also may be another BANG a couple months after that. And those are in addition to any BANGs the winners might/should/will host!

Sweet.

Iron Puzzler BANG - Darned Good Stuff!

I have to say we really had a blast playing in the Iron Puzzler BANG last Saturday! I can't think of any clue in the hunt that I could nitpick or that we didn't enjoy. Of course, we solved them all and usually a solved puzzle is an enjoyed puzzle, so there's that as a qualifier.

Many thanks to coed astronomy, Burninators, BootyVicious, Evil Geniuses, Platonic Solids, and Wrong Ideas for all their work, and to Greg DeBeer, whose Iron Puzzler event led to this (hopefully) renewal of the Bay Area Night Game. It was a good, solid event, and I recommend that it happen again with the next Iron Puzzler.

Since the IP BANG may be run again and/or at a different site (a wonderful new tradition I think), I guess I won't write much about our specific experience... except to say that Erik practically jumped ship after hearing from Rich about how Blood and Bones played in their own division (i.e. a drink after every solve, similar to a methodology Erik employed in the SF Mini-hunt) and that I have never seen a man so pleased to win a rock garden.

Iron Puzzler BANG Photos

There didn't seem to be many picture opportunities apart from our team gathered around a puzzle, but what few I took are up at ipbang.puzzalot.com.

All YAKs left behind

Despite all my Smoldering YAK teammates eagerly anticipating a new puzzle hunt, when the Iron Puzzler BANG comes along, suddenly they're all busy. Okay, sure, one's got a wedding reception, two others have anniversary plans, and another already had made camping plans, but still! All the "When is there going to be another puzzle hunt?" fell by the wayside pretty quickly. Ah well.

Since I'll be on the Smoking GNU instead, Jonathan and I were hoping to reunite our core team of three for a short event (i.e. non-overnight) for the first time since April 2007, but Given's place of employment has given him all but unlimited overtime. Thus, his plan for September 6th is to sleep all day.

Trading Seattle and San Francisco Puzzle Hunts

Jonathan called the other day and, as it invariably does, talk got round to puzzle events. The fact that two SNAPs are in planning triggered the thought that it might be fun to have someone in the Bay Area host those SNAPs as BANGs (and vice versa, if and when a new BANG rolls around). It seemed to work well enough using coed astronomy's mini-Game as SNAP 3. It would double the amount of puzzle events in each area with (hypothetically) only half the work.

I mentioned in the Puzzle Hunters forum that I think we'd be up for hosting a SNAP in the Bay Area, assuming it was logistically possible. It'd be a good way to test the waters as a host, and be good experience should we ever (hopefully) get around to doing something more.

I heard that Wei-Hwa ran a version of the Microsoft Puzzle Hunt at Google once. Would trading longer events like that be feasible on a regular basis? Given the rising price of airfare, it'd certainly have some pluses going for it. And if we want to talk really crazy, there's always the MIT Mystery Hunt...

Single word vs. directions solves

Last night, Given's ear infection kept him from joining Andrea and I for our Wednesday night session of Agon. Deciding not to waste puzzling time, she and I enjoyed some practice for the SF Mini-Game by working on BANG 12 clues, picking up where we left off after The Smoldering YAK's practice session on Sunday.

One thing I noticed from both sessions, apart from how much fun we had and how well we worked together, was how much more satisfying it felt to solve puzzles to a single word, as opposed to a directional message (monoverbum vs. polyverbum?). I'm not quite sure why this is; all I can say is that in the former case, the clue felt truely solved while in the latter (admitedly only taken from my experiences in Midnight Madness: Back To Basics and a few other practice puzzles) didn't have that feeling of closure. I suppose this could be due my experiences at the Google and Microsoft Puzzle Hunts, where puzzles often solved to messages that told you how to re-solve the puzzle.

Interestingly, it seems clues in SF Mini-Game will do both, solving first to a location and then to a solution word.

An Idea for Keeping BANGs Going

One interesting thing Rich mentioned during his presentation on Game Offshoots at the GC Summit 2008 (and I believe he mentioned something on this blog a long time ago) is his theory that the reason there hasn't been a BANG 18 yet is that no one felt compelled by their placement in BANG 17 to host the next one. Part of the reason why that happened is the same teams keep winning and either don't want to keep hosting (quite understandable) or are pretty busy developing long term projects (e.g. Google Puzzle Hunt, Games, etc.). I have an idea how to deal with this. Whether it's a good idea or not is another question entirely.

