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sniffnoySo somehow I managed to pick the winning team to join this year too?
(Full summary later. Solutions won't be up for several hours at least, I presume.)
Anyway. To recall: I was originally recruited for Manic Sages by![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
eyefragment, leading his remote solving group, back when I was a 4th-year at Chicago. (What happened 3rd year, I wonder? I have no idea.) First year here I entirely forgot about it and missed it. Last year I remembered it, found Kevin was leading a remote solving group for Codex, so joined that. Then Codex actually won that year, and I didn't want to join the writing team, so I defected back to Sages for this year, trying to lead a remote solving group out of Truth House. (That didn't go so well. While quite a few people expressed interest, only two people (Kevin Poenisch and Angus) actually joined in -- and not simultaneously, and neither for very long.)
Then Sages win this year and so I say, well, guess it's time to defect back to Codex. But then Evangline Ruth (who solves for Random) points out to me, actually, due to its sheer size, there's a good chance Sages is going to split in two next year, into a solvers team and a writers team. For reference, Sages was about 200 people this year; Random, apparently, was less than 100, and still considered big.
That surprised me -- I had assumed all the big-name teams were going to be like 200 people[0]. Coming from Chicago of course my mental comparison was Scav teams, and those are huge. But wait -- what's "huge"? Suddenly I realize, I don't have actual numbers. And I'm pretty bad when it comes to estimating actual numbers. Thinking it over now, I figure Pierce (back before we joined with Maclean) can't have been more than about 50 people, probably smaller. Not sure how Maclean affects it, but even with them we were still able to use TANSTAAFL as our base of operations.
After all, everyone knows Scav teams are huge because they're so large you need a whole dorm usually to get enough people for a team with any shot at winning... except how many people from a given dorm are usually going to participate? With the exception of Snitchcock, it's probably a pretty small fraction. Chances are that's why you need a whole dorm, not because teams are so huge in raw size.
Of course this still doesn't answer the question of just how large teams usually *are*. Are the big teams from Scav Hunt usually around 100 people or so? There's also the question of what's meant by "big". When we're talking about a "big" team, do we mean that in the sense that, say, BJ is a big team -- they're a big-name team with a lot of people and a real shot at winning -- or do we mean it in the sense that, say, Max is a big team -- they're consistently the most numerous, even among the big-name teams they're really among the upper end in size -- or do we mean it in the sense that the team is outstandingly large, dwarfing the teams in size, and getting kind of bloated?
So this is my question -- the big-name Mystery Hunt teams[3], about how large are they? And the big-name Scav Hunt teams[4], how large are they? Does anyone have numbers?
-Harry
[0]In describing Mystery Hunt to people, I got this right by coincidence. I said we'd be solving for Manic Sages, a team of probably like 200 people; I pulled that number out of my ass[5], it being just my idea of a large team. Justine got annoyed when she found out I'd made that number up, as she'd told it to someone else. Oops; I quickly apologized for spreading misleading information. Then later I found out I had actually been pretty much on the mark.
[3]Which I infer are Sages, Codex, Random, Palindrome, Plant, SETEC, Iif... I don't know, who am I leaving out? (Or falsely including?)
[4]Which I assume are still -- if we stick to the ones that are consistently near the top, rather than all the ones everyone has heard of, seeing as unlike with Mystery Hunt, Scav Hunt only has a small number of total teams in any given year -- Max, Snitchcock, BJ, FIST. Has the New Dorm managed to field a decent team of its own yet? Or do they all just scav for FIST?
[5]I also mentioned how in 2008 the Hunt had been won by The Evil Midnight Bombers What Bomb At Midnight, which I had heard was a ridiculously small team, and I said it was like 6 or 12 people. I think in reality it was closer to 25? In that case I wasn't totally making that number up so much as misremembering it from Youlian telling me, though.
(Full summary later. Solutions won't be up for several hours at least, I presume.)
Anyway. To recall: I was originally recruited for Manic Sages by
eyefragment, leading his remote solving group, back when I was a 4th-year at Chicago. (What happened 3rd year, I wonder? I have no idea.) First year here I entirely forgot about it and missed it. Last year I remembered it, found Kevin was leading a remote solving group for Codex, so joined that. Then Codex actually won that year, and I didn't want to join the writing team, so I defected back to Sages for this year, trying to lead a remote solving group out of Truth House. (That didn't go so well. While quite a few people expressed interest, only two people (Kevin Poenisch and Angus) actually joined in -- and not simultaneously, and neither for very long.)Then Sages win this year and so I say, well, guess it's time to defect back to Codex. But then Evangline Ruth (who solves for Random) points out to me, actually, due to its sheer size, there's a good chance Sages is going to split in two next year, into a solvers team and a writers team. For reference, Sages was about 200 people this year; Random, apparently, was less than 100, and still considered big.
