Mystery Hunt: Alice Shrugged

The 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!

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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.)

MLK Day: Helping Hands

By the time Monday rolled around, I was too tired to face going back to Arisia, though there were a couple of panels that looked interesting (girl meets house, Earthsea and Ekumen), and ended up sleeping late enough that I missed the Hunt recap as well (it was at noon; I don't usually sleep that late, but three days of bedtimes past 1 A.M. and almost no time not "on" since Friday was enough). I did end up going (late) to a volunteer gathering in Cambridge, which turned out to be just as social as going to Arisia would have been, though with completely different people, of course.

As it turned out, I was glad I got there late: people were still standing outside city hall for the tail end of speeches and songs, and since I didn't know the words to the songs, and couldn't quite hear all the speeches (whatever sound system they had wasn't up to the task), it was mostly about standing around waiting for the part I thought more interesting: hands-on projects.

Finally, we got to start doing. There were three locations: city hall, the senior center across the street, and the YWCA around the corner. I'd run into friends with smalls, and since there was a line at both locations we could see, we walked over to the Y. It was also crazy busy, but no line to get in. We went to the area for making fleece items (scarves, baby blankets, big people blankets), eventually finding enough space and supplies to get to work. There were people with sewing machines, and we were to pin designs on the base fleece for them to sew. I chose a red scarf, and managed to get some light brown fleece for decorations (it was too busy for me to want to deal with getting more colors, though that would have been fun). I put rounded pockets on either end, plus large polka dots meandering from pocket to pocket. It was a simple design, but I was pleased with it (I was very careful with my cutting, so the edges would look nice).

At some point, the noise became overwhelming, so I walked to city hall, mostly to have a break (and it wasn't so cold that I needed to get my coat out of my backpack for the two blocks!). Again, I ended up at the fleece goods, making another scarf with pockets. This time, it was a black scarf, with blue pockets, and pink geometric shapes (triangles at one end, squares in a checkerboard at the other, dots between the two). Between making that and chatting with people I ran into (Nadeem and two of his people I'd met at the vote recount (they tapped me for a "person on the street" mini-interview), an Asylum person with her sewing machine, friends of friends who gave me a ride from Worcester last month, etc.), I was too late to help assemble activity kits for kids in hospital waiting rooms, or fill reusable bags with food (I looked at the stuff on top, and was pleased to see things I recognized). And I didn't want to make valentines (to be put in with meals on wheels or something); it's my least favorite holiday. So it was time to head home (and finally make some food). I was glad to have contributed a little, and pleased that this also did what I'd hoped for: a lower-key day to come down from the intensity of Mystery Hunt and Arisia.

I was particularly pleased to have gotten to see the Cambridge city council room, with all the new names on wooden plaques on their new seats. It's a handsome place (and much quieter than the stairwell, even with the doors open!). It looks like there might be a visitor gallery; I should find out if some sessions are open for visitors.

Oh, and in chatting with some of the organizers, I was chuffed that one of them liked my choice of pockets on scarves enough to say that should become a suggestion for future designers!