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.)

How the BANG differed from the SNAP

So, um, we simulcasted SNAP 5 as BANG 22 a few weeks back (results and puzzles). It was crazy. People say they had fun, but in manning my station for Echoes, all I saw was grumpy teams coming from Cipher thinking they only had one puzzle left, only to be handed nine new puzzles all in one go. So from my point of view, nearly everyone had a horrible time. I've been assured, though, that said POV wasn't reflective of the event as a whole.

Afterwards, the common question we got asked was "Which puzzles are yours?" A good question: When you want to criticize — or even compliment — a puzzle, it helps to know who was actually responsible for it.

The truth is we adapted nearly every single puzzle. The reason for this is that SNAP 5 had a meta consisted of getting a second set of photos for each Echo solved. The photos were of pylons of a bridge, and used them as alphabet letters. We, obviously, couldn't do that, so we came up with an alternative meta. The alternative meta, though, meant we had to change the solutions to all but two of the puzzles, and, in some cases, replace puzzles altogether.

So here's a list of puzzles and what we did to them:

1. Journal
Adapted from the same mechanism SNAP 5 used. Their puzzle solved to "GET NOTES AT KILT STORE". Lacking such, we used a row of palm trees.

1a. Ransom
Using photos to get from site to site was the same thing Grey Goo did. We decided to use different photos, though... just to keep the first walk short.

2. Graffiti
Nearly identical to Seattle's version, only with a different solution word. It was called "Signs", but since we were using an abandoned building, we decided to make the presentation look like graffiti and changed the name appropriately.

3. Calendar
Exact same puzzle as used in SNAP 5. I'm not sure if they used the same binding process, though.

4. Chessboard
Our original puzzle, but inspired by Grey Goo's idea. Their version was pretty cool: You were given laser-cut clear acrylics with words on them, assembled the pieces into a chessboard, and did the semi-knight's tour to the king. The words the knight passed over only had one letter in common for each move.

Although we looked into getting acrylics done, it just wasn't in our budget. After coming up with our version, we thought about using transparencies for the "snakes" (which is why we suggested bringing a dry-erase marker) but decided in the end that they would be too flimsy to work with.

5. Gridwork
Nearly completely unchanged from the SNAP 5 version. The main difference is that we changed solid lines on the grid to dashed as our playtest indicated that no one would think to cut out the different sections. Funny thing is, many teams still didn't... they were able to read "FAMOUS EQUATION" and a few other things to get the answer.

6. Symbols
Exact same mechanism as Seattle's, adapted locally. We obviously needed to change the objects in the environment; Grey Goo used a sculpture garden, we used anything that looked like an identifiable shape. We also changed the sets to work with the our version of its echo.

7. New Arrivals
Our original puzzle. Grey Goo's puzzle dealt with determining the right year for mistaken dates of historical events. We liked the puzzle, but decided the library we were using was too small to have thirty teams simultaneously trying to look up what year the Magna Carta was actually signed.

We had been planning something a little more difficult (descriptions would be a mix of two magazines, always with a single magazine between them, then use the middle letter of that magazine), but the version teams saw during the playtest worked so well that we decided to keep it as it was. Pity none of us ever noticed that a handyman could be a belt-wearer.

8. Word Salad
Same SNAP 5 mechanism, different solution. I think Seattle's version was given to them in a styrafoam container. On a side note, I just want to say that croutons and parmesan cheese take the longest time to drain of oil.

9. Cipher
Our original puzzle, though heavily inspired by Grey Goo's version. We made one or two changes to cipher's mechanism (encoding vs. decoding at one point) and the extraction mechanism (first letter vs. glyph), but pretty similar to Seattle's in the end. One big difference was that Seattle's version was only handed out to the fastest teams. The nature of our meta, though, required every team get this puzzle, so we made an "easy" and "hard" version.

Echoes
I hate to think of Echoes as "mini" clues as they weren't a subset of a puzzle, but simply meant to be a location that teams got nine new puzzles that either directly or indirectly echoed previous puzzles (the hunt had a "deja vu" theme).

10. Poetry
Our original puzzle. Seattle's version of Poetry dealt with poems written on different sides of columns. We tried to adapt it, but it did not get good feedback in any of our tests, so we went with something completely different. The sad thing about our version is that in transferring the poem's text from OpenOffice (where it was written) to InDesign (for the Mobius template), the single up-down apostrophe changed, even though it was the same %&$*&@ font on the same !#&*$!% computer. Desktop publishing, go fig.

11. Questions?
Our original puzzle. Seattle used a version called "Elements" and had periodic table abbreviations with a number attached to them for indexing. We needed a different solution word and ended up adding the drop-quote element to the puzzle at the same time. Apparently, we're too old, though, since some teams had no idea what the numeric solution to "IS ENOUGH?" was.

