Puzzles and mysteries for adventurous minds

Round-up My Thoughts

My brain is all over the place today, luckily I have this blog to help me sort out my thoughts!

First of all, not puzzle-related in any way (unless you want to go solve this from last week), the women’s Olympic soccer semifinals are today and I am pumped!!  World Cup champs Japan play France at noon ET, and then defending Olympic gold champs USA play Canada at 2:45.  Both matches should be incredible, so now is a great time to tune in and get prepped for the gold medal match on Thursday.  I’m rooting for the USWNT of course, they are amazing and Abby Wambach is my idol!

Second, did everybody watch Curiosity land last night?  So exciting and amazing to watch, and I’m really glad it was a successful landing.  Barring nuclear apocalypse, it’s hard for me to imagine a future where we don’t at least try and terraform Mars.  And seeing humans land on Mars within my lifetime actually seems like a possibility!  Can you imagine them going around and collecting all the pieces and parts that were ejected from Curiosity, rescuing Spirit and Opportunity, and building a museum there to put them in?  Magical.

In more puzzley news, WarTron, a Portland Game by TeamSnout, ran this past weekend.  I know a lot of you were lucky enough to attend, and the East Coast eagerly awaits your write-ups!  Leave a link in the comments to make sure I see it, and I’ll include them all in my next round-up.  After I’ve finished crying tears of jealousy.

Speaking of Games… my husband suggested that if I met a certain long-term work-related goal, my reward might be for us to try our best to get into and attend our first Game!  So… anybody know of anything in the works for 2013?

Also, got BAPHL on the mind… I’d really like to round up some friends go, but Boston is so far away and September 15 is so soon!  Maybe I’ll send out an e-mail just to see if anyone is interested and see where things go from there.  Anybody planning to attend?

I’ve also been busy helping out with the Great America Race which starts in D.C. this Friday.  Only one way to find out which puzzles I worked on!  =)  I also got a peek at the rest of the puzzles last week, and players are really in for something special!

I’d really like to write a Black Letter Game retrospective post, but that would require finishing the Black Letter Game.  UGH.  Haven’t even glanced at any of the three rounds of hints we’ve been given.  Maybe this weekend!  When did life get so busy?

And here are a few interesting odds and ends I’ve stumbled across recently:

  • Mystery on Fifth Avenue – A neat article from back in 2008 that I just found about an apartment with a puzzle hunt for the inhabitants designed into its very architecture.
  • Taman Shud Case – An interesting unsolved case from the late 40’s.
  • The Great Escape – A new action-adventure reality TV show (oh boy!) on TNT where teams compete to escape from dramatic locations with physical and mental challenges along the way.  I don’t have cable, and unfortunately this is another one of those NBC Olympics-style choose-your-cable-provider-to-watch-online bass-ackwards deals, so I probably won’t actually be watching this anytime soon.  If anybody checks it out, let me know if it’s any good!

 

That’s all for today!  Any puzzle/mystery/adventure news I should know about?

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9 comments on Round-up My Thoughts

  • tabstop

    I dunno where you are on the puzzles, but the hints (I thought) were not very helpful this time around — I have gotten all four hints (for all four puzzles, sigh) and the signature and when hints have not yet caught up to where I was before I got any hints at all. (Where and what got useful information when we got to hint four; who was useful earlier.)

    And there’s your lesson about story, too: when your story requires you to respond to errors in your puzzle with “We don’t know why the Seventeen did it that way. Man, wasn’t it hard to get past that section!” then you should pick a different story. I like to think that I’ve got a fairly good control on my emotions, but I have gotten #&@*ing tired of that response and am now annoyed. I know of five errors on my map (granted one of them they sent out to the facebook list, I didn’t find it) and why should I bother to mention them?

    Reply
    • clavicarius (author)

      We just received batch #4. I think I’ll do my best to take a crack at them this weekend, I guess I feel better that they don’t help much, but maybe not? Hrm…

      This is a good lesson.. You certainly don’t want your immersion attempts to cause frustration! Sometimes it’s best to break the illusion for the sake of the player’s sanity/comfort/happiness.

      Reply
      • Dan Egnor

        In the traditions I come from, we like the idea of a “safe word”, or rather the “safe phrase”: “We’re not having fun anymore.” When a player says that to GC, GC should stop being in character, suspend their natural coyness and see what they can do to help (within the bounds of fairness).

        That said, being on GC is a lot harder than it seems, and errors do get made. I could go on at length about my thoughts on Black Letter, but I give them a whole lot of kudos for trying out a new format.

        Reply
  • anon.

    Don’t be so quick to spoil yourself, eager beaver. Your chance at a Game may be closer than you think.

    Reply
    • clavicarius (author)

      I like the sound of that, cryptic…

      Reply
  • Dan Egnor

    You probably know this, but I try to keep http://puzzlehuntcalendar.com/ updated with anything that could reasonably be described as a “Game”. Unfortunately I don’t know of any upcoming Games but I’m sure they’ll appear. You should absolutely play one in any case! I had a blast in WarTron.

    I’ll be playing in the Great America Race (end-to-end) next week. Our team really enjoyed the starter puzzle you wrote! The interworking of “Bay Area” (or “Game”) style puzzle conventions and Ravenchase type puzzles is really interesting to me. Solving that puzzle made our team a lot more excited about the puzzles in GAR.

    Reply
    • clavicarius (author)

      Yes! Puzzlehuntcalendar.com is such a great resource, thanks so much for all your work to keep it updated and awesome =) I’ll definitely be checking over the next few months to see if anything pops up.

      I hope you guys have a great time at GAR, so awesome you’ll be making it out and playing the full week! And it really means a lot that you liked the starter puzzle. (I am so green not only at Ravenchase, but in the puzzle community in general!) It’s definitely a different style of puzzling than the Bay Area Games, but hopefully it’s a fun different =)

      And thanks for stopping by!

      Reply
  • Tyler

    You heard that WarTron is being rerun in Boston, right? I would avoid spoilers if you can.

    Reply
    • clavicarius (author)

      I just read it on your post, and I hadn’t heard it before that so thanks for the head’s up! (Perhaps that’s what my cryptic commenter was referring to). I will duly avoid reading any recaps then. Very exciting!

      Reply

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