Given joins the MIT Mystery Hunt

Up until now, it's normally been Jonathan and I who would participate in the conference room-style puzzle hunt. Lately, though, Given has taken a liking to them. His first experience was with Microsoft Puzzlehunt 123 and he loved it. This year, he's joining Jonathan and Eric in Boston on the Silly Hat Brigade team for the MIT Mystery Hunt. I was *so* close to joining them, but alas having our core Smoking GNU team together in a conference room for the first time was not to happen. As it is, I'll be super busy the next few days (snow!) and won't even have much time to work on part two of my BANG 25 memories. Hopefully, nobody will hurt me for it.

A Taste of the Hunt and the Coming Simulcast

Yesterday, I got a call from Jonathan. His flight out of Boston had been canceled due to snow, so he was solving some more with Silly Hat Brigade. One puzzle had been bugging him, so he asked me to take a look at it. It was kind of up my alley, having read Hitchhiker's or listened to the radio show about once a year since I discovered it in the 8th grade. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to contribute much (it's kind of hard to solve at home when every few minutes there's a "Daddy, can I...?" or a "Honey, will you...?"), but I did fill in a few holes for them. And the addictive electric tingle I got from doing just that much showed me how much I missed it.

My next taste may actually be coming really soon. With the GNU divided over the Microsoft Puzzle Hunt (Jonathan's going to Redmond, Eric's putting together his own team), Given and I have not yet found another team to play on. This means that we may — assuming there's still room — end up doing the playtest. Which is this coming weekend.

Ghost Patrol Lessons and Finding Sonoma County Puzzlers

Playtesting and volunteering for Ghost Patrol, I have to say, were invaluable experiences (many thanks to Lowkey and Desert Taxi!). First off, we had so much fun during the playtest, it was all I could do to stop myself from telling everyone at BANG 19 who was going to play "You guys are going to have a blast!" in order not to skew opinions and experiences. (I think my unspoken prediction was accurate judging from the standing ovation for GC.) Secondly, it gave us a behind-the-scenes look at what it's like to run The Game.

One of the main observations I made about constructing a Game is that having teammates who live fairly close nearby almost seems like a requirement, since Game constructors will have to meet on a fairly regular basis. Someone I asked from GP's GC said they met once a week for about a year and three times a week for the last month or so. This kind of presents a difficulty for us... one I've touched on before.

At some point, The Smoking GNU would like to host a Game. It may be years in the future, but it is on our to-do list. The difficulty is that on our team, pretty much only Jonathan and I are really devoted to the idea; Given maybe to a lesser extent. The rest of our teammates tend to be involved when they have some free time, but aren't ready to commit to such a large production. Heck, sometimes, I'm not sure I am either.

Two and a half puzzlers aren't enough to host a Game and I don't know of anyone else in Sonoma County who's involved in the community. So I keep thinking that somehow I need to introduce the locals to this amazing event. My guess is that 99% or more of people around here think that a puzzle hunt is something involving haikus (thanks, Downtown Santa Rosa Puzzle Hunt!). That opinion needs to change.

One idea I've had include re-running a BANG up here and putting a clue to its existance on craigslist or around the Santa Rosa Junior College. Seems feasible enough and maybe I'll try it after the arrival of spring. I think my teammates would be up for helping with that.

The SRJC, actually, seems like the best place to get people interested in puzzling. It's possibly the best JC in the U.S. and has around 40K of students who have yet to be introduced to this idea. I wish I had heard of puzzle events back when I was going there and would like give that opportunity to students who might be like me (scary thought). So the idea occurs of maybe getting the SRJC to have a hunt a la Mystery Hunt and try and make it an annual tradition. I'm not sure how to go about doing that though.

Assuming a Sonoma County puzzling community would take root and grow, then perhaps we can find enough local people to make whatever Game we eventually come up with a reality.

"You guys are no longer n00bz."

