Mystery Hunt: Alice Shrugged
Jan. 21st, 2014 12:30 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
magidThe winners of last year's hunt was Team [the entire text of Atlas Shrugged] (no, not that string of six words, but the actual entire text). The hunt they made was lovely, to the extent I got to participate in it (darn that whole Mystery Hunt and Arisia overlapping thing).
The kickoff event was in Kresge Auditorium, where Professor John Galt started to explain how life is better lived without puzzles (or fun?), but was interrupted by the Cheshire Cat. Yes, this would be an Alice-themed hunt! Huzzah! Finally, a theme I know something about (and love). Denizens of Wonderland had come through a variety of rabbit holes to MIT, attempting to evade the frumious Beast that was ravaging the land. We'd have to get more information, and perhaps a vorpal sword, to try to defeat the Beast. Also, the rest of the presentation included many Cheshire LOLcats; I wish I'd brought a camera!
By the time we got back to our team's headquarters, the first few puzzles were live on aliceshrugged.com (password protected; not sure if it will later become public or be hosted at another site). Plus there was some physical puzzle included with the first aid kits MIT had provided for each team. At that point, it felt like there weren't enough puzzles for everyone to find something they liked, but it wasn't long until more puzzles opened up. That was pretty much the only thing I found frustrating about the structure of the hunt this year. Granted, I was only there on Friday (technically into Saturday, since I didn't leave until a bit after midnight, but not really).
I spent a lot of time on a logic puzzle about writing a sudoku puzzle, which seemed to take far longer than it should have (we started over at least five times, if not more), especially given how many solves others on the team managed fairly quickly. I was impressed, though unsure if that means that we're better than last year, or the puzzles were less difficult (I wouldn't say any Hunt puzzles were easy, exactly), or maybe just people ended up better matched with puzzles (and other teammates to work with).
Other than that, there was some time spent on Disemvoweled, which had words without vowels, but with an extra consonant, in a variety of categories, and a fair bit on a scavenger hunt (more items meant more cards to build a house of cards, the size of which was determined by registered team size). There were two lists of items, MIT and Wonderland, with extra cards if we got a whole foursome of items (one example: we had an undergrad, a grad, a postdoc, and a professor on our team, so we got not only a (particular) card for each, but a bonus for having all four). I had some items at home, so I ended up doing an extra round trip to my apartment, which is when I found that I'd not left my kitchen light on as I'd planned, just the night light in the bathroom. Still, I managed to get all the things I was sure of, which was satisfying (I changed into a blue dress (person in a blue dress), got a bound copy of Alice, a heart, spade, diamond, and club when I remembered I had tiny cookie cutters, a mushroom, an hour glass (ok, a three-minute glass, since I grabbed the timer from Boggle), and a few other things. Some of the things we knew we didn't have (two people with the same first and last names, a coin from a previous Hunt), but in the end, we had plenty of things, and the house of cards was built. Worse part about this: cat herding people.
There seemed to be a good number of live events; I didn't go to any, but the scavenger hunt felt a bit like a live-action one on our own schedule. I did get to go meet the Dormouse, who kept napping due to having had cheese. It was fun, but cold: I wasn't wearing shoes, nor did I have a coat, and we stood outside for the encounter.
We, in this case, meant me and my cousin's daughter K, a sophomore at MIT, who I'd recruited for our team. I felt a bit responsible for her having fun, and worried that her limitations might be hard to compensate for (she has vision issues), but it was all fine, which was great.
Other things:
Though I saw some emails about technical glitches, and one on errata, there weren't any issues of that sort for my team while I was there.
It was great going in knowing that puzzle answers would be accepted until 6 pm Sunday. I'd hoped to make it back for more Hunting after I'd spent time at Arisia (I failed at this), and knowing that meant I could plan better. I appreciate how this means that the non-winning teams can have more fun longer (which is the point, really, since our team definitely does not want to win (now, perhaps ever)).
New this year (or at least, I hadn't noticed it before): puzzles were marked as solved once our team had solved them. It was a nice touch, making it easier to find new puzzles to work on.
It was wonderful being in the room (and helping a little) as a bunch of teammates worked on the MIT round metas, which even lead to some backsolving. I still don't know why the puzzles were marked with all suits but hearts, though.
I think this was the first year that there have been food breaks sponsored by outside companies (Facebook sponsored Saturday breakfast, and Akamai sponsored a pizza party Saturday night). I didn't attend either, but wonder whether longer-term Hunters than I felt it odd to have commercial sponsors. I also wonder whether there was much cross-team socializing.
eta A graph of this year's team's results over time. I Hunted with Left as an Exercise for the Reader, which came in 16 out of 46 teams by solving 72 of 120 puzzles. (Or, we were just about the bottom of the top third, by solving 60% of the puzzles.)
eta 2 Public Hunt site now here! (Click on Hunt puzzles and solutions to check out the site increasingly available during the weekend.)
