(no subject)
Instead of summarizing the weekend, which was spent with the fabulous Hathor, Toonhead, Eric Berlin and the rest of the Palindrome pussycats, I'm going to mention a few puzzles over the course weekend.
(I will also mention that this was a brilliantly designed hunt...but I do wish our team had gotten into round 3 faster).
Puzzles I Worked On:
* Two Heads Are Better Than One
* Rivalries
* The Least You Could Do Is Call Me
* Pipe Dream 2
* Good Times in the Casino
* Pointillisme
* The Mega Man Structure
* A Modern Palimpsest
* Charm School
* Crowds chant
* Hints with a Bit of Love
* Oratory
* Laureate
* A Representative Sampling
* The Baddest Man
* Plotlines
* Toto, I Have a Feeling...
* Study Materials
* The Higher They Climb
* Rivalries: Loved It. This is the sort of easy, first round puzzle that are bread and butter puzzles to the hunt. We figured out what to do quickly, solved the clues, filled the grid (ignoring the ambiguity in the first version of the puzzle). The next step, identifying intersections of teams in the same league, seemed like a natural fit to the title. By only quibble about the puzzle is that the final clue (SMALL WHITE DOG) felt slightly different than the rest of the puzzle (I think because you were altering each word), but worked none the less.
* Two Heads: Loved It! Logic puzzles have the disadvantage of not being really a team puzzle. They're better for one person to sit down and work with. So after Rivalries, I got to sit down, work on this by myself, and rock it out. The starting point and first few steps were clear, and the overall puzzle felt elegant and well-constructed. It was my own mistranscription at the end that kept me from bringing this into the finish line (I had MACLEOD KONNOA instead of CONNOR MACLEOD.) One of two execution based puzzles in the hunt, clearly a record.
* The Least You Could Do: Liked it. I helped out with this after a few others had started gathering answers, and I think I had the a-ha (although I though it might have just been single-letter changes at the beginning looking at Cannibal and here). The puzzle had a natural feel to it, but just nothing memorable. Puzzles like this though are like the electrical outlets of the metaphorical house of the hunt. No one's going to stop and say "Ooooh", but without em, the house is useless.
* Pipe Dream 2: Hated It! I loved the first Pipe Dream puzzle. It was a great innovation in the over-filled world of word grid puzzles, and honestly, should be a normal puzzle type anyway. The problem with this version though is severalfold: Fewer clues, with shorter answers (including the ugly UHRY and SLR); less clear directions (does a letter go in the warp square? does one come out?); no constraints on what letter goes in what square. Things that would have gone a long way to fix this grid: Use a bigger grid (the original was 9x9, this was 7x7), simply tell us that the reds are the warp instead of having us work it out, and provide an example showing us clearly how the warps work. (Incidentally, Aaron, if you're reading this, keep going, because the puzzles you wrote or helped write for this hunt were by and large full of win. Just not this one).
* Good Times: Didn't realize how beautiful you were under those glasses! Okay, Eric Berlin, Kevin Wald and I worked on this, methodically working through the grid. We eventually stumbled upon and reconstructed a clue along the lines of HALF AND HALF IS IN TAN BOOK after asking ourselves "Why HPYLORI when SKYLARK was a better fit?". We never caught on to the fact that it was always the first part of the clue that swapped out (which we should have, since we noticed it wasn't always the cryptic or definition that swapped out), or the three CHERRY across answers and three BAR answers. A great job on the part of the constructor, I just wish we had been bright enough to see it.
* Pointillisme: I took your glassess off and...um, let's just put those back on. Sorry, guy I ran into Sunday morning, but this was the sort of puzzle that should just not be in the hunt. I appreciate the work that went into this, I really do, but this puzzle suffered a huge fatal flaw. The Paint-By-Number aspect was hugely extraneous. PBNs are either time-consuming (especially 13 of them) or solved with a program (which is not solving). They can be included if they somehow help with the puzzle, but here, they are only meant to clue Invader. While the images are the same, the format of obfuscation loses all color, leading solvers to think they must identify the characters first. A different obfuscation format (jigsaw, perhaps or encoded file), may have helped. I will point out that in this round of five puzzles, there were two that used the "find locations on a map and make letters" trick.)
* The Mega Man Structure. I am not worthy. This was just amazing. The individual metas were mostly solid (I quibble with the Bio meta for several reasons), but the way the answers were then integrated with each other made for an I.M. Pei-level of construction technique and yet felt like a very enjoyable solve, something that you often do not find together. Quite brilliant.