That was Yar's official assessment after we found ourselves in 3rd place at the end of the Iron Puzzler BANG. And he's probably right. The Smoking GNU - in Total Perspective Vortex Survivors form - showed up in our first puzzle event, BANG 16, two years ago. That's enough time to acclimate ourselves to the community and to show that this is not just some casual hobby we go out and do every now and then. Placing on the podium is probably a pretty accurate indication that it's time to cast off the beginners' cloak.

To be honest, we were a little surprised to place where we did. While walking around in circles as our navigator tried to figure out which part of the Presidio was indicated by the giant "27" on the map, Jonathan estimated at we'd end up fifth; I figured 9th. Coincidentally, we were the ninth team to reach the end location, but none of us would have guessed third. (And after seeing all the results I'm insanely curious to know which clue 5 Blind Boys took a hint on.)

So what does it mean, losing our "newbie" status? Well, we're going to want to give back more to the community than the few things we have done. In another coincidence, we actually have some things planned, including playtesting, staffing, constructing, and maybe even hosting. Right now, though, only one of those things is for sure, but I'm looking forward to them all.

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.

GNU Insight

I haven't actually read Terry Pratchett's Going Postal since before we named our team after its renegade semaphore tower hacking organization, having lost my copy. Recently, I got a new one and found additional insights into our team name that went beyond what I expounded on over a year ago. To wit: There's a reason for the "GNU" besides being a play-on-words.

In the semaphore tower message system, the clackers developed their own message codes, somewhat analogous to IP packet headers. In that code, any message marked GNU means:

G - Go on, i.e. send the message on to the next tower
N - Not logged
U - U-Turn, i.e. turn around at the end of the line and resend the message

So, it's an acronym, and thus is always capitalized and each letter pronounced (guh-new). GNUs were basically ways that clackers could surreptitiously send out messages to each over over the entire network. GNUs were also used to memorialize clackers who had died, their names always traveling up and down the semaphore lines.

A smoking GNU, in context of the book, is a GNU message that has a priority bit turned on, and that's where The Smoking GNU took their name and we, then, took it from them.

The Smouldering YAK, though, has no such pedigree.

Trash Talkin' Teams

We had so many teammates and friends interested in participating in Coed Astronomy's leisurely mini-game, that we decided to enter two teams of five instead of trying to worry about keeping ten people together for the day. After finally coming up with team rosters that everyone's happy with, I was surprised learned last night that certain people are trading barbed (but good natured) comments across the net over which team is better, The Smoking GNU or The Smoldering YAK. To try and put an end to that, I went and figured out which team is better.

For the nine of the ten players that I have witnessed in puzzle-solving action, I assigned a graded scale to each of their abilities (A+ =10, F=0, no plusses or minuses for Ds and Fs). Using the average of his teammates grades for the one player I haven't seen in action, I came up with the following scores:

The Smoking GNU: 35
The Smoldering YAK: 30

This doesn't take into effect other aspects such as who has the better navigator (YAK), which team has better symbiont solvers (GNU), or which team has more experienced players (about even, leaning towards GNU).

So if this were not a leisurely puzzle hunt, you would probably find the GNU placing ahead of the YAK.

T-Shirt Conundrum

Yesterday, I was working once again on coming up with a t-shirt design to be The Smoking GNU's uniform. I was less than impressed with the results:

Renewed Puzzle Hunt Enthusiasm

If nothing else, Saturday night's city search for obscure parts of streets fired a renewed desire to participate in more puzzle hunts. On the drive home after the Treasure Hunt, I was urged by more than one person to get off my ass and put on another Santa Rosa Puzzle Hunt (which I had to indefinitely postpone last year due having to do it solo and to lack of time). Our two Petaluma members are considering constructing their own puzzle hunt and Jonathan once again has the bug to get a BANG together, despite being 500 miles away from the rest of the team.

