This puzzle made the “top five” for the Mystery Hunt, and I didn’t see it during the hunt, so I thought I’d give it a shot.
Actually, I didn’t see any of the top five during the hunt, though one of the five was explained during the wrapup. I may try the remaining three later….
The puzzle is here and my solving log for my 55 minute solve is after the cut…
Last year I joined a new team, Luck (known then as Luck Luck Goose). It was and is a great team, with great people on it, and my puzzle buddy Jasters joined me… and I had a bad time. I mean, going to the hunt and seeing everyone was great. But I love puzzles and somehow my puzzle solving last year was a train wreck (as I blogged last year). This came as a surprise after two prior years at the Hunt, one amazing and one very good.
So, this year I was a bit worried and cautious. Potentially making things worse was that I made the call in November after a tumultuous year to not fly East for the Mystery Hunt. Multiple people I know told me they’d tried remote-solving before and it had totally sucked. Jasters for example has flown east from LA every year since his crappy year remoting, without hesitation, since he had no fun remoting for his first Mystery Hunt.
I knew that DrSudoku had remoted with Luck last-minute last year. I had never solved with him (or talked to him for more than ten seconds at Bay Area puzzle events), but I still figured solving with a known-excellent solver was better than solving alone. I didn’t know for sure how we’d get along, but fortunately we solved very well together. Although his early indications were that he was heading to Boston, my voodoo doll and shooting-star-wishing worked, and he had to change his plans and stay in the Bay Area. I leapt on the chance to invite him over, he accepted, and I was very happy.
In summary, it felt like my solving went really well. Not perfect… but I did get to do some of my favorite things: pull out the final extraction when people are stuck (more than once)…. do a solo solve beginning to end … do an exciting group solve that is super-collaborative (multiple times on that one)… and rescue someone from a marathon slog puzzle (my buddy Jasters and others, with a tiny piece that got them over a hump.)
I definitely think that being better rested helped. Flying to Boston and sleeping in a hotel always leave me exhausted before the Hunt even starts. Adrenaline overcomes that to some extent, but not fully. More importantly I think, I learned to give up on puzzles that seemed roadblocked and potentially unsolvable by me. It also felt like a lot of the puzzles were… easier. That may be entirely based on being better rested and dropping roadblock puzzles, I’m not sure.
Below is my recollection of my solving experience, as close to the style of this blog as possible. I have chat logs and Google Docs revision histories to reconstruct from, but Google Spreadsheet chat logs are lost. I really wanted to convey details of what my solving was like, what tools I used, how long things took, how Ahas came about, etc. This reconstruction is the best I can do. I won’t take about the hunt overall… I was very focused on one little part at a time and never really took in the structure, themes, plot, etc.
Hi, back with more Gaffney. MGWCC 185 is here and my (21 minute) solve is after the cut.
With Mystery Hunt coming up I will be solving some old Hunt (or at least Hunt-like) puzzles in the next couple weeks, and blogging them here. Hold me to that.
This week’s MGWCC took me over 90 minutes, as I danced all around the right method in two attempts. I didn’t finish until early Tuesday morning.
By the way, this Thanksgiving Weekend I will be solving the Thankstravaganza and will try to blog the solves of some of the puzzles here.
The MGWCC puzzle is here and my solving log is after the cut.
Real life remains quite busy, with only time to solve (with detail logs) the weekly Gaffney puzzle.
I was unsure about this one even when I sent it in (and apparently I got it the wrong(?) way, not sure.) But I did get the intended pointer to the solution before I sent in my answer, which gave me more confidence.
The puzzle is here and my log is after the cut
First I should say that this weekend is an event I’m very excited about: Intercoastal Altercations 5, with daily puzzles running all week. Get on them now if you haven’t. The meat of the event is Saturday.
I struggled with this Gaffney with life being a bit hectic lately. According to Matt’s comment at The Crossword Fiend Blog this one had 351 correct entries, but you wouldn’t know it from the difficulty I had. It took me 17 minutes for the grid and almost 50 minutes on the meta.
The puzzle can be found at http://crosswordcontest.blogspot.com/2011/10/mgwcc-175-friday-oct-7th-2011-hunt-for.html and my log is after the cut.
Tough one, both fill and meta. Took me about 1h47m over two days. The puzzle is here and my log is after the cut.
Don’t forget, this weekend is a favorite puzzle set of mine: Mark Halpin’s Labor Day Extravaganza. I’ll race you, and I’ll probably get my buddy Jonathan to help me. And then I’ll blog our solving logs afterwards, unless I forget.
Hi, I’m back. I’ve been solving some puzzles in the meantime, most notably the 2011 CiSRA puzzles which were quite good: http://puzzle.cisra.com.au/puzzles.php. Sadly (for me and for you) I didn’t blog them. I got the first solve in a puzzle for what may have been the first time, which was cool. We wound up in 5th place, 30 minutes out of third place, where we would have wound up behind only our MIT Mystery Hunt teammates on Xyzzy and Plugh. Oh well.
Anyway, MGWCC… I solved 166 and 167 too but they were both really easy (record numbers of successes) so they’re not here. 168, however, I was worried about. It took a sleep and a fresh look. So, even though my total time is about 70 minutes, I’m not sure it would have been nearly that fast without the mind-clearing in there.
The puzzle is here and my solving log is after the cut.
Judging from the comments over at Crossword Fiend, this was a bit easier for me than other folks, relative to other MGWCC weeks. That’s both fill and meta. Maybe my crossword efforts are paying off. I can almost multiple roman numerals in my head at this point.
Just 25 minutes or so, soup to nuts for this one. The puzzle as always is at Matt’s blog and my solving log is after the cut.
My name is Eric Prestemon (email, twitter). I’m going to take a puzzle I’ve never seen before and that I know almost nothing about. Then keep a log of my solution path, whether it takes five minutes or five weeks.
Rules:
