Mystery Hunt roundup, 2012
Jan. 16th, 2012 03:27 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sniffnoySo! This is the part where I discuss the puzzles I worked on, and some that I didn't.
Blinkenlights: Didn't work on this one at all. The solution to this one kind of scares me.
Slash Fiction: This one either. I just find the solution really amusing.
Winning Conditions: I looked at this won when we were stuck -- we had noticed the conditions were inconsistent, but not that only some applied at any given time. At that point we thought it was just a matter of extraction... I moved on pretty quickly.
Zugzwaang: Again I just find the solution really amusing.
O Blessed Day: Spent a bunch of time on this one. Asked Angus, "Did Indiana Jones ever go to an island?" Then a few minutes later I realized it was St. Patrick. Somehow noone else had gotten that one yet. Aside from that one clue I only worked on the holiday side. National Teachers' Day was something of a problem; there are multiple different Teachers' Days and we weren't certain which one to use. Bloomsday was another one I added. Also I put in September 17th for when the US Constitution was signed but had no idea that it was actually designated "Constitution Day"...
Okla-Holmes-a! meta: Didn't work on this one at all. Evangeline pointed it out as something that would have been up my alley. :P
Audio Games: This sounded easy for, like, a few seconds. Then I decided other people could do it better.
Freshman Physics: So this is what I was working on when technical difficulties forced me to take a break for a few hours. Angus and I had been working when suddenly we found ourselves unable to complete EditGrid's requests for credentials. Well, there goes our abilities to collaborate with the rest of the team. I took a nap, then ate dinner, shortly after which it started working again. Angus didn't return, unfortunately.
20 Questions: Clicked on a button before I noticed that bit saying "Your team is working together on this puzzle. Everyone has access to the same app state." Oops. Hope I didn't screw things up too much. Quickly decided not to work on this one.
Behave: Once things got started again, Kevin Poenisch and I worked on this one. We were stuck for a bit because even though we had the words in the 4th category, we didn't have a good description of the category; we had just labeled it "10 letters and starts with a vowel". (Why do I feel like I've heard that constraint before?) Kevin left before we solved it. And from then on I was the only one in Truth House solving.
How Hard Can It Be?: Didn't work on this. Team was stuck on it for a long time; they had no idea what to put in the crossword.
In Vivo: I quickly realized I didn't have enough knowledge of vi to work on this one. Kevin, meanwhile, wasn't certain of the difference between vi and EMACS.
Twosquare: Didn't work on this one. I was surprised to find the pictures were captioned and more surprised to find the captions were accurate; in this sort of thing you expect additional needed information to appear, not minor hints.
Picture an Acorn: Did a bunch on this one. I think I was the only one there who knew the term "eggcorn", or at least the only one it occurred to. Actually I got "bare witness" and "social morays" before someone asked "Why is it called Picture an Acorn?" and only then did I remember the word. Searching the Eggcorn Database allowed me to quickly identify "without further adieu" and "post-dramatic stress disorder". None of us got "for all intensive purposes", however. Naturally I didn't get to see the final picture...
Initial Public Offering: Minor help on this one... good thing Wikiquote has a list of ad slogans, huh?
Getting There is Half the Fun: I was kind of hoping this one would have something to do with VVVVVV. :)
Bowling Down the House: I was all ready to try taking the numbers as ternary (yes, the resulting code would be ambiguous) when someone suggested they might be frequencies for a Huffman code. Fortunately, he was right.
QED: Minor help on this one. Got confused for a bit on this one due to me thinking letters had to go in the grid, and you had to figure out not just which number went where but which of the two letters corresponding to it went there...
Set Theory: This one was a mess. WAR, COMEDY, and PRESIDENTS didn't take too long but when I stopped working on it we were stuck with GRACE in place of SMITH. For a while we were expecting MEMORIAL to be SENATORS or something; then we thought maybe it was warships? Yuck.
Headstones: Minor help; I identified Bill Sikes.
General Knowledge: Minor help.
Functions: I have no idea how they figured this one out.
Highlights: This one seems to have been stuck for quite a while -- took a while before anyone noticed FIRSTDESIGN, especially because with what they had it came out as FIRSTDESGIGC. Then people got the first designs wrong and it was a big mess. People were quite annoyed at having to produce an answer that actually fit the meta.
