mystery hunt 2008
It was a lot of fun.
As mentioned previously, I wasn't hunting with the Sages this year, for a variety of reasons, and was instead hunting with GroovyTron. The final count of people was slightly above 40. This sounds like a lot of people but it certainly seemed just about right for 34-101.
We filled the space pretty well. Up front were three different solving tables, which were kind of the main solving spaces. On the mid-level of the room were two more clusters, and then there were even more isolated spaces for things like the Mystery Rallye (a.k.a. the Truck Conundrum) and the Big Musical Number ("FIIIIREHOOOOUUUSSSSE").
The entire hunt was marked with a very laissez-faire approach to winning. If it was going to happen, it would. But it wouldn't, because Dan Katz blah blah blah (which turned out to be correct). Several hours in, with only a few puzzles solved, it became very clear that (a) this was a hunt that would reward teams that were large, excessively smart, and good at making big logical leaps, and therefore that (b) we should do whatever we wanted to.
And, by and large, we did. (Hell, we even took an hour out of hunting early Sunday morning to throw a dance party, and pictures were taken for the Tech.) And we had lots of fun doing it. I get the feeling that with a hunt as frustrating as this one was, I would not have enjoyed working with a team closer to and more focused on winning because it was extremely unclear who was, in fact, winning. Cue stress.
So I guess, in conclusion, that the groovy solution is the correct one, and I hope more people follow suit in the years to come. One of these years it'd be great to see a smaller, more relaxed team find success instead of the ultrafocused teams that tend to dominate.
As to the future: I don't know what will happen with GroovyTron. I think it could probably support 10 or so more people if we managed to keep 34-101 somehow. Things are very different when all of your team fits in one big room, as compared to having to be in several (which then means your electronic communication needs to be much better and people need to be better about using it). Instead, what we ended up doing was yelling up and down and getting people's attention that way, and mostly ignored our wiki except to put partial answers when we wanted to work on something else. It screwed the remote solvers somewhat, and I feel a little bit bad about that, but it never really got all that bad.
I was kind of hoping for more small teams in the spirit of GroovyTron. 30, 40 people, relaxed, with the majority of people on-site and MIT undergrads or recent alums. This year, telling people the truth they already knew ("Hint: staying on the same team forever and getting less happy is not the correct course of action") was kind of stressful and I was worried about having GroovyTron actually happen up until about a week before hunt. Now that one rousing success has already happened, I feel like next year's prospects are a whole lot better.
As mentioned previously, I wasn't hunting with the Sages this year, for a variety of reasons, and was instead hunting with GroovyTron. The final count of people was slightly above 40. This sounds like a lot of people but it certainly seemed just about right for 34-101.
We filled the space pretty well. Up front were three different solving tables, which were kind of the main solving spaces. On the mid-level of the room were two more clusters, and then there were even more isolated spaces for things like the Mystery Rallye (a.k.a. the Truck Conundrum) and the Big Musical Number ("FIIIIREHOOOOUUUSSSSE").
The entire hunt was marked with a very laissez-faire approach to winning. If it was going to happen, it would. But it wouldn't, because Dan Katz blah blah blah (which turned out to be correct). Several hours in, with only a few puzzles solved, it became very clear that (a) this was a hunt that would reward teams that were large, excessively smart, and good at making big logical leaps, and therefore that (b) we should do whatever we wanted to.
And, by and large, we did. (Hell, we even took an hour out of hunting early Sunday morning to throw a dance party, and pictures were taken for the Tech.) And we had lots of fun doing it. I get the feeling that with a hunt as frustrating as this one was, I would not have enjoyed working with a team closer to and more focused on winning because it was extremely unclear who was, in fact, winning. Cue stress.
So I guess, in conclusion, that the groovy solution is the correct one, and I hope more people follow suit in the years to come. One of these years it'd be great to see a smaller, more relaxed team find success instead of the ultrafocused teams that tend to dominate.
As to the future: I don't know what will happen with GroovyTron. I think it could probably support 10 or so more people if we managed to keep 34-101 somehow. Things are very different when all of your team fits in one big room, as compared to having to be in several (which then means your electronic communication needs to be much better and people need to be better about using it). Instead, what we ended up doing was yelling up and down and getting people's attention that way, and mostly ignored our wiki except to put partial answers when we wanted to work on something else. It screwed the remote solvers somewhat, and I feel a little bit bad about that, but it never really got all that bad.
I was kind of hoping for more small teams in the spirit of GroovyTron. 30, 40 people, relaxed, with the majority of people on-site and MIT undergrads or recent alums. This year, telling people the truth they already knew ("Hint: staying on the same team forever and getting less happy is not the correct course of action") was kind of stressful and I was worried about having GroovyTron actually happen up until about a week before hunt. Now that one rousing success has already happened, I feel like next year's prospects are a whole lot better.