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Puzzle Safari 2007
Jul. 9th, 2007 01:13 amThis year's Puzzle Safari, being as it was on July 7th -- aka 7/7/7 -- also accordingly had a James Bond theme as well as a casino theme going for it.
There were several new features this year:
1) answers did NOT necessarily solve directly to a location on the Microsoft campus -- mainly because it gets dull always expecting a XX/XXXX answer. So this year answers might be random phrases or words as well.
2) to facilitate that, there was actually a website where we submitted answers, rather than just the logbook. when you got a correct answer, it'd tell you the location of the stamp.
2a) occasionally, and leading into the next point, it'd also show you a picture of a place where some casino chips were located.
3) there was a casino in the building 9 cafeteria, where they had several "casino games" going on. The thing is, while from a distance it might have looked like people were playing the actual game, in reality, the games were just puzzles that you had to solve. You needed to have found the specific chips to play certain games, and you would "cash out" after solving the puzzle by handing in a sheet with the right answer on it, and they would give you a sticker, which had to be put in your team's logbook.
Usually with Safari, you have a four-person team, and will generally at any time have 3 people solving puzzles and one person, the "runner", running around Microsoft campus collecting stamps for the logbook. Your group has one book, and you turn it in twice during the day, and get an event score based on how many puzzles you solved from each puzzle wave at each timepoint in the day. So the runner's running around, and say we solve something and it says the stamp is in building 09, room 2357 -- and we know our runner is near there -- then we'd call that person on their cellphone and be like "hey, the answer to That Puzzle is 09/2357, can you go get that one?" and they go to that room, find the stamp, stamp the logbook, and keep going.
But because of the casino -- where you didn't actually need the logbook to get the stickers, you just needed a chip to play the game -- I think a lot of teams ended up doing what we did, namely 2 people solving puzzles, one person running, and one person in the casino. This might have been a bad idea, I'm not sure.
Our team was a subset of Liboncatipu, so we just used that as our team name. It was me and my favorite puzzlehunt buddy Mike Janney, and Ryan Roberts and Steve Henry. A few of the others from our last PH team were also in Safari in various ways -- Andy and Jamie and Matt were a team with their friend Arjun, Jeff was on a team with Jonobie and two other friends of theirs, Drew and Jason were actually involved in organizing the event and running the casino. (So wait, if I count correctly that means the only people from PHA Liboncatipu that weren't at Safari were Matt Lahut, who's in Pittsburgh, and Brian Railing, who's off climbing mountains. Wait, I forgot that Ryan actually missed PHA and was last in PH9 with us. I remembered him being awesome so I figured he must have been part of the most awesome Liboncatipu squad ever :) Our 12th PHA guy was Ajay, who I don't think did Safari this year.)
( Puzzle details )
Anyway, to make a long story slightly less long, the day was over sooner than anyone thought it should be, we cleaned up our room, chatted for a while about various stuff, and went down to closing ceremonies, where I should have been looking at solutions and rating the puzzles, but instead I ended up talking too much and catching up with several friends that I hadn't seen in forever. Our team placed 24th out of 75, or so I was told. Everyone else from Liboncatipu did much better than we did. :( I blame being stuck on stupid metapuzzle hints like getting "brother" out of a phrase like "contra sister".
Oh, other funny story: so they announced that Puzzle Hunt 11 is going to be on October 6-7, and Mike and Ryan immediately went to go reserve rooms for it, and were already finding that several places they wanted were taken -- by people on Safari staff, heh -- and anyway, they were all picking on me because I won't be here for it, there's just no way I can fly back from Japan for it. But then I realized a few things:
Puzzle Hunt starts at 10am Saturday, which is 2am Sunday in Japan.
Puzzle Hunt ends at 6pm Sunday, which is 10am Monday in Japan.
My "weekend" days off are Sunday and Monday
There's no rule saying all of your PH teammates have to actually be on Microsoft campus
I think we were totally kidding about it, but I told Mike that if anyone ducked out of Liboncatipu at the last minute or something, feel free to Skype or IM me and I'd somehow figure out a way to net-conference in to help solve puzzles :) The best part is, if our team hit what's usually our "dead time" at 1am, that'd be 5pm for me!
