Team Sharkbait was there! Well, they played the session before us. Rock on, Team Sharkbait.
The toughest thing I did all night was give up a spot on the team with people I knew. Leading up to the game, I'd been insufferable: "Hey, guys we should get there early so that we're sure to be on the same team." But getting there early didn't help. The organizers assigned people to tables. Of the five BANGists in attendance... four went to one table and I went to another. In hindsight what I should have done is wandered over to the table with the four BANGists. There were also two non-BANGists there. I could have asked the two extras if one of them would trade seats with me. It turns out that they knew people at the table I'd been assigned to, so they might have gone for it. But I didn't do that: instead, I looked around the room for clues. Dumb, dumb, dumb.
In theory, it's nice to meet new people. But... this was basically solving puzzles. There was no van ride filled with idle chatter in between. Sitting around a table with puzzles, not so much idle chatter. So I learned that Trish is surprisingly good at [redacted] puzzles, solving one in seconds that had confused me and another guy for minutes. And I learned that J.J. was good at Ahas. Yeah, somehow I don't really feel I got to know them very well.
The puzzles were nice! An hour-long puzzlehunt feels different from other kinds. It's more of a sprint. If you're playing at SF's New People gallery, the room's not really air-conditioned; one of the guys on my team was overheated. It made me glad that so many of our local events are outside in the open air.
That's the spoiler-free advice I can give: I wish I'd tried to trade seats with someone; and I'm glad I wasn't dressed too warm.