Pirates of the Tyrrhenian: Forehead slap on looking up the solution and finally seeing the clue in the title (didn't notice it when looking at our own Wiki page). Didn't work on this one.
Sheila Sunshine meta: Oh gods. I started work on this one before we had any of the unnumbered answers. We had all the numbered ones except for 2 and 7, and I was hoping things would be uniquely specified enough that maybe we could backsolve some of the unnumbered ones. #7 ended up being solved before we would finish the first part, and solving it let to backsolving #2. But the unnumbered ones... no. ENGINEERING ended up being backsolved, but not before the rest of the meta had been solved. Thing is a lot of the Sheila puzzles were stuck for a long time so I was just sitting waiting for information. And to make it worse, none of the first few to be solved formed pairs. Then I messed up some things, and... yuck. Meanwhile the on-site team was working on it independently, not writing anything down on the wiki, but fortunately was apparently much better than me. (Also a bit overconfident, as they thought they could solve it without any paired solutions. It would seem that they couldn't.)
One thing worth noting is that the last of the 3x11 boxes, when solved, features an infinite loop. This is interesting in that when solving the first part we figured P was more likely to be what it actually is, rather than the "always up" box, on the grounds that the latter would generate an infinite loop. (Though I suppose that would be an infinite growing loop, and the loop that actually appears in the solution isn't one.)
Eight Digits: Didn't really work on this one. The people that did at first tried it in base 10, and found that it didn't work. Then they tried it in base 8, and found that it still didn't work. Oops.
Now I Know My ABCs: Again, I just find the solution really amusing.
Piercing the Veil: And this one is just a funny puzzle.
Written Down: We got stuck for a while after getting the quotes; I never got back to this one. I found Jack London, Martin Luther, Karl Marx (though that one's a misquote...), and Charles Darwin.
...so yeah, I didn't really do a lot on this one. Partly because I made the mistake of not sleeping Friday night and so was solving sleep-deprived on Saturday... I then slept through our victory, of course. But hey, my sleep schedule's a bit better now (which is why I did it)...
Blinkenlights: Didn't work on this one at all. The solution to this one kind of scares me.
Slash Fiction: This one either. I just find the solution really amusing.
Winning Conditions: I looked at this won when we were stuck -- we had noticed the conditions were inconsistent, but not that only some applied at any given time. At that point we thought it was just a matter of extraction... I moved on pretty quickly.
Zugzwaang: Again I just find the solution really amusing.
O Blessed Day: Spent a bunch of time on this one. Asked Angus, "Did Indiana Jones ever go to an island?" Then a few minutes later I realized it was St. Patrick. Somehow noone else had gotten that one yet. Aside from that one clue I only worked on the holiday side. National Teachers' Day was something of a problem; there are multiple different Teachers' Days and we weren't certain which one to use. Bloomsday was another one I added. Also I put in September 17th for when the US Constitution was signed but had no idea that it was actually designated "Constitution Day"...
Okla-Holmes-a! meta: Didn't work on this one at all. Evangeline pointed it out as something that would have been up my alley. :P
Audio Games: This sounded easy for, like, a few seconds. Then I decided other people could do it better.
Freshman Physics: So this is what I was working on when technical difficulties forced me to take a break for a few hours. Angus and I had been working when suddenly we found ourselves unable to complete EditGrid's requests for credentials. Well, there goes our abilities to collaborate with the rest of the team. I took a nap, then ate dinner, shortly after which it started working again. Angus didn't return, unfortunately.
20 Questions: Clicked on a button before I noticed that bit saying "Your team is working together on this puzzle. Everyone has access to the same app state." Oops. Hope I didn't screw things up too much. Quickly decided not to work on this one.
Behave: Once things got started again, Kevin Poenisch and I worked on this one. We were stuck for a bit because even though we had the words in the 4th category, we didn't have a good description of the category; we had just labeled it "10 letters and starts with a vowel". (Why do I feel like I've heard that constraint before?) Kevin left before we solved it. And from then on I was the only one in Truth House solving.
