Hogwarts Inside Out: Game Control Operations: Middle of the Night

Team XX-Rated was having trouble with their wand. Curtis, in his role of Cornelius, the wand expert, talked to them on the phone, affecting a Southern drawl. "Has your wand expert tried that diagnostic spell I told y'all about?" XX-Rated's wand's timer was just fine. But the LEDs had stopped displaying. (Or am I mixing this up? Was there yet a third team that had wand difficulties? Did Accio brain say their wand was giving out, and that when they'd received it, the LEDs had looked kinda cracked?) Did we have any spare wands? (As it turned out, Cary and Acorn ran into XX-Rated before they ran into RadiKS. They handed the spare wand over to XX-Rated, taking back that wand.) Meanwhile, if Team XX-Rated needed any information from their wand, they would need to call the info line instead.

You might think it would be an advantage to have a broken wand. It could take 10 minutes or more to cast a spell; it only took a few seconds to call the info line. But Team XX-Rated didn't get this advantage, at least not when Justin Santamaria of team coed astronomy answered the phone. XX-Rated and coed astronomy had combined to form the XX-Coed team back in the Mooncursers Game. They'd got to know each other and thus Justin was now able to tease them mercilessly. "OK, I'm not going to tell you what the wand says unless someone on the team is waving the wand back and forth. Otherwise, it's not fair to the other teams. OK, it says 'You cast--' Hey, is she still waving that wand?"

Anna was supposed to pick up her brothers plus Lisa (Cassandra) and Mike. She had to deliver her brothers to Auburn by 2:00 A.M. There was a hitch in this plan: not all teams had reached Lisa yet. So Anna called up Cary, asking him to pick up Lisa later, and then Anna headed off to Auburn. The plan had allowed for some teams being slower than others--but some teams were exceeding our expectations. Hopefully, our plans had enough wiggle room.

DeeAnn briefed Greg deBeer, who would eventually set up the Severus N-Gram puzzle at Griffith Quarry. Some teams were running earlier than expected. Thus, some teams would get there before sunrise. Gee, wandering around an old quarry in the dark didn't sound very safe. How to make it safe? Greg would mark the trail to the clues with glow sticks. He'd be dressed up as a Guardian, would make woo-woo noises and wave his arms around. But he shouldn't chase anyone--and if anyone started running, he should tell them to stop. DeeAnn summed up the goal: "Nobody dies, nobody gets hurt." She didn't say so, but she may have thought of the sad occasion when a Gamer, running around a mining area during a Game (and probably staying up all night), fell down a mine shaft and was paralyzed. I didn't talk about that, though. I just said, "Yeah, repeat business is paramount." But what I meant was "Nobody dies. Nobody gets hurt." It's a good goal. (Editor's note: I'm told that her goals are actually more ambitious than stated above. They are: "Nobody dies. Nobody gets hurt. Nobody goes to jail.")

At around 3:00 in the morning, DeeAnn called up her mom. Her mom and sister were going to hang out at the tea-leaf puzzle spot in Auburn. For the play-test, we'd had a couple of GC folks giving out tea from the back seat of a car. For the real game, mom and sis were making tea while Curtis handed it out from an enclosed food cart. I couldn't hear what DeeAnn's mom was saying on the phone, but I could hear her voice. She sounded bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, better than I would be if I had woken up before dawn planning to drink tea in Auburn in the dark.

More activity around GC HQ. DeeAnn let Crystal know that she was up past the end of her shift, and could go to bed. Cary called up to say that he had picked up Lisa and Mike; they were now all headed back to the Firefly site.

DeeAnn decorated one of the lockable toolboxes to look more Hufflepuff-ish. We play-testers had whined so much about our troubles finding the Sticks and Stones puzzle under a bush at Maidu Park that that GC decided to try something else: leave the clue in plain sight, but inside a locked toolbox so that raccoons wouldn't get in and throw everything around. Thus, this toolbox was now anointed with Hufflepuff stickers and a yellow bandana. Hopefully when teams saw these decorations and a yellow padlock, they'd realize that they needed to cast HUFFLEPUFF with their wands, as back at the portraits puzzle.