The kickoff event was in Kresge Auditorium, where Professor John Galt started to explain how life is better lived without puzzles (or fun?), but was interrupted by the Cheshire Cat. Yes, this would be an Alice-themed hunt! Huzzah! Finally, a theme I know something about (and love). Denizens of Wonderland had come through a variety of rabbit holes to MIT, attempting to evade the frumious Beast that was ravaging the land. We'd have to get more information, and perhaps a vorpal sword, to try to defeat the Beast. Also, the rest of the presentation included many Cheshire LOLcats; I wish I'd brought a camera!
By the time we got back to our team's headquarters, the first few puzzles were live on aliceshrugged.com (password protected; not sure if it will later become public or be hosted at another site). Plus there was some physical puzzle included with the first aid kits MIT had provided for each team. At that point, it felt like there weren't enough puzzles for everyone to find something they liked, but it wasn't long until more puzzles opened up. That was pretty much the only thing I found frustrating about the structure of the hunt this year. Granted, I was only there on Friday (technically into Saturday, since I didn't leave until a bit after midnight, but not really).
I spent a lot of time on a logic puzzle about writing a sudoku puzzle, which seemed to take far longer than it should have (we started over at least five times, if not more), especially given how many solves others on the team managed fairly quickly. I was impressed, though unsure if that means that we're better than last year, or the puzzles were less difficult (I wouldn't say any Hunt puzzles were easy, exactly), or maybe just people ended up better matched with puzzles (and other teammates to work with).
Other than that, there was some time spent on Disemvoweled, which had words without vowels, but with an extra consonant, in a variety of categories, and a fair bit on a scavenger hunt (more items meant more cards to build a house of cards, the size of which was determined by registered team size). There were two lists of items, MIT and Wonderland, with extra cards if we got a whole foursome of items (one example: we had an undergrad, a grad, a postdoc, and a professor on our team, so we got not only a (particular) card for each, but a bonus for having all four). I had some items at home, so I ended up doing an extra round trip to my apartment, which is when I found that I'd not left my kitchen light on as I'd planned, just the night light in the bathroom. Still, I managed to get all the things I was sure of, which was satisfying (I changed into a blue dress (person in a blue dress), got a bound copy of Alice, a heart, spade, diamond, and club when I remembered I had tiny cookie cutters, a mushroom, an hour glass (ok, a three-minute glass, since I grabbed the timer from Boggle), and a few other things. Some of the things we knew we didn't have (two people with the same first and last names, a coin from a previous Hunt), but in the end, we had plenty of things, and the house of cards was built. Worse part about this: cat herding people.
There seemed to be a good number of live events; I didn't go to any, but the scavenger hunt felt a bit like a live-action one on our own schedule. I did get to go meet the Dormouse, who kept napping due to having had cheese. It was fun, but cold: I wasn't wearing shoes, nor did I have a coat, and we stood outside for the encounter.
We, in this case, meant me and my cousin's daughter K, a sophomore at MIT, who I'd recruited for our team. I felt a bit responsible for her having fun, and worried that her limitations might be hard to compensate for (she has vision issues), but it was all fine, which was great.
Other things:
Though I saw some emails about technical glitches, and one on errata, there weren't any issues of that sort for my team while I was there.
It was great going in knowing that puzzle answers would be accepted until 6 pm Sunday. I'd hoped to make it back for more Hunting after I'd spent time at Arisia (I failed at this), and knowing that meant I could plan better. I appreciate how this means that the non-winning teams can have more fun longer (which is the point, really, since our team definitely does not want to win (now, perhaps ever)).
New this year (or at least, I hadn't noticed it before): puzzles were marked as solved once our team had solved them. It was a nice touch, making it easier to find new puzzles to work on.
It was wonderful being in the room (and helping a little) as a bunch of teammates worked on the MIT round metas, which even lead to some backsolving. I still don't know why the puzzles were marked with all suits but hearts, though.
I think this was the first year that there have been food breaks sponsored by outside companies (Facebook sponsored Saturday breakfast, and Akamai sponsored a pizza party Saturday night). I didn't attend either, but wonder whether longer-term Hunters than I felt it odd to have commercial sponsors. I also wonder whether there was much cross-team socializing.
eta A graph of this year's team's results over time. I Hunted with Left as an Exercise for the Reader, which came in 16 out of 46 teams by solving 72 of 120 puzzles. (Or, we were just about the bottom of the top third, by solving 60% of the puzzles.)
eta 2 Public Hunt site now here! (Click on Hunt puzzles and solutions to check out the site increasingly available during the weekend.)