The season is warming up. In addition to an as-of-yet-unscheduled BANG, a leisurely mini-game, and Shinteki's fourth Decathalon, I see that an invite-only Game, Midnight Madness: Back to Basics (why do people keep stealing my never-to-be-implemented ideas???), has popped up. Sad to say (to us anyway), our somewhat obscure year-and-a-half old team doesn't always stick out in people's minds when considering who to invite (changing our name a few times since inception probably hasn't helped either). Anybody know where I can buy some good subliminal advertising?

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.

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.

NMS Results Show & Analysis

After spending the entire day yesterday in San Francisco securing a passport ("There's one word I just love to hear...") for my daughter and the evening with a downed server, I found out that Coed Astronomy had released their wrapup of No More Secrets, including the full leaderboard, so we could see just how badly we did.

You can see where our navigation problems came in, since the solve times often include travel time. For example, the Karaoke puzzle at the entrance of Microsoft probably only took maybe ten minutes, but we're listed at 37 minutes, showing that at a minimum our trip time was 27 minutes. Since most other teams made the trip in 10 minutes or so, it shows just how much we need to improve our navigation.

In contrast, the Text Adventure puzzle required no travel or navigation, and our solve time of an hour was very competitive with other teams. In fact, only two other teams (The Burninators and Loaded Bonbons) solved it faster.

The one that really killed us was the Bugged clue. It took us 75 minutes over the average of the other teams to solve, and about a half hour longer than the next slowest team for that puzzle. Our first mistake was the location directions: It said something about heading over to 17 at Felton, which we took to mean to travel to 17 Felton Rd. in Cupertino, instead of heading over the 17 freeway down to the city of Felton. I don't know how much time we wasted figuring that out.

After nearly arriving, we decided to get some food, so ten minutes of time was spent going into McDonalds and getting our laptops setup while our orders arrived. Which means we spent maybe an hour and a half actually working on what other teams felt was an easy and obvious puzzle. We still are kicking ourselves for not calling for a hint/confirmation of theories sooner and for not recognizing Bjork=B Ark. But then, our entire team is so allergic to puns, we've trained ourselves to not spot them. Yes, that collective groan you heard across the Santa Clara County was our team's response to "No Morse Egrets".

Apart from that and one or two other clues, our team is satisfied with our actual solution times, feeling that they reflected our abilities well, and were relatively on par with other teams. Our travel times, however, definitely need to be improved. Hopefully, we'll incorporate what we've learned when The Smoking GNU (under the guise of Möbius BrigANDs) plays in Pirates BATH in a week. Sadly, I'll be missing it, since I'll be making good use of my passport that weekend.

Back to Three

I talked to a teammate a few days ago and found out that he no longer holds any interest in puzzle hunts anymore, mostly because his other hobbies (apart from WoW) are of such a nature to allow him to bring his family along. The sad thing is that brings our team roster down to three. We've asked friends, when the next BANG comes you wanna join us? Sure! they say. And then a BANG actually gets scheduled and it's like suddenly they're washing their hair that day. A lot of the time it is due to family commitments.

It makes me wonder if a family puzzle hunt is possible. Bring the wife and kids! Heck, bring Grandma and Grandpa! The problem, I guess, is keeping everyone interested over a six hour period, as well as the enlarged team sizes slowing everyone down.

Regardless, it's sad to lose our teammate. We really enjoyed having him on our team. Sometimes, I think he felt he didn't help very much because he didn't have that many "a-ha!" moments that make puzzling so addictive. But he was a lot more help than he'll probably ever know.

Top Ten Things I Learned from No More Secrets

No More Secrets was The Smoking GNU's first full length game. We came in 18th out of 20, it seems, but we had fun, and hopefully we learned a few things:

1. Pony up the extra cash for the navigation system on the rental van instead of relying on your brother's company's handheld GPS navigation system that's still in alpha, despite how well it worked for you last year.

