Puzzle Hunts: Notes from Volunteering at the Googol Congolmerate Game

I volunteered to help GC (the Burninators) at the Googol Conglomerate game. Mostly I watched a refrigerator. I took some notes. I don't know how coherent they are, but they're all I've got.

• Some members of Game Control (GC) aren't Googlers, and thus need a Googler to walk them around, badge them through doors, and make sure they aren't looking at too many secrets. Thus, I accompany Ian on a visit to Team [Tmp]. It's an intern team. When they ask whether they'll get t-shirts if they do well, I try not to snicker. What is it with interns and t-shirts? Ian says that during the playtest, he slept in the storage room behind the GC HQ conference room. I know that storage room: the tech writers used to have a weekly meeting in that conference room and once I went exploring. I start to ask, "Did you find any booz--" as Ian says "I found this champagne bottle." I remembered finding an open bottle of champagne in that storage room, flat and halfway-gone. I remembered pouring the remaining champagne out so that we could recycle the bottle, thinking about decadence.
• I am a "runner", delivering things from GC HQ in a conference room to outlying spots. When folks ask me what I do at work and I'm too lazy to give the real answer, I say "I deliver the sandwiches." As of today, I am no longer a liar: I deliver a sandwich to Doug Zongker.
• I am an observer. There's a run-around puzzle and at the end of it, players get to talk with Melinda. Melinda would like some warning before teams show up. The last leg of this run-around starts at the Naked juice refrigerator in the lobby of building 42. Melinda asks for someone to watch the juice so that she has some warning before teams show up. So I set up a chair by the piano in building 42, watching the juice refrigerator. I sit there for the next several hours.
• I am watching the juice, waiting for teams. But not everyone who shows up at the fridge is a team. And apparently not everyone who shows up at the fridge wants juice. The guy who just sits and stares at the juice refrigerator. In the end, it turns out that he's not playing. He just thinks a lot about juice. Over the next few hours, he eats a lot of food out of the bulk bins and uses the massage chair. I hope he got some work done, too.
• I'm still watching the juice. I'm sitting next to Everybody [heart] Nutella's printer. Chiu-Ki recognizes me immediately and knows that something is up. She doesn't interrogate me, though. Except, later, about the triclops headlamp.
• I'm still watching the juice. This lobby I'm sitting in is pretty bustling. It's next to a laundry room and there's a massage chair.
• I'm still watching the juice. Guy with a baby. The guy sits down at the electic piano, fiddles with the controls. It starts playing a tune. He gets up, walks with the baby a little. Then he knocks over a couple of bicycles. I go to pick up the bikes so that he doesn't need to put the baby down. But now he's lost face. "Haha, I never even touched the bicycles, they just fell down." I say, "Yeah, no fun when that happens." He sits down with the baby. The piano starts playing the same song again--apparently, it auto-repeats. The guy isn't going to turn off the piano--to do that, he's going to have to squeeze past the bikes again, risk knocking them over again, risk losing face. I can't turn off the piano either--or else we'll all have to admit that he screwed up when he started up the piano, and he will lose face. So we all sit and listen to that piano play the same song over and over again. Eventually, they leave. You know what the best feature of an electric piano is? The Off switch. I use it.
• I'm still watching the juice. A couple of the Team [Tmp] interns are here by the printer with me, but they didn't come in through the door they should if they're on the juice-refrigerator runaround. "It says we're supposed to dig near building 42." Oh, they're on another puzzle, one that ends with them digging up a fake rock that's been buried on the edge of the sand volleyball court in the courtyard. They'd gone to the volleyball court, but had shied away when they saw people playing there. They ask me "It doesn't really mean that we're supposed to dig, does it?" "Well, you probably do. And if it says 'near building 42'--well, right now you're not near building 42, you're in it. Do you know the exact words of what you're looking for?" They consider this question dolefully and move on.
• I'm still watching the juice. A security guard walks by. He sees me sitting in a corner by a printer, a strange spot--good only for watching a juice refrigerator. I nod. He nods. I'm probably not the weirdest thing he's seen this week. Not even close.
• I'm still watching the juice. My officemate happens by the lobby. He's surprised to see me hanging out here at 9pm on a Saturday. We talk a little about the hunt.
• I'm still watching the juice. It's just after midnight. An IM conversation:
  me: Happy Sunday!
  melinda: (melinda just went down for a nap)
   thsi is corey
   are you idle?
  me: I am watching the fridge
  melinda: could you come over to HQ?
  
  I head back to GC HQ. It turns out that Melinda is no longer awaiting visitors. No-one from GC let me know... probably because they're panicking because the web application that allows teams to view puzzles is suffering under the load. Whoops.
• The game show experiences technical difficulties. It uses a web site which runs on the same machine as teh web application that's having so much trouble. Or mabye it's this game show web site that's causing trouble for the main web application. In the end, we don't use the game show web site, just run the game by hand. That works pretty well.
• Walking over to the mini-kitchen from the HQ conference room, I see a familiar face. Johannes is here. Johannes is here late. I talk a bit with Johannes.
• In the HQ conference room. Jokes about team names: "What's Brown and Sticky?" "Chocolate bacon"
• In the HQ conference room. Working on my 20% project. We talk a lot about 20% time as a benefit, but you really need to seize that benefit. You need to carve the time out of your schedule. Or you could find your self lollygagging in a big conference room on a Saturday night. Sunday morning. Whatever. Anyhow, I finally do some coding on my 20% project for the first time in weeks.
• Sitting in the HQ conference room. Team [Tmp] calls about the midgame. Melinda & I hurry back to position. Wait around for an hour. Hmm, maybe they aren't doing the runaround.
• In the HQ conference room. I look at a puzzle which is a series of photos from campus. I check carefully--Yes! I'm in this photo. A few weeks back I'd been having lunch outside when I noticed Corey carefully taking photos. I'd made funny faces at the camera. Wei-Hwa says "Now you've been immortalized inside the Game."
• Going to the kitchen from the HQ conference room. It's Sunday morning. JT Goldstone is here. Chat with him.
  
• I am acting! I am in another conference room. Finale! I am pressed into service as an understudy. I am one of two kidnapped Googol founders, Perry. Ian Tullis is Lergey. this is some nonsense text which i am tpying into this bufefr. We are pretending to type our graduate theses. The plot of the Game, now revealed, is that our graduate adviser has kidnappe us and is forcing us to finally finish our theses. Teams burst into a conference room to find our adviser cracking a whip(!) at us as we desperartely type into our laptops. There is a puzzle on the whiteboard behind us for teams to solve. Whn they solve, Ian and I "sneak" away.
• Acting! And then we do it over again for Team Moo. Our acting is not very convincing. Fortuantely, teams seem to figure out what to do nonetheless. Whip-cracking is not conducive to typing.
• Acting! And then over again for Coed Astronomy.
• Back in the HQ conference room. I can do something useful! Melinda is trying to find a cheat code for a Homestarrunner game. Google isn't finding it. But I know about hrwiki.org, and they have the information.
• In HQ conference room. IM from Ron. Rumors that Jimmy L. might be back in California--for cancer treatment.
• In HQ conference room. 11am, Teams that had gone home for the night are starting to trickle back in. And so is GC. More emails coming in, more people to handle them. A team calls up with the AA number--they're going to start the runaround and are on their way to Melinda. I head out for the first stint--making sure that the envelope isn't stuck at the back of the juice cabinet (it is). Googlers are trickling back in, too. This lobby is more bustling now than it was at 3AM.
• Cancer. Crap.

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