Looking at the BANG Hall of Fame, there are only four teams that have won more than one BANG (some are ties, admittedly), and only three teams that have hosted more than once. Nearly every team that has won has hosted or co-hosted a BANG (Red Sea DespARRRadoes says they will eventually), but teams that have won more than once don't host as often as they win.

So here is my suggestion: All future BANGs would have three comptetive categories, name and degree of difference to be determined by the hosting team. Category 1 would be the casual teams, beginners and intermediates. Category 2 would be the expert/hardcore teams. Category 3 would be any team that has won more than one BANG playing in Category 2, by default. Only the winner of Category 2 would be asked to host the next BANG.

Just an idea.

Two New Puzzle Hunts Scheduled

April 12 - BAAG (1?): Coed Astronomy is hosting what seems to be a non-night version of the BANG (as opposed to confusing people and replacing the "Night" with, say, "Noon") in San Francisco this spring. Sounds like a good idea to me: When comparing BANG 16 and BANG 17, I have to say handling flashlights to illuminate a paper puzzle can be a bit of a pain. One drawback, though, would be the inability to do light-based puzzles such as the graveyard clue in BANG 16.

Assuming a team size of four, we're trying to round up our BANG 17 team, less my brother, and then see if other people who've played on The Smoking GNU at one time or another want to form a secondary team (tentatively named One Smug Knight).

(Note: I find the word "leisurely" in the description to be interesting for some reason.)

May 3&10 - Shinteki: Not sure as to the nature of this event except that it's twelve hours long. Right now, our primary plan is to send the standard Shinteki team, and perhaps a seconary team to volunteer to playtest.

Upcoming Puzzle Events

Today - Trogday: Trogdor turns five.

January 18 - MIT Mystery Hunt: Jonathan's flying out to Boston and joining the Silly Hat Brigade, the captain of which, oddly enough, went to the SRJC with us. Sure, he was eight at the time, but maybe he'll remember.

February 3 - Superbowl XLII: Hosting a surprise mini-puzzle hunt for friends. Something to do between commercials. And if any of them happen to read this, I'll deny everything.

February 9-10 - Iron Puzzler 2008: Tempting, but considering our abysmal showing at the last one, I think we'll pass and leave the slot open for other team.

February 23 - Chinese New Year Treasure Hunt: In the midst of putting a team together. I've been told it won't be as challenging as a puzzle hunt, but it'll be a fun life event anyway.

[Date Unknown] - Microsoft Puzzle Hunt 12: I doubt I'll be going up to Seattle for Cracking Good Toast's hunt, but other GNUs may. Perhaps I can remote solve for Second Breakfast.

[Date Unknown] - BANG 18: The Unibangers are planning on hosting the next BANG. I'm sure we'll be there!

[Date Unknown] - Googol Puzzle Hunt II? - The organizers of the Googol Conglomerate had hoped that it would become an annual event and that the winners (Phobos-Grunt) would host the next one. I have no hints or indications that this will happen, but I can hope, can't I?

Best Laid GNU Plans

Jonathan, co-founder and captain of The Smoking GNU, came up to Santa Rosa for the Christmas-through-New Years week. It had been our plan to get together a least a day or two to do some brain-storming and location scouting in order to determine the feasibility of us hosting a BANG this year. However, due to colds, my daughter, and his family refusing to let him free since they hadn't seen him in several months, it didn't happen.

It may seem like a small thing, but this was a very crucial step in getting our plans off the ground. Phone conversations just haven't seemed to jump-start our creative thoughts, despite the number of times we've discussed it. It's as if it keeps things in the theoretical stage, whereas face-to-face meetings with notes on paper would actually start us moving forward.

Barring Jonathan moving back up to the Bay Area from L.A. (he's looking for a job with company that better suits his talents and/or starting a Masters program), we concluded that our plans probably won't happen this year.

End of the Season

Well that pretty wraps up the 2007 puzzle hunt season. Although the Unibangers plan to do the next BANG, something tells me that it won't happen until 2008. It seems kind of weird that there was only one BANG this year when the average has been about four. Maybe that's due to all the other events, including a new puzzle hunt at the Google campus (a tradition which I hope continues), keeping people/teams who might otherwise be orginazing another BANG from having the time to do so.

