Shortlog - a log of everyday things

2011-05-01

Yesteday was the first Berkeley Mystery Hunt! I captained a team by the name of PhDestroy! which included Lora and Wes (with whom I teamed up for Stanford's The Game) and added Andy from the BiD lab, Nima (with whom I joined forces for the College Puzzle Challenge), one guy Nima knew named Di, and one guy named Bobby from the mailinglist.

Our merry band of 7 puzzlers got off to an incredibly slow start, solving something like one puzzle in the first four hours, but as we got more hints and worked out more, we started picking up the pace. I won't talk about the puzzles, since the organizers want to run this hunt again for a Bay Area Night Game at some point, but suffice it to say that we eventually got our act together, solved the metameta, and at 10:53pm, won the game. (Actually, HQ had to cut the entire runaround because we were the first team to get there, and they wanted to finish by 10:30, with wrapup at 11. Oh well.)

Amusing events involved Andy trying to wheedle puzzle solutions out of Hunt HQ, getting to reuse a piece of Python I've had on my computer for over three years, and exchanging stories with the organizers.

I've volunteered to help the organizers write next year's hunt, and have some good ideas for puzzles floating around in my head. That's another major step toward completion of an item on my bucket list. I do hope I'll have the time to help make this happen - I really do love these puzzle hunts. :)

One special thanks to my team, who made that day delightful (even when we were stuck and frustrated) and one to the organizers, who put the whole thing together over the course of several years. I had a blast!

UPDATE: photo! From left to right: Bobby Liue, Di Wang, Drew Fisher, Nima Ahmadi Pour Anari, Andy Carle, Lora Oehlberg, Wes Willett. Thanks to Ankur Mehta for the photo.

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