Puzzle Hunt

[macabre0]

I spent this last weekend doing Puzzle Hunt: Atlantis on the Microsoft Campus.  I observed many things over the weekend including things about myself I had not known before.  I was playing with the Drunken Robots, which consisted of Nathan, Rob, and Steph, whom I knew, and about a half dozen others I had not met before, and whose names I am not sure I remember correctly.  I think they were Jack, Susan, Jason, Santos, Ben, and Richard.  They were a great team and I enjoyed seeing how different skill sets played to each other as we worked our way through a variety of kinds of puzzles.  Only one person on the team really got on my nerves, but after he snarked at me about missing his Zoolander reference I just learned to ignore him, even while he was sitting next to me.  I would gladly cancel all weekend plans any weekend of this year to do the event again--it really was one of the best weekends I've ever had, and I can't believe it's taken me this long to get my butt into a puzzle hunt.

One of the most interesting things I discovered about puzzle hunt is how much it reminds me of Burning Man.  I've told that to a few people and received some remarks of incredulity.  Still, barring the temperature controls of being inside a conference room, and the free soda and access to refrigerators, there are some remarkable similarities between the events, including:

• cart it in, cart it out.  You bring all your supplies, snacks, sleeping stuff, computers, etc. to the puzzle hunt, and then you must cart it all back out, leaving no traces
• community.  You spend the weekend with a whole community of like-minded people with the same experiential goal.  People who don't know each other will talk on the street or in a building because we all know we're part of the same community.  Strangers share stories and laugh and sleep in the same hallways during this intense event.
• surreal experience.  This is a non-stop event where your sense of time, weather, and reality seems to mostly dissipate.  It might feel like 15 minutes has elapsed, but really when you look at the clock it's been 8 hours, and you're still working on that same puzzle.  Watches become mostly irrelevant unless you're picking up pizza or going to the Pro Club for a swim at a specific time.  Eating, sleeping, drinking, and showering all become random and not according to a normal schedule.  Or you may forget to do all of those things during the event.
• be a participant.  Puzzle hunt is not for those who want to sit around and look pretty.  It's all about participating in figuring out the solutions to the puzzles, meta-puzzles, and meta-meta-puzzles.  If you don't want to spend 32 hours working on puzzles and would rather be doing laundry, climbing mountains, or something, it is not the place for you.  I found that my energy waned on day 2 significantly and next time around I will have stopguards in place to keep me from losing focus so much.

It was a brilliant weekend for me.  I learned that I am especially good working in teams on word-related puzzles, and anything pop culture or music-related.  Math things and stuff in binary should go to someone else on the team.  One of the women in my group (there were three of us) was named Susan, and she and I did a lot of the working though of the word puzzles.  She was great fun and we even had the pleasure of solving the first puzzle in the morning, which resulted in us needing to order a sunken garden pizza.  Of course, once we got the pizza we never did solve the other half, no matter how much we did with the darned thing.  Still, the puzzles were challenging and fun, and the energy and humor of the group was great.  Rob provided some upbeat music to keep us going.  I met some great people, who I hope to get to spend more time with in the future.

Next time around I really want to attend the closing ceremonies, though.  Nathan's back was killing him, so we returned home without going, and I felt like I really wanted that closure to the event.  I can tell I really am still a little obsessed over the puzzles we didn't solve because I'm dreaming about puzzles all night long.  Good stuff.  I did hit up a few others who attended to get solutions to the ones that bothered me the most.  Poor Nathan, he was in a lot of pain all weekend and still braved the event like a trooper.

So, that was puzzle hunt for me.  I awoke Monday morning feeling like a train had hit me.  Lack of sleep, massive consumption of soda, and no protein in 24 hours took its toll.  I'm still trying to catch up on my sleep.  I am told this is normal, which I was glad to hear.  Thanks to all who participated in helping me have this experience--Gretta, Bam, Nathan, and everyone on my team.  I had a blast!