Or perhaps it's because the Platonic Solids did such a good job that the BANG bar has been raised a notch? I'm thinking that if I dug into my puzzle file, pulled out 10 puzzles, fitted them into a meta, and just placed them at random locations, people might be a little bit disappointed.

A Santa Rosa BANG?

Assuming that at some point in the future, The Smoking GNU hosts a BANG, one of the key issues is where to have it. Jonathan, Given, and myself are all as near natives to Santa Rosa as you can get without actually being born here and it's the city we know best. But, seeing as how most of the BANG audience is south of the Golden Gate, how many people would actually show up in Santa Rosa if we did?

From what I understand, the attendance of BANG 15: Bang Appétit was somewhat diminished by the fact that it was held in Petaluma. Santa Rosa is a further half-hour north.

While we may have been willing to drive from Santa Rosa to Los Gatos (two hours) for BANG 16, and theoretically there will always be teams willing to drive wherever in the Bay Area for a puzzle hunt, it sounds like it would leave the more casual puzzle teams out, something we wouldn't want to do.

That leaves the question, then: Where?

Bees & Beavers vs. Shinteki Decathlon

That's right, I'm really busy. Yet, I'm taking time out from writing a puzzle for a good friend and former roommate's wedding and trying to finalize puzzles for a friends and family puzzlehunt and get prototypes ready in time for the playtest to say...

We got 4th!

Well, I say "we" much in the same way that a team fan says "We won!" at a football game: I played no part in The Smoking GNU's placement in Shinteki Decathlon III, Week 2.

I got the report from Jonathan yesterday. He said they had a great time, but are a little disappointed with their 4th place finish for two reasons: a) It's the same placing they got last year; and b) They were in the lead for much of the game. Apparently, they ran into trouble on the ninth clue, when they didn't spot a vital part of information on the back of the DVD box. This cost them about a half hour and perhaps 45 points. If they had seen that, it's possible they might have ended up in third, or even second place. That "missing a vital part of the clue" problem happens to our team too often... kind of like the Raiders always seeming to fumble the ball during a comeback drive.

I asked about the laser game clue because it sounded neat based on Ian's description, and apparently like some other teams, they found the puzzle easier to solve without the game. He really enjoyed the Livecube puzzle, which is indeed what I was refering to in my earlier post and was one of the clues I staffed the previous weekend. They never made it to see Leon the Giraffe at the tenth clue (another one that I staffed a week ago; it was amusing how most teams asked Ian and I if we were Leon), since they figured that the half-hour or so that they had left wouldn't put much of a dent in any puzzle labeled "Endurance"; instead, they concentrated their remaining time on solving bonuses.

The somewhat sad thing is that this may be the last time Jonathan (our team captain) comes up for a puzzle event this year. Living in Southern California means that he flies in for each event, which is fine if it's long enough (i.e. longer than half a day). But if a BANG or, if we're lucky, two is held by the end of the year, he'll probably be up for neither. Which would just leave me and Given...

The next event that three of us may be able to participate in together is the Microsoft Puzzle Hunt, which is apparently happening October 6-7. One of the difficulties, of course, is that none of us know any Microsoft employees (well, we met Terrance while playing for Second Breakfast, but I think he's part of the hosting team), and unless I start selling body parts, I wouldn't be able to afford the trip anyway.

BANG 16 - Revisited

So I was cleaning up the desk trying to make room for my old Linux box when I came across a notebook filled with strange notations in it. Turns out, it's my notes from our experience in BANG 16. I had always meant to do a full write-up of it, as those brave enough to look can find out from my corny first blogger post. Time, however, has just not made such things possible. But here are two anecdotes from that night:

1. Coins puzzle - There was a huge crowd gathered around the puzzle-sitter at the fountain, so we grabbed the sheet of paper, headed out of the area, and sat down to solve. The puzzle involved figuring out the minimum number of coins needed to make change for a certain amount. Figuring that the dollar coin was the largest denomination, we figured that you'd take the number of coins needed and convert that number to the appropriate letter. Didn't work, so the team started trying other ideas, while I decided that maybe the puzzle designers were using 50 cents as the largest one. Still nothing. A quarter? Nothing!
   