12. Inbox
Exactly the same as Seattle's version, only with our new solution word.

13. Chessmen
Exactly the same as Seattle's version, only with our new solution word.

14. Rebus
Our original puzzle. Seattle's version was "Gridworks" and had a nonogram that solved to an image of a metronome, as well as letters scattered throughout the grid that would get crossed off, with only the solution word remaining (hmmmm... sounds vaguely familiar). Our new solution word didn't lend itself to a nonogram very well, so we decided to try and put a rebus inside a nonogram. I wrote a version of it, but it was a damn hard solve! We ended up running out of time and decided to put the rebus out as is. The day after the hunt we came up with a better puzzle.

15. Sets
Our original puzzle. Seattle has a sidewalk with images from the Chinese zodiac on them and gave teams copies off said images so that when a line was traced from image to image, letters were spelled out. Obviously, couldn't do it, so we decided to have it work in concert with Symbols.

16. Rags
Another completely original puzzle on our part. Seattle's "History" puzzle was fun, we thought, but it just wouldn't work with the magazine theme that this puzzle would echo.

17. Alphabet Soup
We used Seattle's version of the puzzle, though in changing the solution word, we changed the puzzle somewhat. The solution of each can was now a soup instead of a salad name from the Word Salad, and we providing a rough ingredient list for each soup.

18. Paraphrase
Our original puzzle. It turned out the mechanism Grey Goo used for their "Numbers" puzzle would not work with our meta solution word, so we we decided to reuse the cipher.

19. Meta
Our original puzzle. As mentioned above, Grey Goo's dealt with using photos of a bridge that we couldn't duplicate.

20. Ransom Note
Pretty close to Grey Goo's. I think they made use of two sets of photos; we only had the one and had to adapt accordingly.

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.

Things I Learned from Simulcasting BANG 22

Croutons hold a lot more oil than they let on

Kinko's is open 24-hours a day until Friday night at 11pm

Having a walking route nailed down is pretty darned important

7am is no time for quality control checks

Many photo development stores don't have a problem with getting out 1500 prints in a few hours

Simulcasting gives you the motivation to get things done by a specific date with the frustration of having to wait on the other team to get things in (near) final form

The fastest team will be approximately five minutes faster per puzzle than planned for

Some graffiti fonts are illegible

Restaurants seem very amenable to not charging to have a group of 150 people come eat a meal at their place

It's challenging trying to lock a route down when the team member with final say lives five hundred miles away

It's better to have a good puzzle with a okay presentation than a okay puzzle with a good presentation

Desktop publishing programs mess with imported content, especially apostrophes

The fastest team can inadvertently be used as last second quality control

Some companies don't like having their building photographed

The alphabet soup font costs $45 (but there are alternatives)

Drinking Division teams are very generous to volunteers

InDesign is frustrating to use when you've had no experience with it, and maybe even then

It's pretty neat to think that you're only one of fourteen or so teams to ever do one of these

Calendar Needs

I've been giving our leftover Calendar puzzles to our volunteers as a small reward for all their help in BANG 22. Now that my wife is back from Texas and has seen it, she wants a copy too. I heard at least one team say they didn't want to take it apart during the BANG, despite that being our intention in printing it in pad form. Maybe I'll print some more.

Returned Bowls?

In putting together "Word Salad" for BANG 22, I never once considered the idea that teams would be returning the bowls. What the hell am I supposed to do with 40 faux-wood salad bowls?

BANG 22 is not in Santa Rosa

From talking to a few people last night at BANG XX, it seems that there is an underlying assumption that the Smoking GNU will be hosting BANG 22 in Santa Rosa. Although we can't reveal the specific location yet, I think it's safe to say that we can pretty much rule out Santa Rosa and indeed all of Sonoma County as the local for the April 18th event.

A Queue of BANGs

So we've finally officially announced to the BANG mailing list that we of The Smoking GNU are going to be hosting BANG 22, a simulcast of SNAP 5. (There was a short announcement at the the Microsoft Puzzle Haunt 123, but I don't know how many people were awake enough to notice...)

Which adds one more BANG to the queue. It's funny that within the next three months, there are three BANGs planned (with a fourth set for some unannounced time after that). Not all that long ago it seemed like the dearth of BANGs might mean the end of the line for the event.

I'm curious, though, as to what effect having so many so close together will have on attendence. My guess is that BANG 22 will have the lowest team count of the three: It's long (eight hours is the current estimate), it's north of the Golden Gate Bridge (the Petaluma BANG only had 24 teams, while the recent average has been closer to 35), it's a simulcast (which generally seem to come in on the low side in the Bay Area), and the other two BANGs are original hunts by more experienced, well-known teams.

Doesn't really matter in the end. We just hope to provide a good time and fun challenges as one small way of showing our appreciation for all the hard work other teams do to put on events that we participate in. Plus, it'll give us great experience for the currently purely-theoretical day we put on our own original puzzle hunt.