Yet more post-hunt stuff

[prog]

Today went past in an eyeblink. Slept late, made and drank my own coffee while lounging for an hour in my own living room, then trundled to the Hunt wrap with classicaljunkie for all of that. Had the traditional post-wrap dinner at the Uno's near me with half the team. Poof, dark out, and now its 8.

Hunt recovery will do that to you.

We fell short of making it into the endgame. Really, we didn't come close. Our pace was pretty good, but we were completely overwhelmed with unsolved puzzles by Sunday afternoon. They were hard this year, and there was a lot of them. I personally found it hard to concentrate on any one puzzle, and never really got interested in the whole structure, though that's an entirely subjective complaint that the rest of my team didn't reflect.

Sure I had fun, though - thank you, Dr. Awkward and company!! With a day between me and the coin getting found (congrats again to the Bombers) my appetite for solving's definitely come back. I think I'll be tearing into the latest P&A shortly.

Comments

[greenlily.livejournal.com]

I agree with you about the structure, actually. Eight (!!!) Mystery Hunts have not made me a better puzzle solver, but they've brought me much closer to getting a feel for what a satisfyingly constructed puzzle (or set of related puzzles, such as a meta) feels like. This one didn't feel so good.

[gwillen.livejournal.com]

Hey, I found your LJ by Googling 'site:livejournal.com mystery hunt 2008'. How far did IIF get? (Which Dossier meta puzzles did you have left?) I'm on Manic Sages, and am curious how other teams found the Hunt.

I personally agree somewhat with your lack of interest in the Hunt structure, and think some of our team felt that. I felt like we didn't put anywhere near our usual punch into metapuzzle solving (although we also deprecated our previous practice of having a subteam of dedicated meta-solvers, which doubtless affected that as well.)

Also, I have been recently pondering what sort of dietary supplements I should maybe be considering for life extension. As the commenter on your previous post, I have somewhat of an aversion to things that smell like snake oil, but I think both reservatrol and omega-3 supplements (omega-3 actually having some FDA support, according to Wikipedia.) Anything else you're taking / thinking of taking / thoughts on the topic in general?

[prog.livejournal.com]

I wasn't paying a lot of attention to how we were doing after Saturday afternoon or so. It took us a long time to crack any metas at all, because of unfortunate miscommunication about the suspect names - we were looking only at their names, and ignoring their other info. I estimate we solved maybe two-thirds of the puzzles (including backsolves) but that's just from looking over peoples' shoulders as they looked at Palindrome's tally-sheet, so I'm not certain.

Our team's benevolent dictator posted his thoughts to his own LJ: http://tahnan.livejournal.com/145054.html

I haven't updated about my adventures with Resveratrol. Because it's currently nothing more than hope in a bottle, a lot of the (completely unregulated) vendors are pretty slimy, and Zarf's snake-oil comment totally applies. They're the worst parts of a quite varied landscape, though. I'll post more thoughts later (and tag it 'resveratrol').

[gwillen.livejournal.com]

... Wait, that was Zarf?

Zarf has a _livejournal? :-D

(As a member of CMU KGB, our bylaws require me to consider Zarf somewhat of a demigod, since he's responsible for the initial version of our Capture the Flag With Stuff. Also, he writes awesome IF.)

[radiotelescope.livejournal.com]

I have a livejournal account, but I never post to it.

(But zarf is fed from updates to my web site.)

Appropriate demigod honors may be rendered at the KGB Reunion this spring. I'll be there.

[radiotelescope.livejournal.com]

(Apparently demigods don't know Livejournal formatting.)

[gwillen.livejournal.com]

unfortunate miscommunication about the suspect names

Yeah, I already talked about this in a comment on tahnan's post (in reply to someone I assume was from Palindrome.) There were two groups that the Sages would not have gotten if we had gotten that email sooner. (All the others we got through names first.)