* A Modern Palimpsest. Loved it. I did work on puzzles in the Zelda round, but I'd rather not discuss them. Instead, here's a puzzle you'll really like. Someone else had done the grunt work of identifying the movies and quotes. They thought there was something to do with alterations to the quotes, but had gotten no farther. A group of us watched through Emma. Nothing. ET. Why are they panning so much? Fargo. I noticed the rather obvious picture of a log as they entered. As they exited, I nearly jumped when I saw that it become a fez. Ooh! Ooh! We went back and watched ET again, discovered the HELMET/VIOLIN swap, and soon had the key. Watching through, we figured out the rest of the objects fairly easy (but what was that object before the SILK?), but struggled with a rather tricky but excellent isogrammatic pair GUACAMOLE and BATH TOWEL.
* Charm School: Loved It! Like all hunts, there should one puzzle that can have a group of people stand around and get punny answers to clues. Viva le Difference was one, this was another. This was a great invigorating puzzle, and really helped us bring up the mood around the HQ.
* Crowds chant: No opinion. I was asked to see if I could big picture this, but got no where. Part of the problem was that several clue answers we had were just wrong, and someone had spent a fair amount of time taking "notes" (literally). I include this only for one reasons: In a puzzle where you have non-intersecting clue answers, enumerations are incredibly helpful and should be used when possible. Here, it would have helped us understand that the number of notes in each clue did not clue the enumeration. Since I'm not musically inclined, I cannot comment intelligbly about the feasibility of recognizing four-ish notes from Take Me Out transposed. I might have suggested have the transposed version playing in the background as someone read a fuller clue. Great inspiration though on connecting major/minor league to keys.
* Hints with a bit of love! Loved it! Presumably a fairly easy construction, aside from the difficulty of brainstorming a dozen plus &lit clues. This was entertaining, solid, and a real pleasure. Between this and Charm School, the Civilization round really got our team pumped up.
* Oratory. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I loved this puzzle...I've always been fascinated by the concept of diagramming sentences, and this is a simple straightforward version. As a constructor, I am very impressed at the ability to get a straightforward diagonal answer with what undoubtedly was a mininum of possibilities.
* Laureate. The puzzle that sent me home. I tend to stay away during most of the hunt, refusing to learn from hunts past. However, as a group of my teammates slogged away at this, this puzzle helped me realize my brain had stopped functioning, I needed a shower, and a few hours rest. By the time I came back, another team had won, and most of my team scattered. Cryptics often have a hard time finding a home in the hunt (as many non-puzzle-heads get tripped up by the cryptic form at its basest), and a Listener style cryptic trips up many a hardcore puzzler. On a technical standpoint, I really dislike the "scramble down clues" portion of many Listeners, but I would have insisted that if you were already going to have one modification to the down clue to begin with (the letter change), then another (scrambling the entry) should not be used.
* The Baddest Man. Liked it, wish I could have solved it. I love Encyclopedia Brown. The internet does not. Looking at the solution, its clear that one needed a compendium of Encyclopedia Brown mysteries, which we needed. (I also got thrown by an unintentional red herring...there have been 26 EB books so far). Still, getting to write an Encyclopedia Brown story would have been a cool task had we solved the puzzle.
* A Representative Sample. Liked it. Last puzzle I actually solved. Someone else had done the grunt work. I plugged it into the grid. I thought about taking the 17th column, and after that, every 17th character. To my great shame, I never recognized the Simpsons episode.
* Higher They Climb. This is a GREAT idea for a puzzle. 100 squares on a chutes and ladder board, 100 senators. For awhile, I thought that perhaps whoever wrote this was incorporating the two previous metas based on these (one in 2007, the other in 2008), but thankfully that was not the case. Here's the thing: the a-ha moment here is connecting up and down moments in a senator's career to the chutes and ladders board, and it's inspired and satisfying. Futzing with the order you apply to the board is not. One a-ha is a must, two is stretching it, and three is bad. This stretched it. Some better cluing or flavortext really would have helped here take this great idea for a puzzle and make it a flawless puzzle.
* Plotlines. Loved it. I might have added "Movie/Book/Graphic Novel/Play" to each, as it was pretty difficult as it was, but a great execution. I only came in at the end, when we got confirmation from another team that the last one was Midsummer's Night Dream.
* Toto, I Have a Feeling. Both this and the previous puzzle were puzzles by teammates and I looked at while having brunch at the CBC around 10AM after we had given up. I really enjoy Save Ferris, so this took about ten seconds to fall for me. Never went back and did the leg work for this. I tend to rail against ISIS puzzles (identify-sort-index-solve), but this is the exact sort of ISIS puzzle than can be in the hunt and be enjoyable: no weird indexing, no weird sorting. Just a straightforward diagonal clue.
* Study Materials. After the hunt was officially over, and before solutions came out, I went back to look at our work on this. Someone had added James Ensor, and really, is there any other place to know him from? I would have used more definitive clues for each line. Another ISIS puzzle.