Joan was awake. Joan wanted to know what she was supposed to do; she'd lost her printout sometime in the confusion last night. Unfortunately, this turned out to be impossible; the big 22-page spreadsheet that showed everyone's jobs at all times was an Excel spreadsheet on some machine back in the bay area. Team Snout mostly used Google Spreadsheets to keep track of spreadsheet-ish things during the game--it was easy to share them between all the computers that were running. We didn't need to set up a LAN. But the big spreadsheet hadn't made it into Google Spreadsheets. Lesson learned: put your data where you can get to it on game day. And remember that other piece of data over there. Oh, and that other piece of data, too.

Teams were calling up about the Tea Leaves puzzle. They were confused by the lock picture. They thought it looked like an acorn. Hmm, Continental Breakfast had made that same mistake. Guessing from the way that Jan was teasing Chris, coed astronomy had also identified that picture as an acorn. "It looks exactly like an acorn." "It doesn't look exactly like an acorn." "The, uh, the hat is too big--" "I think it's that we didn't expect there to be key--" "We thought about leaving out the key, but then there's a purse... No acorn has a hat that big." "Uh--" "No acorn has a hat that big." "Maybe you don't--" "Right, we shouldn't be debating something that multiple teams have arrived at. Clearly, it's an acorn." Chris was coming around. It was tragic. What made the clue cool was the idea of reading tea leaves where everything was drawn with the letter "t". But that was tricky, and teams kept calling in.

Volunteers on the info line talked about which teams and which people were nice--and which were not. "One of them is so bitchy." "So bitchy." "She's just so mean." I wondered how bad a team's reputation has to be before they stop getting admitted to games. I wonder what you say if you're Game Control. "Well, you solved all of the application puzzles just fine, but we don't think you enjoy these games, and so we encourage you to do something else that weekend." But what about a mostly-nice team with a couple of mean people? That's the situation the phone crew was talking about now Was there a tactful way to admit a team to a game but tell them to leave Ms. Meanie-pants at home? Maybe not. And since most of the team was nice you did want to be tactful.

We knew that Lisa was back when we heard Cassandra Cross' "Helloooo". Lisa had had a fabulous time. Her arms were covered with scribbled numbers. She explained the numbers: "The whole idea is that I was crazy." Mike Durgavich walked in. His eyes twinkled more than mine did at this late hour.

Team Blinded by Quidditch had solved a few puzzles in a row very quickly. They were surging ahead of the pack. They were threatening to surge ahead of Game Control, to "break the game." We were scrambling. DeeAnn was scrambling, figuring out how to keep planting clues ahead of BBQ. We were running out of cars. She was on the phone, talking to someone. "It's about 5:30 now. They're about a half-hour ahead." "Blinded by Quidditch" "They might get there before you are--" "Juggling cars--could use more cars. "More keys. Might have to have someone drive to Dementor site and having two people switch cars." We needed to get Dementors into position, might need to get someone into place with a puzzle at an emergency clue site, needed to get people to the ziggurat, to the finale site (the Delta King steamboat/restaurant). Visions of cars and drivers whirled around DeeAnn's head, resolved themselves into a picture only she could see.

Blinded by Quidditch called up the info line. They were in Maidu Park. They'd been searching for the puzzle for a while and hadn't found it. They wanted to narrow down their search. They had backed up to the main fork in the trail. Could we tell them which branch to take? I would have been tempted to stall. They were already breaking the game, and now they were calling for help? Then again, finding the puzzle was not itself supposed to be a puzzle. It wouldn't be a fun game if the challenge was to search a big park for a small box with no clues. I remember how stumped we'd been as we wandered around Maidu Park. Now I wasn't tempted to stall them at all. No-one else seemed to have been tempted to stall them in the first place--Sean, who'd planted the clue, came to the phone and talked BBQ through finding it.

