A couple of weeks back, I once again spent an afternoon helping to playtest the MaPP Challenge '26, a puzzle hunt aimed at math-enthusiastic high school students. When university math outreach nerds run hunt at various cities, hopefully things will go smoothly because dedicated playtesters Dave Moulton and I bumped into all the rough edges so the MaPP people will have a chance to sand those down.
The youth might think it's "sus" that I was playtesting their puzzles: It's been 30+ years since I was a high school student. But it's fine: as a precaution, I forgot all of my university math and most my high school math, too. OK, that's an exaggeration. There were a few times during the playtest when I thought, "Oh, I recognize this! It's a [spoiler redacted]!" But I swear I failed to remember anything about [spoiler redacted] that would actually help solve the puzzle.
When I hauled my phone out of my pocket and ran the ClueKeeper app, it was still showing the MaPP Challenge 2025 playtest, which tells you how many puzzling events I've attended lately. (Zero (0))
