Mystery Hunt: Mario and Peach Get Married

[magid]

Or not, because Bowser kidnapped her during the black-tie optional ceremony (video of the ceremony, though without the pre-recorded sound track). And of course, many many puzzles had to be solved in order to find her. Luckily, team Metaphysical Fungus was able to help out.

Here's the intro, and the world map (with solutions now mostly available, which is admirable speed compared to previous years.).

I worked a bit on Squared Key (1-1), Bridge Burners (1-1), Karaoke Night (1-1), Toad's List (1-2), English Expectations (1-2), Pattern Recognition (1-2), Another Small Collection of Immense Integers (1-2), Everybody's Got to Be Somewhere (1-2), Photo Album (1-3), Mountain Pass (1-3), Games (Minus Man in Mega Man), Where's Antoinette? (Stagecraft Man in Mega Man), The Writing on the Wall (Stagecraft Man in Mega Man), One More Try (Bebop Man in Mega Man), Forsaken Fortress (Zelda), Execution Grounds (Zelda), and Fascinating Kids (Civilization).

However, with most of these, it was just a small contribution. For me, this was the biggest contrast with last year's Hunt, when I worked on only 3 or 4 puzzles, and they mostly got finished. Not only that, but I could see the structure, and felt I was seriously useful to getting the solve. This year, I helped with lots of basic level stuff, but nothing more complicated. (Some of this came from me splitting my time with Arisia, thereby overtiring myself early on).

Of the ones listed above, a few stand out for me.

• Toad's List made me realize I need to read more sf.
  
• Pattern Recognition was a very elegant puzzle, though I don't think we got to the end of it.
  
• Another Small Collection of Immense Integers was Ross' solve, with me helping to find large factors of very large numbers a tiny bit faster. This is another one that I found beautiful in design. (And realize yet again that I am not really a puzzle designer, just an apprentice puzzle solver, however much I might wish to be more talented.)
  
• One More Try was a fun crossword made more interesting not only by realizing there were double-clued phrases, but also because we were solving it with some remote solvers in England, chatting, sometimes skype-ing back and forth. The world is such a small place sometimes...
  (If you're interested in being a remote solver for a couple of hours or something next year, let me know and I can pass the information on to our team organizers.)
  The events seemed to work well. I only went to one, but was around as people prepped for two others. One event included dressing up as a computer game character dressed as a pirate, and another event included making a robot that could do a couple of tasks, including raising a flag, sharpening a pencil, mixing a drink, and so on (our fearless leader used an electric pencil sharpener to great effect). The one I attended was Zombies v. Zombies, and I had a fabulous time. It was a riff off Zombies v. Flowers, which I've never played, crossed with Rock-Paper-Scissors. The teams had tangrams to assemble, sudokus to solve, and Boggle boards to get 30+ points on. Once those were checked, the team got paper, mini traffic cones, or buckets (respectively). A team member held one item at the edge of the square board, and whenever there was a drum beat, advanced one square until meeting a zombie that defeated them or canceled them out (zombies on the board couldn't be solving puzzles). A team won when they got one person across the board. We played a few times, and I only once ended up on the board, maximizing my enjoyment by doing lots of Boggle. Oh, and dancing to the excellent music track, which included Thriller, songs from Little Shop of Horrors, and Zombie Jamboree, among others. Totally silly, and perfect for a Sunday morning when fried :-).

Metaphysical Fungus did a lot of work to make this year's Hunt really good, not only in the puzzles (which were impressive, though I think that I'm hardly able to judge, especially given how few I worked on of the total, though I wish there weren't so many more towards the end, making it harder to even look at them) and events. Other things stood out for me.

• Members of the team came by more than once to check that we were having fun.
  
• There was an end time given in advance, so I knew there'd be time to work on puzzles even after whichever team found the coin. That meant it was easier to get sleep and such, knowing there'd be time later. (I assume this would be different were I on a team that were actually in the running for winning, but happily, I'm not.)
  
• There was a lot of information available about earning points (some just by time, helping smaller teams get everything unlocked) and coins (not The coin), which could be earned at the events, and 100 of them could be used to buy a solution.
  
• They offered rooms for people to sleep in. I didn't need them, but I found it incredibly thoughtful.
  
• Switching calling in answers to submitting them online with a follow-up call, which meant there weren't issues about spelling things out for clarity.
  
• Lots of achievement awards that felt like we'd earned things even without winning. They ranged from the obvious stuff about solving puzzles, in chunks or at speed or in particular time slots, and so on, to more humorous things, like checking the achievement award page, attending the events, calling in wrong answers, and so on.
  The coins we earned in competition ended up going to solve Mario Clash, which none of us got a handle on, hours after hours after hours, and having that answer lead to the team's first meta, in world 1-1. And that in and of itself was enough, along with some info on the meta-meta, to backsolve our second meta, world 1-3. We got very close to the meta for world 1-2, but never quite got there, so couldn't play the game for the Mario's world meta-meta. Still, our team met all our goals: don't win, don't lose, have fun, and solve a meta. Yay!

Comments

[bercilakslady.livejournal.com]

That sounds like a lot of fun. And it reminds me of this song..

http://seananmcguire.com/songbook.php?id=146

[bercilakslady.livejournal.com]

And I found a youtube..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x5nHJ49Nstw

[magid.livejournal.com]

:-)

Thanks for the pointer!