Elena and Georgia scrambled out the door. They had to plant a clue and get ready to act like Dementors before Blinded by Quidditch showed up. How long would that Sticks and Stones puzzle keep BBQ busy? Probably not long. Our Dementors were out the door. We were out of vehicles at GC HQ.

Blinded by Quidditch called up to say that they'd found the box in Maidu Park. Sean noted, in hindsight, that we could have marked the path to the clue with glow-sticks. Meanwhile, some teams were still back in Auburn, asking directions to the tea-cart.

Miss Jerry was talking to Team Briny Deep. All the phone volunteers liked talking to Briny Deep. They were always sweeties, and they talked like pirates. "Red skies at morning, sailor." Miss Jerry was telling Briny Deep to take warning. "You'd better be packing clean underwear for what we have in store for you." That was quite a warning; she paused for the Briny reply, then said. "Maybe you have one pair between the six of you to share." Another pause, then, "OK. Right, yes, 'Reparo.'" Briny Deep knew the Harry Potter magical spell to clean their underwear; they were ready for anything.

It was time to wake up people who were on the 7:00 AM shift. Here, I made a mistake. It was a fairly awful mistake: I woke up Crissy for no good reason, pretty soon after she'd finally gone to sleep. Listening to the audio recording afterwards, it's easy to hear what went wrong. DeeAnn was saying who needed waking up. At one point she mentions Crissy--and then points out that there's no point in waking up Crissy. Crissy wanted to film the Dementor scene, but the Dementors were long gone, so we could let Crissy sleep. Unfortunately, I got distracted by another conversation partway through. Too much going on, I didn't focus enough. Lesson learned: Focus. Don't mess up. Anyhow, I wandered off to the sleeping rooms, found sleeping people, woke them up, made sure they were really awake and in motion.

Most of the time, I didn't have much to do. I didn't want to go on info line, just in case DeeAnn suddenly needed an assistant. I finally figured out something interruptible I could do: data entry. Team Snout used Google Spreadsheets to keep track of spreadsheet-y things. We used a Google Spreadsheet to keep track of team status. But we didn't ask the phone volunteers to type all that phone data into a computer. Instead, they took notes on pieces of paper: which team, when they called, had they finished the puzzle or were they asking for a hint, any bonus points awarded. That slip of paper went into my inbox when the phone call was done. I'd edit the spreadsheet, find the row for that team, the column for that puzzle, and enter the information.

Folks debated which emergency puzzle to throw in front of Blinded by Quidditch. You'll remember the notion of emergency puzzles--there were some emergency sites that didn't have puzzles associated with them, and there were a few puzzles that could be dropped pretty much anywhere in the story line. Blinded by Quidditch was running an hour and a half ahead of the pack. Folks were talking about a puzzle called "Numerology".

"Numerology? Total block."

"For Blinded by Quidditch?"

"Yeah."

Numerology was a tough puzzle, perhaps impossible. No-one on Team Snout had solved it without needing a hint (except for Lisa--she designed it). At one point, the solver had to look at some numbers and realize that they were international telephone dialing codes for certain countries--some rather obscure countries that even a jet-setter probably never calls. For all other puzzles, all necessary information was in the textbook. (You may recall that Coasters required knowledge of trivia that wasn't in the textbook--and that was part of the reason it had been relegated to the emergency puzzle bucket.) For numerology, teams would need to figure out international dialing codes, national holidays, and stranger things. Sean described it as "a brick wall."

This felt wrong to me. As a player, I want Game Control to give me puzzles that they think are solvable. Play-testers should have seen that puzzle and been able to solve it. Perhaps they solve it in the comfort of a nice living room while well-rested, but they solve it. Numerology broke that rule.