Just so that it's clear: I really thought this was an amazing hunt, and every aspect of it, from the organization, points reward and wrap-up, really showed the amazing detail and the love they feel for the MIT Mystery Hunt.
(I will also mention that this was a brilliantly designed hunt...but I do wish our team had gotten into round 3 faster).
Puzzles I Worked On:
* Two Heads Are Better Than One
* Rivalries
* The Least You Could Do Is Call Me
* Pipe Dream 2
* Good Times in the Casino
* Pointillisme
* The Mega Man Structure
* A Modern Palimpsest
* Charm School
* Crowds chant
* Hints with a Bit of Love
* Oratory
* Laureate
* A Representative Sampling
* The Baddest Man
* Plotlines
* Toto, I Have a Feeling...
* Study Materials
* The Higher They Climb
* Rivalries: Loved It. This is the sort of easy, first round puzzle that are bread and butter puzzles to the hunt. We figured out what to do quickly, solved the clues, filled the grid (ignoring the ambiguity in the first version of the puzzle). The next step, identifying intersections of teams in the same league, seemed like a natural fit to the title. By only quibble about the puzzle is that the final clue (SMALL WHITE DOG) felt slightly different than the rest of the puzzle (I think because you were altering each word), but worked none the less.
* Two Heads: Loved It! Logic puzzles have the disadvantage of not being really a team puzzle. They're better for one person to sit down and work with. So after Rivalries, I got to sit down, work on this by myself, and rock it out. The starting point and first few steps were clear, and the overall puzzle felt elegant and well-constructed. It was my own mistranscription at the end that kept me from bringing this into the finish line (I had MACLEOD KONNOA instead of CONNOR MACLEOD.) One of two execution based puzzles in the hunt, clearly a record.
* The Least You Could Do: Liked it. I helped out with this after a few others had started gathering answers, and I think I had the a-ha (although I though it might have just been single-letter changes at the beginning looking at Cannibal and here). The puzzle had a natural feel to it, but just nothing memorable. Puzzles like this though are like the electrical outlets of the metaphorical house of the hunt. No one's going to stop and say "Ooooh", but without em, the house is useless.
* Pipe Dream 2: Hated It! I loved the first Pipe Dream puzzle. It was a great innovation in the over-filled world of word grid puzzles, and honestly, should be a normal puzzle type anyway. The problem with this version though is severalfold: Fewer clues, with shorter answers (including the ugly UHRY and SLR); less clear directions (does a letter go in the warp square? does one come out?); no constraints on what letter goes in what square. Things that would have gone a long way to fix this grid: Use a bigger grid (the original was 9x9, this was 7x7), simply tell us that the reds are the warp instead of having us work it out, and provide an example showing us clearly how the warps work. (Incidentally, Aaron, if you're reading this, keep going, because the puzzles you wrote or helped write for this hunt were by and large full of win. Just not this one).
* Good Times: Didn't realize how beautiful you were under those glasses! Okay, Eric Berlin, Kevin Wald and I worked on this, methodically working through the grid. We eventually stumbled upon and reconstructed a clue along the lines of HALF AND HALF IS IN TAN BOOK after asking ourselves "Why HPYLORI when SKYLARK was a better fit?". We never caught on to the fact that it was always the first part of the clue that swapped out (which we should have, since we noticed it wasn't always the cryptic or definition that swapped out), or the three CHERRY across answers and three BAR answers. A great job on the part of the constructor, I just wish we had been bright enough to see it.
* Pointillisme: I took your glassess off and...um, let's just put those back on. Sorry, guy I ran into Sunday morning, but this was the sort of puzzle that should just not be in the hunt. I appreciate the work that went into this, I really do, but this puzzle suffered a huge fatal flaw. The Paint-By-Number aspect was hugely extraneous. PBNs are either time-consuming (especially 13 of them) or solved with a program (which is not solving). They can be included if they somehow help with the puzzle, but here, they are only meant to clue Invader. While the images are the same, the format of obfuscation loses all color, leading solvers to think they must identify the characters first. A different obfuscation format (jigsaw, perhaps or encoded file), may have helped. I will point out that in this round of five puzzles, there were two that used the "find locations on a map and make letters" trick.)
* The Mega Man Structure. I am not worthy. This was just amazing. The individual metas were mostly solid (I quibble with the Bio meta for several reasons), but the way the answers were then integrated with each other made for an I.M. Pei-level of construction technique and yet felt like a very enjoyable solve, something that you often do not find together. Quite brilliant.
