I'm not cool enough to attend SXSW, but when folks there twitter about attending a puzzlehunt lecture, I pay attention. A lecture about puzzlehunts, forsooth. Apparently, a couple of folks put together a couple of puzzly treasure-huntish games. Furthermore, they wrote them up online. You can tell that they learned some lessons by the time they ran the second one--they provided better cluing on the puzzles, chose less sabotage-prone clue locations, and a couple of teams actually finished.
- XXX, in which much goes wrong, but the participants figure out they're onto something good
- Poisoned Picnic, which ends by addressing the winners: "Next time, you guys get to host!"
Maybe we're all re-inventing the wheel here, but it's a fun wheel.
Labels: link, middle states, puzzlehunts