The Lowdown on the LARF

Jonathan told me all about his experiences on Sunday's LARF. He's threatened to write them up (I give it about a 15% chance), but here's a very short summary: Some teams complained that the puzzles were too hard; his team wondered where the puzzles were. Apparently, most of the clues consisted of some sort of physical challenge which, when completed, would allow GC to give them a coded message. This message would be something along the lines of "20 8 9 19 19 21 3 11 19", i.e. a straight encoding, no "exercise of ingenuity" needed.

LARFing it

I occasionally point out to Jonathan (daily if possible) that despite his love of puzzle hunts, the first thing he did after playing in BANG 16 is move to Southern California, almost the antithesis of puzzle hunts compared to the Bay Area. He laments the fact each time, but until Google realizes that hiring him could improve their search result accuracy by 95%, he's staying put.

Tomorrow, Jonathan'll try out the Los Angeles Race Fantastique (LARF). He's hoping to have fun, but expects the puzzles to be perhaps slightly below BANG level. Regardless, it'll sate his need for puzzles for a few weeks.

I told him he should start throwing his own Games down there, to try and build a community. He thought that was a little extreme as a first step, but considered the idea of re-running some BANGs (as LANGs?). Ah, such puzzle bravado.