* A Modern Palimpsest. Loved it. I did work on puzzles in the Zelda round, but I'd rather not discuss them. Instead, here's a puzzle you'll really like. Someone else had done the grunt work of identifying the movies and quotes. They thought there was something to do with alterations to the quotes, but had gotten no farther. A group of us watched through Emma. Nothing. ET. Why are they panning so much? Fargo. I noticed the rather obvious picture of a log as they entered. As they exited, I nearly jumped when I saw that it become a fez. Ooh! Ooh! We went back and watched ET again, discovered the HELMET/VIOLIN swap, and soon had the key. Watching through, we figured out the rest of the objects fairly easy (but what was that object before the SILK?), but struggled with a rather tricky but excellent isogrammatic pair GUACAMOLE and BATH TOWEL.
* Charm School: Loved It! Like all hunts, there should one puzzle that can have a group of people stand around and get punny answers to clues. Viva le Difference was one, this was another. This was a great invigorating puzzle, and really helped us bring up the mood around the HQ.
* Crowds chant: No opinion. I was asked to see if I could big picture this, but got no where. Part of the problem was that several clue answers we had were just wrong, and someone had spent a fair amount of time taking "notes" (literally). I include this only for one reasons: In a puzzle where you have non-intersecting clue answers, enumerations are incredibly helpful and should be used when possible. Here, it would have helped us understand that the number of notes in each clue did not clue the enumeration. Since I'm not musically inclined, I cannot comment intelligbly about the feasibility of recognizing four-ish notes from Take Me Out transposed. I might have suggested have the transposed version playing in the background as someone read a fuller clue. Great inspiration though on connecting major/minor league to keys.
* Hints with a bit of love! Loved it! Presumably a fairly easy construction, aside from the difficulty of brainstorming a dozen plus &lit clues. This was entertaining, solid, and a real pleasure. Between this and Charm School, the Civilization round really got our team pumped up.
* Oratory. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I loved this puzzle...I've always been fascinated by the concept of diagramming sentences, and this is a simple straightforward version. As a constructor, I am very impressed at the ability to get a straightforward diagonal answer with what undoubtedly was a mininum of possibilities.
* Laureate. The puzzle that sent me home. I tend to stay away during most of the hunt, refusing to learn from hunts past. However, as a group of my teammates slogged away at this, this puzzle helped me realize my brain had stopped functioning, I needed a shower, and a few hours rest. By the time I came back, another team had won, and most of my team scattered. Cryptics often have a hard time finding a home in the hunt (as many non-puzzle-heads get tripped up by the cryptic form at its basest), and a Listener style cryptic trips up many a hardcore puzzler. On a technical standpoint, I really dislike the "scramble down clues" portion of many Listeners, but I would have insisted that if you were already going to have one modification to the down clue to begin with (the letter change), then another (scrambling the entry) should not be used.
* The Baddest Man. Liked it, wish I could have solved it. I love Encyclopedia Brown. The internet does not. Looking at the solution, its clear that one needed a compendium of Encyclopedia Brown mysteries, which we needed. (I also got thrown by an unintentional red herring...there have been 26 EB books so far). Still, getting to write an Encyclopedia Brown story would have been a cool task had we solved the puzzle.
* A Representative Sample. Liked it. Last puzzle I actually solved. Someone else had done the grunt work. I plugged it into the grid. I thought about taking the 17th column, and after that, every 17th character. To my great shame, I never recognized the Simpsons episode.
* Higher They Climb. This is a GREAT idea for a puzzle. 100 squares on a chutes and ladder board, 100 senators. For awhile, I thought that perhaps whoever wrote this was incorporating the two previous metas based on these (one in 2007, the other in 2008), but thankfully that was not the case. Here's the thing: the a-ha moment here is connecting up and down moments in a senator's career to the chutes and ladders board, and it's inspired and satisfying. Futzing with the order you apply to the board is not. One a-ha is a must, two is stretching it, and three is bad. This stretched it. Some better cluing or flavortext really would have helped here take this great idea for a puzzle and make it a flawless puzzle.
* Plotlines. Loved it. I might have added "Movie/Book/Graphic Novel/Play" to each, as it was pretty difficult as it was, but a great execution. I only came in at the end, when we got confirmation from another team that the last one was Midsummer's Night Dream.
* Toto, I Have a Feeling. Both this and the previous puzzle were puzzles by teammates and I looked at while having brunch at the CBC around 10AM after we had given up. I really enjoy Save Ferris, so this took about ten seconds to fall for me. Never went back and did the leg work for this. I tend to rail against ISIS puzzles (identify-sort-index-solve), but this is the exact sort of ISIS puzzle than can be in the hunt and be enjoyable: no weird indexing, no weird sorting. Just a straightforward diagonal clue.
* Study Materials. After the hunt was officially over, and before solutions came out, I went back to look at our work on this. Someone had added James Ensor, and really, is there any other place to know him from? I would have used more definitive clues for each line. Another ISIS puzzle.
Just so that it's clear: I really thought this was an amazing hunt, and every aspect of it, from the organization, points reward and wrap-up, really showed the amazing detail and the love they feel for the MIT Mystery Hunt.