I hereby declare that the name of the puzzle-solving group that gathers together at my house sometimes, and is mostly-but-not-entirely made of members from the "Immoral, Illegal & Fattening" MIT mystery hunt team, to be Shabbas Llamas. This comes from an excellently incorrect clue answer we generated on Sunday, thanks to hahathorFor lack of a better name, ( Read more... )

I found this object while unpacking. I know what it is, even though I haven't had reason to use it in, oh, 16 years or so.


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The MIT Mystery Hunt is only a few days away. I'm determined to get as much money-work as I can done before then; there is a backlog, with end-conditions in reach. There won't be much Volity or Gameshelf progress, despite so much I want to do in both. (Though maybe I'll squeeze more in if put the video games away for now ( Read more... )

In New Jersey again, hanging out with doctor_atomic through Sunday morning. We just spent several hours burning our brains over the latest issue of Puzzles and Answers Magazine, knocking over two puzzles and shouting "This is brilliant!" at a third though we have no idea yet how to shake the meta out of it. Taking a damn break now. (I also love grumbling at ( Read more... )

classicaljunkie and I were working through that big book of NYT crosswords tonight. At point we found ourselves looking at:

Man in the 'hood - N _ _ _ A

I was like, Oh... please tell me that isn't so.. It ended up being MISTA (we had a letter wrong at first), which seems kind of weak, but OK ( Read more... )

I had two very good meetings, in two very different roles - in one I was like arr I am a good leader and in the other I was like arr I am worth what I'm paidBought two books. One is "How to Start a Business in Massachusetts" by O'Neill and Warda. Ha ha, horse before the cart, yes, but it's a smartly written summary and I've already learned a lot. I ( Read more... )

Puzzles and Answers magazine has become an excellent pastime of classicaljunkie and myself. I can recommend it to anyone who enjoys puzzle hunts / extravanganzas, like MIT's mystery hunt or The Fool's Errand - a set of themed puzzles whose answers combine into a meta-puzzle, which itself yields the whole set's ultimate solution ( Read more... )

cthulhia (half-)jokes about joining the NPL in order to gain insight on next year's hunt, but I think I'm actually gonna do it. Waddayathink ( Read more... )

Cliff Johnson sez on his website, "The last few weeks have not gone as smoothly as I had hoped. In fact, I’m encountering memory problems that paralyze the game and me along with it. Unfortunately, this is not proving to be a trivial matter. Therefore I’ve decided to remove the countdown clock and roll up my sleeves and pull out whatever hair I ( Read more... )

As I write this, Cliff Johnson is about to let The Fool and his Money's countdown clock, seen on his homepage, drop below seven days.

There's also a preview of the CD artwork and an animation that flips through several game screenshots. It looks like, after three years of delays, he's finally ready to ship the game! Very cool ( Read more... )