How Hard Can It Be?: Didn't work on this. Team was stuck on it for a long time; they had no idea what to put in the crossword.
In Vivo: I quickly realized I didn't have enough knowledge of vi to work on this one. Kevin, meanwhile, wasn't certain of the difference between vi and EMACS.
Twosquare: Didn't work on this one. I was surprised to find the pictures were captioned and more surprised to find the captions were accurate; in this sort of thing you expect additional needed information to appear, not minor hints.
Picture an Acorn: Did a bunch on this one. I think I was the only one there who knew the term "eggcorn", or at least the only one it occurred to. Actually I got "bare witness" and "social morays" before someone asked "Why is it called Picture an Acorn?" and only then did I remember the word. Searching the Eggcorn Database allowed me to quickly identify "without further adieu" and "post-dramatic stress disorder". None of us got "for all intensive purposes", however. Naturally I didn't get to see the final picture...
Initial Public Offering: Minor help on this one... good thing Wikiquote has a list of ad slogans, huh?
Getting There is Half the Fun: I was kind of hoping this one would have something to do with VVVVVV. :)
Bowling Down the House: I was all ready to try taking the numbers as ternary (yes, the resulting code would be ambiguous) when someone suggested they might be frequencies for a Huffman code. Fortunately, he was right.
QED: Minor help on this one. Got confused for a bit on this one due to me thinking letters had to go in the grid, and you had to figure out not just which number went where but which of the two letters corresponding to it went there...
Set Theory: This one was a mess. WAR, COMEDY, and PRESIDENTS didn't take too long but when I stopped working on it we were stuck with GRACE in place of SMITH. For a while we were expecting MEMORIAL to be SENATORS or something; then we thought maybe it was warships? Yuck.
Headstones: Minor help; I identified Bill Sikes.
General Knowledge: Minor help.
Functions: I have no idea how they figured this one out.
Highlights: This one seems to have been stuck for quite a while -- took a while before anyone noticed FIRSTDESIGN, especially because with what they had it came out as FIRSTDESGIGC. Then people got the first designs wrong and it was a big mess. People were quite annoyed at having to produce an answer that actually fit the meta.
Pirates of the Tyrrhenian: Forehead slap on looking up the solution and finally seeing the clue in the title (didn't notice it when looking at our own Wiki page). Didn't work on this one.
Sheila Sunshine meta: Oh gods. I started work on this one before we had any of the unnumbered answers. We had all the numbered ones except for 2 and 7, and I was hoping things would be uniquely specified enough that maybe we could backsolve some of the unnumbered ones. #7 ended up being solved before we would finish the first part, and solving it let to backsolving #2. But the unnumbered ones... no. ENGINEERING ended up being backsolved, but not before the rest of the meta had been solved. Thing is a lot of the Sheila puzzles were stuck for a long time so I was just sitting waiting for information. And to make it worse, none of the first few to be solved formed pairs. Then I messed up some things, and... yuck. Meanwhile the on-site team was working on it independently, not writing anything down on the wiki, but fortunately was apparently much better than me. (Also a bit overconfident, as they thought they could solve it without any paired solutions. It would seem that they couldn't.)
One thing worth noting is that the last of the 3x11 boxes, when solved, features an infinite loop. This is interesting in that when solving the first part we figured P was more likely to be what it actually is, rather than the "always up" box, on the grounds that the latter would generate an infinite loop. (Though I suppose that would be an infinite growing loop, and the loop that actually appears in the solution isn't one.)
Eight Digits: Didn't really work on this one. The people that did at first tried it in base 10, and found that it didn't work. Then they tried it in base 8, and found that it still didn't work. Oops.
Now I Know My ABCs: Again, I just find the solution really amusing.
Piercing the Veil: And this one is just a funny puzzle.
Written Down: We got stuck for a while after getting the quotes; I never got back to this one. I found Jack London, Martin Luther, Karl Marx (though that one's a misquote...), and Charles Darwin.
...so yeah, I didn't really do a lot on this one. Partly because I made the mistake of not sleeping Friday night and so was solving sleep-deprived on Saturday... I then slept through our victory, of course. But hey, my sleep schedule's a bit better now (which is why I did it)...
