Puzzle Safari
Yesterday was the seventh annual Microsoft Puzzle Safari, and my first. Billed by a fellow contestant as "a puzzle biathlon", it's an odd mix of events -- part puzzle-solving, part foot race. Each team of four people starts with a set of puzzles. Solving the puzzles leads to answers that are locations on the Microsoft campus. To get credit for solving the puzzles, you must take a log book to the location and stamp it. Because there is only one log book, each team can have only one runner out at a time. On my team, I was the primary runner, although everyone ran some. I also solved some puzzles, but for each half once we had 5+ puzzles solved, we sent a runner out to get them, so I mostly ran. We were really happy with our result, especially for having 3 people who were relatively new to this; we placed 15th out of 74 teams.
The event was an enormous amount of fun, partially because it was an enforced exploration of the Microsoft campus during one of our beautiful Pacific Northwest summer days. For example, buildings 1-6 are these small clusters of X-shaped buildings connected by walkways that sometimes enter and exit at different levels (at least once I ran through an exit only to realize the sidewalk dead-ended 3 feet from the door next to a gorge and the bridge I wanted was above my head). They have beautiful landscaping, but they're difficult to navigate around on the exterior, because at seemingly random points there are quick changes in elevation or impassable landscaping. I eventually resorted to running through them to get between them, but that involved a pretty zig-zag route. In contrast, buildings 26-28 are out in the middle of nowhere and are enormous and twisty buildings. I once ran past building 26, concentrated on running for a while and then headed for the next door I saw, only to be startled when it was STILL a door to building 26. Apparently the structure had bent inward and back out and I hadn't noticed it was still connected.
I noticed another blog entry from one of the other contestants who was also her team's main runner. She wore a GPS tracker during the event and posted her route -- it's a pretty good example of what a runner's route looks like. I was out about 2.5 hours and ran it far faster than I usually run that distance, although there are some natural breaks for stamping and taking phone calls from the team. Our final move in the game was to have Jeff meet me at the next to last stamping location and sprint towards the final stamp and finish line with the book. I was definitely glad to hand off to a faster runner at the end; after being out for so long, I had used up my final bit of energy sprinting towards the handoff spot.
Anyhow, I'm really looking forward to the next event.
The event was an enormous amount of fun, partially because it was an enforced exploration of the Microsoft campus during one of our beautiful Pacific Northwest summer days. For example, buildings 1-6 are these small clusters of X-shaped buildings connected by walkways that sometimes enter and exit at different levels (at least once I ran through an exit only to realize the sidewalk dead-ended 3 feet from the door next to a gorge and the bridge I wanted was above my head). They have beautiful landscaping, but they're difficult to navigate around on the exterior, because at seemingly random points there are quick changes in elevation or impassable landscaping. I eventually resorted to running through them to get between them, but that involved a pretty zig-zag route. In contrast, buildings 26-28 are out in the middle of nowhere and are enormous and twisty buildings. I once ran past building 26, concentrated on running for a while and then headed for the next door I saw, only to be startled when it was STILL a door to building 26. Apparently the structure had bent inward and back out and I hadn't noticed it was still connected.
I noticed another blog entry from one of the other contestants who was also her team's main runner. She wore a GPS tracker during the event and posted her route -- it's a pretty good example of what a runner's route looks like. I was out about 2.5 hours and ran it far faster than I usually run that distance, although there are some natural breaks for stamping and taking phone calls from the team. Our final move in the game was to have Jeff meet me at the next to last stamping location and sprint towards the final stamp and finish line with the book. I was definitely glad to hand off to a faster runner at the end; after being out for so long, I had used up my final bit of energy sprinting towards the handoff spot.
Anyhow, I'm really looking forward to the next event.