Other stuff a bit farther in the past:

Last weekend was the 2021 MIT Mystery Hunt, written by [whoosh!] ✈✈✈ Galactic Trendsetters ✈✈✈ [neowwww!], and it was incredible puzzling fun. This year's hunt took place at the MYST 2021 physics conference, having hunters explore an alternate universe and MIT's alternate-universe counterpart, the Perpendicular ( Read more... )

It's yet another one of those times when I don't post for weeks at a time because I'm alternating between being busy and wrecked! So, jumping back ( Read more... )

The MIT Mystery Hunt was last weekend, this time themed after 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. It was an unusually good year for my team, we came in second (only 50 minutes after the winning team), so I finally got to go on the runaround at the end of hunt (which this year involved a sequence of challenges that took us from half-past-midnight Sunday ( Read more... )

I continue to fail to write ( Read more... )

This year's Mystery Hunt (themed after financial shenanigans and heist movies) was amazing and crazy, lasting slightly over 73 hours despite hunt organizers' (Manic Sages') attempt to speed things along (increasing the rate of free puzzle solutions, adding hints, a late-game decision to require only that five of the six rounds be solved instead of ( Read more... )

The MIT Mystery Hunt was this weekend. It was fun. This year's Hunt was themed after "The Producers"; Max and Leo are up to their usual schemes and require the teams' help to make their new scam plays into sure-fire box-office flops (included rounds of puzzles like "A Circus Line" (meta-puzzle solution: ELEPHANT IN A TUTU), "Okla-Holmes-a" (CORNY ( Read more... )

Mystery Hunt was fun. The full hunt is here, and the answers are all up (clicking "call in answer" will now take you to the page with the solution). My team didn't do very well this year, we solved a few meta-puzzles from each round but only completed one super-meta. I wish we'd gotten Cut and Paste (got off on the wrong track and never figured ( Read more... )

Hunt is on, with a Mario (or video games in general) theme this year. Unfortunately, I can't brain today, due to a cold. Hopefully once some helpful medicine kicks in, I'll be up and running.

Xave's Dresden Files tabletop game is starting, which looks like it should be fun. I'm still not a big fan of Fate, though, it requires more fiction- ( Read more... )

Tough week. Busy at work. Missed work Tuesday and Wednesday because I was struck flat by some sort of virus. Still trying to shake off the last bit of sore throat and cough from that. Hopefully will be able to have a useful workout tomorrow ( Read more... )

SIPB talk today by Keith Winstein about "The Non-Conflict Between Bayesians and Frequentists" was interesting.

Basically, the two approaches to probability are as follows: Bayesians use prior probability (which may involve assumptions) to calculate the probability of a result given a new piece of data. Frequentists determine what answer they can ( Read more... )