And yet, and yet, I'm not sure that I have a better idea of how to slow teams down in an emergency. You could give them a lot of little puzzles which you know are solvable--but you probably don't have that many extra elegant puzzles sitting around. Numerology was hard, but it was more elegant than throwing a book of crossword puzzles at a team and saying "let me know when you finish these."

Further mitigating... the Blinded by Quidditch people were better puzzle-solvers than we were. Who was I to say that a puzzle was "too hard"? Maybe they knew something about international dialing codes. Maybe when they figured out that other pieces of the puzzle involved mapping thingies to countries, they knew they'd need to map numbers to countries and somehow figure it out. Or they'd struggle with it for a while and call for a hint.

A call from Team RadiKS to the info line. They'd found a car key in the parking lot of Griffith Quarry. Did we have a lost and found? We asked them to hang on to the key, we could announce it at the after-party, see if anyone was missing a key.

Folks were still debating whether to throw Numerology at teams. It looked as if more than one team might hit the Emergency Clue. "That one was just impossible." "Just impossible." "They should get double points for solving that one."

Dawn had broken. Businesses were opening. The nearby coffee shop had opened. Joan and DeeAnn had driven to pick up some coffee. Now, they were calling back to GC HQ--not to take coffee orders, but to report that the car would not start. We were short of vehicles, we needed to deliver an emergency clue--and now we had a car out of commission. They were staying with the car, they would call the auto club, they were close-by if we needed them--but the auto club needed DeeAnn to be with the car.

We needed to slow down Team Blinded by Quidditch. Maybe. They still had to solve another puzzle before they reached the Emergency Clue site. That puzzle might slow them down. So we had another emergency puzzle ready. This puzzle was not a brick wall, more of a fired-mud hurdle. We'd watch their progress. At the last possible minute, we'd dispatch a driver with a puzzle. Which puzzle? That would depend on the timing. What car would we dispatch to plant this clue?

Jim Keller phoned in. We were all really glad to hear from Jim Keller. Jim Keller is generally great, but we were especially glad to hear from him because he had a working vehicle. Jim was suddenly very popular. Jim also was familiar with the Emergency Clue site--it was the water intake facility he'd navigated Team Continental Breakfast to during the play-test.

Then a phone call from Greg deBeer--the last team had picked up the engram puzzle at Griffith Quarry. Thus Greg and Andrew were ready to come back--with a car. Our resource restraints were fading.

Though DeeAnn was stuck in a coffee shop parking lot, she was still driving the rhythm of GC, figuring out the logistics. She called up Curtis, who put her on speaker phone. Soon, we'd need people at the Ziggurat to greet teams, ask them to cast DYNAMITE, and give them pieces of Mugglium. When Justin came back with a vehicle, he could drive over with Daniel, dropping off Sean and Curtis at the Delta King to set up the after-party.

RadiKS called up to ask if we had a repaired wand waiting for them at some location. We were confused--we did have a plan to send them a wand. But the wand was in the car broken down in the coffee shop parking lot. So we said, yes we have a wand, wait no we don't, wait yes we do, no sorry we really don't sorry. Eventually, we gave the wand to Daniel so he could hand it over at the Ziggurat.

Sean and Curtis were talking about setting up for the party. I was figuring out who was supposed to be awake for the next phone shift. Curtis was saying that some equipment was needed from Anna's car, that we needed Anna. Well, we needed Anna's car key. Unfortunately, I heard the part about needing Anna, didn't hear that we just needed her car key. And so I went and woke up the people for our next shift, plus Anna. She woke up, came downstairs to GC HQ--where we found out that she didn't have her car key. She'd handed that over to her brother Rob last night. Thus, I contributed to another screw-up. Lesson learned: No, really, focus. No, really, don't mess up.

DeeAnn phoned in. They'd been messing with the car. They got it to start up, mostly. The electronic displays didn't work, but they could make the car go, they could make the car stop, they could steer, the essentials were in place. Maybe we didn't need the auto club after all.

