Good, bad, and ugly at Puzzlehunt 12/13
This weekend, Jeff and I and 10 other people played in Puzzle Hunt 12/13. We did extremely well, coming in second. In recent years, we've finished, but not placed, so this was really cool.
The Good:
My favorite puzzle, by far, was working on Coloring Book with Matt. It initially looked like an absolute slog of a puzzle, with literally pages of formations that had to be colored so that none of the three colors touched the same color. Fortunately, we realized that the formations were somewhat like "gates" with color inputs and outputs, and there was a finite set of allowable configurations. That was a fun "Aha!" moment, and once we mapped out those configurations, we were able to finish relatively quickly.
I also really liked finishing off the diagramless crossword with Jeff, though I can't remember the title right now. It had some goofy bits (unchecked letters and two-letter words), but the Star Wars theme was fun (I learned that the definitive Star Wars source is Wookiepedia), and the fact that it drew out R2D2 was really cute.
Other puzzles were fun, though many of them have faded from memory now. I actually realized at the closing ceremony (where they go through all the puzzles) that there were puzzles I'd worked on on Saturday that I'd completely forgotten had even existed.
The Bad:
I don't mind puzzles that require some data gathering online -- I like hunting for information and consider part of my role on the team to do that. What I don't like is puzzles that require lengthy searching, and then take many, many, additional steps past that to solve. They feel like time sinks without a huge amount of payoff. There were a couple of these in the hunt, and a few of them never were solved, which was disappointing.
I especially don't like puzzles that have red herrings that look like they would provide interesting information if only searched the right way. I am looking at you, Mr. Bad Boys puzzle. That puzzle still annoys me, because it was such a tantalizingly cool-looking puzzle (a set of business cards that we were given that had names, a symbol, and an occupation on them). I even guessed many of the early tricks of the puzzle (such as the fact that the cards needed to be "chained together" based on occupation and icon), but was unable to solve because the names on the cards looked like real names that I should be able to match -- for example, we found a set of cards that had names that were authors' names, but off by one - Ruess (Suess), Platt (Plath), Prichett (Pratchett), etc.
The Ugly:
Me, after 1.5 hours of sleep on Saturday. Yikes, that was a hard couple of hours on Sunday afternoon.
The Random:
This is the event that has finally prompted me to create a "puzzle" tag for LJ. I kept telling myself I wasn't REALLY a puzzler, I was just a person who happened to sometimes do puzzles. Honestly, it's a lot like my 25 things entry about being smart; I kept judging whether I was "really" into puzzles by some of the most hardcore people around, which isn't really the right way to think about it. But after nearly cracking the top 3 in Puzzle Safari (and formally declaring it my favorite "puzzle event"), staying up all night for this Puzzle Hunt and taking 2nd (and multiple times forgetting how long I'd been sitting in one spot, working on a puzzle), running a mini Puzzle event for a party at our house, and considering running a Puzzle Hunt proper, I think it's time to just to fess up and admit I'm a puzzling person.
The Good:
My favorite puzzle, by far, was working on Coloring Book with Matt. It initially looked like an absolute slog of a puzzle, with literally pages of formations that had to be colored so that none of the three colors touched the same color. Fortunately, we realized that the formations were somewhat like "gates" with color inputs and outputs, and there was a finite set of allowable configurations. That was a fun "Aha!" moment, and once we mapped out those configurations, we were able to finish relatively quickly.
I also really liked finishing off the diagramless crossword with Jeff, though I can't remember the title right now. It had some goofy bits (unchecked letters and two-letter words), but the Star Wars theme was fun (I learned that the definitive Star Wars source is Wookiepedia), and the fact that it drew out R2D2 was really cute.
Other puzzles were fun, though many of them have faded from memory now. I actually realized at the closing ceremony (where they go through all the puzzles) that there were puzzles I'd worked on on Saturday that I'd completely forgotten had even existed.
The Bad:
I don't mind puzzles that require some data gathering online -- I like hunting for information and consider part of my role on the team to do that. What I don't like is puzzles that require lengthy searching, and then take many, many, additional steps past that to solve. They feel like time sinks without a huge amount of payoff. There were a couple of these in the hunt, and a few of them never were solved, which was disappointing.
I especially don't like puzzles that have red herrings that look like they would provide interesting information if only searched the right way. I am looking at you, Mr. Bad Boys puzzle. That puzzle still annoys me, because it was such a tantalizingly cool-looking puzzle (a set of business cards that we were given that had names, a symbol, and an occupation on them). I even guessed many of the early tricks of the puzzle (such as the fact that the cards needed to be "chained together" based on occupation and icon), but was unable to solve because the names on the cards looked like real names that I should be able to match -- for example, we found a set of cards that had names that were authors' names, but off by one - Ruess (Suess), Platt (Plath), Prichett (Pratchett), etc.
The Ugly:
Me, after 1.5 hours of sleep on Saturday. Yikes, that was a hard couple of hours on Sunday afternoon.
The Random:
This is the event that has finally prompted me to create a "puzzle" tag for LJ. I kept telling myself I wasn't REALLY a puzzler, I was just a person who happened to sometimes do puzzles. Honestly, it's a lot like my 25 things entry about being smart; I kept judging whether I was "really" into puzzles by some of the most hardcore people around, which isn't really the right way to think about it. But after nearly cracking the top 3 in Puzzle Safari (and formally declaring it my favorite "puzzle event"), staying up all night for this Puzzle Hunt and taking 2nd (and multiple times forgetting how long I'd been sitting in one spot, working on a puzzle), running a mini Puzzle event for a party at our house, and considering running a Puzzle Hunt proper, I think it's time to just to fess up and admit I'm a puzzling person.