Comment: Puzzle Hunts

i_beg_to_differ.jpg

Nice filename :-)

~Jeff

?Hola Larry Hosken!

Just a note to say "Hola" now that we each have links to each other. I actually remember sitting across from you on the train back from Hogwarts but I was a little too conked-out to make any friendly chit-chat. Regardless, our first Bay-area game was a lot of fun and it'd be cool to make it down there for another event, so perhaps we'll meet up again one of these days.

Also, just curious: how specifically did you know my neighborhood was called Phinney Ridge? Are you familiar with Seattle-area neighborhoods or...?

~El At?mico (a.k.a. Jeff)

?Viva Los Jefes!

I've been reading through your Hogwarts writeup -- ever so fun, as usual. A few things that I wanted to comment on:

Team Lowkey really does have a Real Graphic Designer. Jen, one of their members, is a Real Artist. Hence their awesome coat of arms. :)

You think we didn't find any appropriate Weasley fanfiction? Well, we were actually looking for fanart, and we found *lots* of it. But we decided at the last minute that it was just possible that some people might have more delicate sensibilities than the two of us, and then Ian also got worried about the fact that, technically, it might constitute child porn. Despite the fact that he'd plastered dour faces of Queen Victoria over all the naughty bits. So no calling cards. ;)

Err, there might be other things, but I need to go to sleep now instead of continuing to read.

Hi Larry,

I enjoyed your writeup on Hogwarts, nice work. Curious about this, though, in reference to us "a team to whom I was already in Karmic arrears."... Dare I ask what this refers to? :)

By the way, about the phone call, no worries about the delay. We were having a really hard time getting phone reception and were happy just to get any connection at all. :)

Rich

Hi Larry,

I have only recently become aware of the Game and other puzzle hunt activities and am very anxious to make up for lost time. I was able to participate in the Shinteki: Decathlon II event (as Better Late Than Never) and in BANG 16: The Amazing BANG (as Total Perspective Vortex Survivors) however I was much too late to sign up for the upcoming Hogwarts Game.

In my search for all things Game-related, I came across your web site and have enjoyed many of your puzzle hunt stories but it was your first such tale that has sparked this email. In it, you described your own beginnings in puzzlehunting and how a fellow Gamer took pity on you and allowed you to join their team. In the spirit of karmic rebalancing, I was hoping that you might be willing to help me catch such a break.

I have subscribed to both the Orkut and Yahoo! Game groups but my membership is still pending and so I cannot read or send any messages. I realize that the Hogwarts Game starts in less than a week and that there is only the slimmest chance that a team will have an opening, much less be willing to chance a newbie, but it pains me to think that I am missing some opportunity. Has any team posted about having room? And do you have any advice on how I might best put out some feelers without being rude?

Thank you,

Jonathan McCue

http://lahosken.san-francisco.ca.us/anecdotal/hunt/15/signs-times-seatback-window.html

JPT called this one "cobra milking," but I thought a better caption would have been "blowing the question."

Thanks for another great writeup!

~CKL

There have been a few puzzle hunts run here in the past. Matt Stephens ran them as an initiation for his fraternity while he was at the University of Texas. After graduating, he began a company (www.compunltd.com) and ran a handful of Puzzle Hunts here, calling them Midnight Madness. He has not done one in over a year though, and I am unsure as to whether or not he plans on doing any in the future. I, on the other hand, am looking into putting one together. I would love to be able to create a puzzling community similar to the one you enjoy on the west coast.

-Phil

"Maybe this one Seattlite was so glad to escape the drizzle that they reacted to this heat with joy instead of lethargy."

Nah, we were busy escaping the 90+ degree heat up north. I think it was hot everywhere that weekend. But hey, free ice cream - who wouldn't react with joy?

Hiya, Larry,

What I actually said at the Rose Garden was something like, "pay no attention to this time sheet", because I was sitting there recording arrival times. The Shinteki time sheet was highly inconsistent with my professed coincidental presence, so I thought I'd throw you off the trail, see.

I enjoyed the writeup, as always. I had even talked with Darcy about deliberately doing something wacky when you showed up, just so I would go down in the annals of Game history.

- Ian

Hey, Larry,

Thanks for forwarding the Mystic Fish e-mail, and for honoring us with one of your great write-ups. I was glad to see that my reference to you in the hints didn't weird you out or anything (apparently Wei-Hwa wasn't particularly amused by the existence of a Wei-Hwa module in the Sudoku puzzle), and that you weren't too spooked by the state of our house (we thought of putting a simple puzzle on the ducks on our shower curtain that would have resolved to "SORRY OUR BATHROOM IS JANKY".)

It's also hilarious that you were the one who ended up getting the one Palm that was displaying the end location. I had literally just finished programming the master Palm, and in my sleep-deprived state, I said, "OK, we're about ready to start handing out Palms", which Darcy reasonably took as a signal to actually start handing out the other Palms, many of which were blank or had been used in playtesting or contained a silly fake Game that I had been using to amuse Darcy. (It was one puzzle long, and the answer was "THAT'S WHAT SHE SAID!", a reference to a Saturday Night Live skit that had been in vogue in our household. As we left that clue site, I was still worrying that some team might end up typing in AMBIDEXTROUSLY to no avail, give up in frustration, and then be told that the answer was actually "THAT'S WHAT SHE SAID!")

- Ian, for Get on a Ferry with Kerry (Darcy and I tried for like 10 minutes to come up with another one involving a real President, and our hat is off to you. I decided that it would have been too crass to invoke Get on a Steamer with Cleveland yet again.)

The Tidy Bowl Man would have loved this, if he ever had fantasies of being Liberace.

'Lene

Larry,

Wei-Hwa Huang told me about your description of going through the Registration maze. I thought it was fantastic, so I added a pointer to it from my Bureaucratic Maze page.

By the way, your pointer to the Bureaucratic Maze is set up wrong. It should point here:

http://logicmazes.com/bur.html

Best,

Bob Abbott

Larry,

I just ran into your website and wanted to drop you a friendly line and extend my sincerest thanks for the very kind words about your visit to the Isotope for Free Comic Book Day 2004. So, "Thanks!" I'm glad you enjoyed my little piece of comic book heaven and found yourself some good books to read.

Also, I dug your write-up on the SFMOMA Video Walk, sounds like a surreal good time!

James Sime
Isotope - the comic book lounge
San Francisco
415-753-3037
http://isotopecomics.com