   
   
   We spent a long time trying to figure out how to solve it and eventually, when we were like the next to the last team there, we took the hint. Turns out my quarter-as-the-highest-coin thought was right, but I had made a huge number-to-letter translation mistake. I felt like hitting that brick wall with my fist, I was so mad at myself. (We found out much later, i.e. the end of the game, that there was a stack of coins next to the puzzle-sitter to let us know which group of coins to use.)
   
   However, it kinda ended up being a good thing. If we hadn't taken the hint, we might have ended up ahead of The Platonic Solids and would have had the honor of hosting the next BANG... on our first outing!


2. Graveyard/Flashlight puzzle - We only had the one code sheet when we arrived at this puzzle and were concerned as to what were going to do when we found out that Jonathan was going to go to the other end of the graveyard and communicate something to us via flashlight. "I don't know Morse code by heart yet," Jonathan mentioned. "I'm sure they'll have a sheet down there for you," I replied.
   
   So off he went. Meanwhile, the rest of us set up: Nathan would tell me whether Jonathan was flashing a dot or a dash, I'd write it down, and Given would translate it. "Okay he's starting, write this down: Dash... dash... dash... dash... dash... dash... dash... dash... dash... dash... dash... dash... dash... dash... dash..."
   
   "Um," said Given, "that's not Morse."
   
   "Okay he's starting up again. Dash... dash..." Nathan continued.
   
   "I think it's alphanumeric!" said Given.
   
   "Okay, I'll try it," I told him.
   
   
   
   And it didwork. With quick thinking on Jonathan's part and a good catch on Given's, we got out of there pretty quickly, making up some much needed time from the quarter blunder.

Future Games

I've been thinking too much about what we would do if and when it came time for The Smoking GNU to host a BANG. We came in fifth in BANG 17 and if we used B&B's standards, hosting would fall on us. Luckily, Platonic Solids added that the next host should also have participated in at least three BANGs. We only have two under our belt, so unless someone sprouts another BANG this year, we're going to have to wait until next year to even gain our third merit badge, and maybe the year after to host.

Assuming we continue to participate, it will eventually fall upon us to host, and I'm already (mentally) scouting locations. Additionally, the thought of hosting a Game is in the back of my mind, although that might be several years down the road, if ever!

I think a fun idea would be to have a "Greatest Hits" Game, where a selection of puzzles from the previous Games would be presented. This would allow teams to experience some of the best/most interesting puzzles that they may have missed out on since 1973 (at least that's when Wikipedia now is saying that it began) to have a chance. Of course, each puzzle would have to have a twist on it so that teams who had already experienced it wouldn't get bored.

My teammates think I'm crazy that I'm actually looking forward to hosting. To be true, I can't even explain it to myself. My best guess is that I've hosted tons of other events and the greatest joy I get from it is hearing how people (usually) enjoyed themselves. What more reason would I need?

BANG 17 Pictures

Pictures that I took from BANG 17 are up. Unfortunately, they're mostly from the pre-game activites (wrapping other teams up in foil armor). I seem to be too distracted during the game to take pictures during puzzles for some reason...

BANG 17: Knights of the Round Table

Operating for the first time under our new team name (the old one, while somewhat amusing, was didn't easily roll off the tongue), we had a strong showing in the seventeenth Bay Area Night Game, which took place entirely during the day (not that I'm complaining!). I'd never been to UC Berkeley before, so I was lost pretty much the entire time. But that's what you have navigators for, right?

I really appreciate all the hard work that the Platonic Solids put into creating this puzzle hunt. Especially the interactive ones which impressed me the most: The charading hermit, the singing monks, and the Black Knight. They require a lot from the volunteers and we really appreciate all that they did to make this possible. We even had a sidequest after finding the Grail: Providing water for the Black Knight.

The only puzzle I didn't enjoy was the very first one: Finding Camelot. In a puzzle hunt dominated by non-paper puzzle, giving everyone four paper puzzles that they need to solve before they could even leave the starting area seemed counter-productive. Additionally, there was no way to confirm we were making progress until all four were solved. Eventually, after discussing what it all meant, our team just decided to go to where the lightning bolt on the nonogram pointed.