So GC logistics had a lot of complicated phone calls and running around. Meanwhile, the info phone line was heating up. Teams didn't know what to do about Dementors. "Have you consulted your first aid kit?"

DeeAnn was back and things already felt a bit more organized. "Now, who's on van duty?" Some hands went up, but not all that we would need. Soon it would be time to receive vans from teams at the Ziggurat, drive those vans to the airport to return them. Soon we would need many drivers. Some of them were still asleep. I made my rounds, waking people up.

DeeAnn called up the Dementors. One last team, LowKey was on their way to this optional puzzle. Slower teams would get skipped over it. Thus, when Team LowKey had picked up the puzzles, the Dementors were free to come back.

It was time to start breaking down GC HQ. Logistics folks threw trash into trash bags. We gathered together peoples' backpacks to make sure we didn't leave them behind. Jan on the info phone line announced that a team was on their way to the Ziggurat building. That was the cue for van drivers to head out to the Ziggurat building. Things were about to get hectic. DeeAnn's phone rang; she handed it to me.

DeeAnn briefed the van drivers. I talked to Georgia the Dementor on the phone. She wanted to know what Team LowKey looked like. Finally, a question I could answer. "They'll look kind of goth and pale like they ought to be rock stars." Georgia wanted to know if Team LowKey was wearing Hawaiian shirts. Once I'd recovered from cognitive dissonance, I said that that was probably team Lurem Pistrix!, a.k.a. "Sharkbait". The Dementors also wanted to know something about the puzzle they were guarding. I was no help here, handed the phone over to Chris. Teams had been throwing their chocolate at the Dementors. Perhaps they'd read the story at the beginning of their text book in which cocoa poisons the original Dementor? Anyhow, they were throwing their chocolate, chocolate whose wrappers they would need. Instead of taking the chocolate the Dementors shambled away from it so that the teams could pick it up if/when they figured out that they needed it.

The van elves stampeded out the door and things quieted down.

The info phone line folks still had plenty of questions to answer. The rest of us set about tearing down everything that wasn't immediately useful to the phone crew. Tossing out more trash. Someone found a bag full of cigarette-smoky clothes in a closet in a plastic trash bag labeled "not trash". We kept track of them--but in the end, they didn't belong to any of us, had been left behind by some previous tenant. The motel had a debris box, but it was locked. Someone thought to ask the maids what we should do with all of our trash instead of leaving it in bags all over the room. They loaned us a laundry cart.

I still had DeeAnn's phone. Andrew called up. He was a meta-van-driver, shuttling van drivers from the airport to the ziggurat. What was he supposed to do after he dropped off a load of van drivers? I asked DeeAnn--Andrew should come back to GC HQ. A team called up the info line asking about the fate of a piece of luggage they'd handed over to GC. It wasn't in their van. We asked around. No-one knew what this team was talking about. Then again, not all GC people were in this room. Could this mysterious luggage be in someone's car trunk? A call from Miss Jerry--their group of drivers couldn't find the correct place next to the ziggurat. DeeAnn had driving directions--and partway through hearing those directions, Miss Jerry's party spotted their destination.

Meanwhile, we continued to tear down GC HQ. Maps and printouts that had been taped to the walls were now taken down and folded up. The info line people still needed to see this information, but they only needed information on the last handful of puzzles, only needed maps for Sacramento and its suburbs. Trash was gone, dishes were cleaned and drying. There was still a computer projecting team status up on the wall, still people sitting around with phones, still some printouts on the coffee table, but no hint of the crowds that had passed through, the crises, the last-minute electronics repair.

Elena and Georgia, the Dementors, were back at GC HQ. A few teams had thrown chocolate at them. If a team threw their chocolates with the vital wrappers on, the Dementors would drift away from the chocolate to give teams a chance to pick it up again. "We were going to give it back to them, but then we thought, They'll figure it out."

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