Anyway, it's a little disappointing a result for what'll be my last puzzling event for a while, but I'm glad I got to do it and see everyone. I'm really lucky that I totally adore pretty much everyone in our Puzzle Hunt circle, so I always have a blast at these things.
There were several new features this year:
1) answers did NOT necessarily solve directly to a location on the Microsoft campus -- mainly because it gets dull always expecting a XX/XXXX answer. So this year answers might be random phrases or words as well.
2) to facilitate that, there was actually a website where we submitted answers, rather than just the logbook. when you got a correct answer, it'd tell you the location of the stamp.
2a) occasionally, and leading into the next point, it'd also show you a picture of a place where some casino chips were located.
3) there was a casino in the building 9 cafeteria, where they had several "casino games" going on. The thing is, while from a distance it might have looked like people were playing the actual game, in reality, the games were just puzzles that you had to solve. You needed to have found the specific chips to play certain games, and you would "cash out" after solving the puzzle by handing in a sheet with the right answer on it, and they would give you a sticker, which had to be put in your team's logbook.
Usually with Safari, you have a four-person team, and will generally at any time have 3 people solving puzzles and one person, the "runner", running around Microsoft campus collecting stamps for the logbook. Your group has one book, and you turn it in twice during the day, and get an event score based on how many puzzles you solved from each puzzle wave at each timepoint in the day. So the runner's running around, and say we solve something and it says the stamp is in building 09, room 2357 -- and we know our runner is near there -- then we'd call that person on their cellphone and be like "hey, the answer to That Puzzle is 09/2357, can you go get that one?" and they go to that room, find the stamp, stamp the logbook, and keep going.
But because of the casino -- where you didn't actually need the logbook to get the stickers, you just needed a chip to play the game -- I think a lot of teams ended up doing what we did, namely 2 people solving puzzles, one person running, and one person in the casino. This might have been a bad idea, I'm not sure.
Our team was a subset of Liboncatipu, so we just used that as our team name. It was me and my favorite puzzlehunt buddy Mike Janney, and Ryan Roberts and Steve Henry. A few of the others from our last PH team were also in Safari in various ways -- Andy and Jamie and Matt were a team with their friend Arjun, Jeff was on a team with Jonobie and two other friends of theirs, Drew and Jason were actually involved in organizing the event and running the casino. (So wait, if I count correctly that means the only people from PHA Liboncatipu that weren't at Safari were Matt Lahut, who's in Pittsburgh, and Brian Railing, who's off climbing mountains. Wait, I forgot that Ryan actually missed PHA and was last in PH9 with us. I remembered him being awesome so I figured he must have been part of the most awesome Liboncatipu squad ever :) Our 12th PHA guy was Ajay, who I don't think did Safari this year.)
( Puzzle details )
Anyway, to make a long story slightly less long, the day was over sooner than anyone thought it should be, we cleaned up our room, chatted for a while about various stuff, and went down to closing ceremonies, where I should have been looking at solutions and rating the puzzles, but instead I ended up talking too much and catching up with several friends that I hadn't seen in forever. Our team placed 24th out of 75, or so I was told. Everyone else from Liboncatipu did much better than we did. :( I blame being stuck on stupid metapuzzle hints like getting "brother" out of a phrase like "contra sister".
Oh, other funny story: so they announced that Puzzle Hunt 11 is going to be on October 6-7, and Mike and Ryan immediately went to go reserve rooms for it, and were already finding that several places they wanted were taken -- by people on Safari staff, heh -- and anyway, they were all picking on me because I won't be here for it, there's just no way I can fly back from Japan for it. But then I realized a few things:
I think we were totally kidding about it, but I told Mike that if anyone ducked out of Liboncatipu at the last minute or something, feel free to Skype or IM me and I'd somehow figure out a way to net-conference in to help solve puzzles :) The best part is, if our team hit what's usually our "dead time" at 1am, that'd be 5pm for me!
Anyway, it's a little disappointing a result for what'll be my last puzzling event for a while, but I'm glad I got to do it and see everyone. I'm really lucky that I totally adore pretty much everyone in our Puzzle Hunt circle, so I always have a blast at these things.