That surprised me -- I had assumed all the big-name teams were going to be like 200 people[0]. Coming from Chicago of course my mental comparison was Scav teams, and those are huge. But wait -- what's "huge"? Suddenly I realize, I don't have actual numbers. And I'm pretty bad when it comes to estimating actual numbers. Thinking it over now, I figure Pierce (back before we joined with Maclean) can't have been more than about 50 people, probably smaller. Not sure how Maclean affects it, but even with them we were still able to use TANSTAAFL as our base of operations.
After all, everyone knows Scav teams are huge because they're so large you need a whole dorm usually to get enough people for a team with any shot at winning... except how many people from a given dorm are usually going to participate? With the exception of Snitchcock, it's probably a pretty small fraction. Chances are that's why you need a whole dorm, not because teams are so huge in raw size.
Of course this still doesn't answer the question of just how large teams usually *are*. Are the big teams from Scav Hunt usually around 100 people or so? There's also the question of what's meant by "big". When we're talking about a "big" team, do we mean that in the sense that, say, BJ is a big team -- they're a big-name team with a lot of people and a real shot at winning -- or do we mean it in the sense that, say, Max is a big team -- they're consistently the most numerous, even among the big-name teams they're really among the upper end in size -- or do we mean it in the sense that the team is outstandingly large, dwarfing the teams in size, and getting kind of bloated?
So this is my question -- the big-name Mystery Hunt teams[3], about how large are they? And the big-name Scav Hunt teams[4], how large are they? Does anyone have numbers?
-Harry
[0]In describing Mystery Hunt to people, I got this right by coincidence. I said we'd be solving for Manic Sages, a team of probably like 200 people; I pulled that number out of my ass[5], it being just my idea of a large team. Justine got annoyed when she found out I'd made that number up, as she'd told it to someone else. Oops; I quickly apologized for spreading misleading information. Then later I found out I had actually been pretty much on the mark.
[3]Which I infer are Sages, Codex, Random, Palindrome, Plant, SETEC, Iif... I don't know, who am I leaving out? (Or falsely including?)
[4]Which I assume are still -- if we stick to the ones that are consistently near the top, rather than all the ones everyone has heard of, seeing as unlike with Mystery Hunt, Scav Hunt only has a small number of total teams in any given year -- Max, Snitchcock, BJ, FIST. Has the New Dorm managed to field a decent team of its own yet? Or do they all just scav for FIST?
[5]I also mentioned how in 2008 the Hunt had been won by The Evil Midnight Bombers What Bomb At Midnight, which I had heard was a ridiculously small team, and I said it was like 6 or 12 people. I think in reality it was closer to 25? In that case I wasn't totally making that number up so much as misremembering it from Youlian telling me, though.
no subject
Date: 2012-01-15 08:08 pm (UTC)FIST actually was never that huge, either. I'd estimate we generally had about a dozen highly active members, and another 10-20 who worked on at least one item they found interesting but maybe never even came to HQ, any given year. Then again I'm pretty terrible at estimation, so who knows.
no subject
Date: 2012-01-15 08:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-16 08:19 am (UTC)Congratulations on winning yet another hunt -- I guess this hunt thing isn't so hard after all, what with a record of 2/3 from your end ;-). I don't see you on the coin request list, but you should go ahead and e-mail and request a coin. It's a nice souvenir, and we love our remote solvers. I'm sleepy and going to be fairly brief, but here's some answers.
* In your third year (my first), I flew up to MIT for hunt, and so I did not organize a UofC remote team.
* You can get a pretty good idea of the size of Manic Sages by looking at the list of team members on our wiki. Holy shit we actually _do_ have almost 200 people, don't we? Jesus. It somewhat calls into question the legitimacy of winning when we have so damn many people. Although that said, I have no clue what the actual sizes are for the other big teams.
* The Evil Midnight Bombers were indeed tiny. I don't remember just how small though.
* I doubt if Manic Sages will split in two. There had been lots of speculation, even within the team, about what would happen, but it sounds like we're going to try to have everyone contribute to making the 2012 hunt. There are _a lot_ of ways to contribute (not just writing puzzles!), so we suspect that we can actually find a place for anyone who wants to help out.
* I actually don't know that much about the other serious contenders for the coin, but your list looks pretty reasonable to me.
* Last year, MacPierce's team name was The Rahmones. I find it strange that they're not listed as MacPierce, but it's the same team.
no subject
Date: 2012-01-17 12:00 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-17 12:24 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-21 01:25 am (UTC)