Iron Puzzler is once again coming to the SF Bay Area. This is that weekend-long combo puzzle-design and puzzle-solving contest in which teams spend Saturday creating puzzles using "secret ingredients"; then spend Sunday solving each others' puzzles. The period(s) in which the Iron Puzzler event went dormant are the darkest years of my life.*
There's even a division for first-time puzzle designers in which you get a mentor to give you great advice like "You should use this totally sweet word list, it's roughly sorted by puzzle-suitability" or "Maybe choose a less flammable material for that." I signed up to be a mentor. You should, too. But wait, you're thinking, What if I don't have time to share all of my puzzle-designy wisdom with these nice folks? Also, I think I can't stand people? Don't worry about any of that. I signed up as a mentor last year; my mentee-team never asked me anything. It took zero time! I could have mentored ∞ teams, no problem! If you're not playing in Iron Puzzler, signing up to be an Iron Puzzler mentor is a great way to smugly say "I'm helping the local puzzlehunt community to grow; what have you done?" without actually having to stop collecting Pokemons. Why are you still reading this? Why haven't you clicked through to the Iron Puzzler site?
*This is not true.