Apart from that we enjoyed pretty much all the puzzles, found them challenging at about the right level, and had a good time. My favorite quote from the whole day? As Eric was about to "drink" from the Holy Grail, he said "If I shrivel up and turn to dust after drinking this, I'm coming after you guys!"

The Longest (Puzzle) Day - Part 1

I'm a Total Perspective Vortex Survivor, and August 12th was the longest puzzle day of my life.

(A story of how we made it through both Perplexcity's SF Live Event and BANG 16 in the same day. Sorry for the length... a journal is for recording memories, after all. Skip to parts two and three, after they're available, to read about the actual event.)

The Shocking Discovery!

Jonathan found The Game after several online treasure hunts came online, specifically one blogged about by Wei-Hwa Huang. He was completely shocked to find out about this subculture of puzzle-addicts who have been running puzzle hunts since at least 1985. "We've been missing out on these for over twenty years!" he continuously points out to me.  And he has a valid point.  Jonathan and I have known each other almost twenty-five years and we've always been puzzlers.  We've played Infocom (we one went through the Enchanter series in six hours), we read books, he subscribed to games magazine.  This love of puzzles never died down and now we find out that about The Game and he's pissed and I'm in disbelief that we'd never heard of it.  Of course, neither of us went to Standford or Berkley, or worked for Microsoft or Google, so that's a big disadvantage right there.

But now that we found it, we weren't going to waste any more of our time.

Jonathan soon inserted himself into a team for the Shinteki Decathlon II (it was too expensive for me to enter, but I was his go-to guy when he needed trivia) and they finished in fourth place, not too bad.  Then BANG 16 was announced and we quickly formed a team that included my brother Nathan and our friend Given.

Then shortly before the BANG was to be held, Jonathan called me all excited:  Another puzzle even was happening the same day! Perplexcity was having their second live event (it was free!) and after he described the London live event, we were convinced. The timing would have to be perfect: We'd have to leave the Palace of Fine Arts by 3pm in order to make it to Los Gatos on time, which meant that we'd miss the opening of the SF connection at 3:30, but we would get to participate in all the puzzling events.

The Amazing Preparations!

We felt that it important to practice as a team, so Jonathan, Given and I gathered at my house and printed out puzzles from Bang 8 and went about solving them. A lot of fun! And we worked well together! A good boost of confidence for us. The only problem was I earned a reputation for leaving stuff out, when we were completely stuck on the "First Letters" puzzle, and it turned out it was because I hadn't realized there were two sheets of paper that printed (it was a quick solve for us after that).

Friday night, the three of us drove down to South San Francisco to do some practice puzzling with our fouth member, Nathan. We did some puzzles from BANG 13: Trick-or-Bang. I think we had more fun just being together, but we did enjoy the puzzling as well, especially trying to solve the spiders puzzle and eventually taping pictures of spiders to Jonathan's fingers.

Nathan took leave of his wife and two kids so we could spend the night in San Fran, so we wouldn't have to travel so far to the Perplexcity Event. Nathan works for SIRF, a maker of GPS chips, so he volunteered some stuff he was working on to take with us to help during the next day (Given got the best use out of it, driving from South San Fran to Los Gatos), so we had to stop by his work before heading up to the City. While Nathan got the equipment and set it up, Jonathan, Given and I discussed some of the puzzles on the whiteboards. When all was ready, Nathan said this was one of the few times he was out without his wife and kids, so we were darned well gonna play some foosball on the table in their office! We humored him but had fun for about fifteen minutes before heading north to the City.

The Events Antecedent!

Jonathan's aunt owns an three level apartment complex valued, he says, at three million dollars. She's out of town, he got permission, so that's where we were staying. It was beautiful! Hardword floors, beautiful decorations, and plenty of high-tech stuff, not that we had any time to play with anything. We quickly divied up the beds (Given ended up with a floor mattress), got a late-night sleep.

After showers and oatmeal the next morning, we waited in the solarium-like living room as Jonathan got final software on his laptop, and we collected our things. Out the gate we went, when our first strike hits: Nathan's van has a flat tire. The first problem was actually finding the spare tire, since the van's makers had decided to hide it pretty well. Nathan eventually solved that puzzle though, and, getting the spare on quickly, we rush down to the Palace of Fine Arts, parked, make our way through a hole in the chain-link fence and finally end up at the theater.

(Part II - Soon to come...)