Navigation was a serious issue for us: The GPS system kept pushing the SD card with the software on it out, Google Maps kept failing because everyone and their mother was calling our Internet-enabled phone to see how things were going, and the only person familiar enough to use MS Streets and Trips was the one answering the phone every time someone and their mother called.

A consistent navigation system might have saved us up to five minutes a clue.


2. Don't try sleeping at a friend's on their air mattress the night before, despite his house being an hour closer to the first game location.

Especially if your teammate(s) snore, or are a snorer yourself (as your non-snoring teammate will get up and kick you to try and get you to stop).


3. Be exacting when data collection is in an inaccessible location.

At the wall climbing puzzle, we failed to record the exact location of each word, so that once we figured out it was a semaphore puzzle, we had to go back and climb each location again.


4. Excessive wall climbing leads to cramped hands that are unable to close properly

See above.


5. Remember to eat baby carrots

Baby carrots have become something as unscientific as a good luck charm for our team, and we forgot to have any during the entire Game.


6. When you have nothing to contribute, sleep! (Or at least rest your eyes)

Although I'm familiar with cellular automaton, it's definitely not my forte. Being late night/early morning, I should have just dozed while my teammates worked on it and not worried about missing the next puzzle (in this case, the XOR light puzzle which my only contribution to was filming the animation).


7. We'll always be over prepared.

I'd say about 90% of the stuff we brought, we did not use. We were going by a combination of Blood and Bones' equipment list, write-ups on past Games, and things we had that just might possibly be useful if GC was really crazy. It would explain how the ratchet screwdriver, the laser-level, and the Simple Green (which was in this case yellow for some reason) ended up in our van.


8. When kneeling in front of a former Netflix building trying to take a picture of strange symbols after sending an email to a strange account in the middle of the night, the sprinklers will turn on.

But I did get the picture.


9. Standford has no bathrooms

Or at least any that are open on a Sunday morning.


10. Wrap the string around the Styrofoam ball instead of trying to hook it with a over-used paperclip

Okay, so maybe that won't especially be useful in future events.

The Smoking What??

It's a little disheartening to find that the only award our team received from the No More Secrets game had to do with the fact that our team name references "GNU" (or "GNU'S Not Unix"), while our team's video application was in a proprietary Windows format. Part of me thinks that explaining why would be like explaining why "The Aristocats!" is so funny, but the other part says "Nobody reads your stupid blog, write it down so at least it's out of your head!"

Our team name is actually derived from a group of semaphore tower (or Clacks tower) crackers in the Terry Pratchett novel Going Postal (which I highly recommend, BTW). It does not necessarily indicate an team affinity for Linux - although I do have bit of one - nor an addiction to tabacco. In the context of the book:

‘So now you’re, what was it again . . . crackers?’ Moist said.
‘That’s right,’ said Mad Al. ‘Because we can crack the system.’
‘That sounds a bit over-dramatic when you’re just doing it with lamps, doesn’t it?’
‘Yes, but “flashers” was already taken,’ said Sane Alex.
‘All right, but why “Smoking GNU”?’ said Moist.
‘That’s cracker slang for a very fast message sent throughout the system,’ said Sane Alex proudly.
Moist pondered this. ‘That makes sense,’ he said. ‘If I was a team of three people, who all had a first name beginning with the same letter, that’s just the kind of name I’d choose.’

Of course, Terry Pratchett created the name as a pun on "The Smoking Gun" (the famous mugshot website) and the GNU public license. To even further muddle the references, the characters are based off of The Lone Gunmen from the X-Files.

And how did our video end up in WMV format? Truth be told, I'm the only one on our team with a camcorder and had only previously used it to record home videos of my daughter to send to her grandparents. So with a week to go to the deadline (the only time our geographically diverse team could gather in once place to put together a Rube Goldberg device), I didn't have the time to go out and find which was the best video editing software to use. I just used the default/completely unsatisfactory software that Microsoft provides... which saves video is its proprietary format.

And that is how you kill the joke.