I’m back from Boston, where I had a really good time joining Luck Luck Goose (formerly Beginner’s Luck) for the 2011 MIT Mystery Hunt.  We finished fourth, within just a few minutes of third place (after about 51 hours of puzzles).

A good, detailed log of our solving from his point of view by my teammate Joe DeVincentis is here: http://devjoe.livejournal.com/38419.html

My experience was great, as Luck is a great team to solve with, full of people I really like. However, my solving experience was pretty much crap.  I was in the first wave on only four puzzles (I think), and on only one of those did it go from there straight through to solution.  On the other three, I missed at least one step on the path to completion. 

The rest of the time, I tried to pick up puzzles others had stalled on and carry those to completion.  I definitely helped on a few of these (Stuff Nerd People Like, for example), but mostly I just bashed my head into figurative walls.  I don’t think I had a single moment in the whole hunt where I went from “I don’t know how this works!” to “I know how this works!”… which is really the thing I’m there to experience. 

My essentially unedited log (with week-later thoughts added in []) is after the cut. I’d like to thank my teammates for letting me play with them, and for letting me post publicly in detail about our experience.  Any mentions of them and their solving haven’t been double-checked with them, so they may be incorrect, and the mistakes are mine.

2011-01-14 Fri 11:51: Got here at 11:15, went to La Verde and bought snacks and sodas for team.  We’re pretty much set up and chatting.

 12:28: Back from the intro. As predicted by Mike Sylvia, the theme was the (interrupted) wedding of Mario and Peach. Not that that helps.

 12:30: Idle… waiting for Nathan. He’s here!

 12:33: At URL… not doing anything interesting

 12:34: I got assigned upload video of intro task… uploading

 12:43: uploaded. server going live at :47… idling. 

[Pretty excited/nervous at this point]

 12:47: We’re live! Just scoping things out

 12:48: Looking at karaoke night…

 12:56: Identifying songs with rock* and artistry. paused halfway. tiring. about to restart

 13:20: ID’ed about half the songs. most seem like karaoke. not sure if all are. solving harder songs now.

 13:22: Ok, splitting into 1-2 person groups. Bowen is heping too… Still no insight into the final step. 

 13:23: Bowen suggested just applying the times [to the given audio file… the times apply instead to the original songs]. They don’t seem to map to the song fragments, plus they only go up to 4:55 and the mp3 is 7:20 or so. I will ponder this.

 13:25: My team just unlocked world 1-2, after solving two puzzles in 1-1. yay.

 13:26: I’m going to try and map songs to the time ranges for a bit

 13:32: That didn’t go well. Jumping back and forth for a bit. We need an aha, I think.

 13:35: Looking at distribution:  0:* 15, 1:* 13, 2:* 10, 3:* 2, 4:* 1…. hmmm. And why karaoke? We need to add in the  lead singer’s words?

 13:37: Segment lengths, 4:1, 6:3, 7:2, 8:4, 9:3, 10:4, 11:2, 12:7, 13:3, 14:3, 15:2, 16:1

 13:38: (I don’t expect to extract from those, just thinking about the data and what they mean)

 13:39: Bowen suggests finding that time range in the original song. Sounds right.

 [What took us so long? Not clear]

 13:44: Closer seems too ambiguous (and not on Rhapsody!) moving on

 13:47: Torn works great. Bowen said Clocks works great… but both are lots of lyrics. I say we keep pulling out phrases and look for patterns. Long phrases couuld be right.

 13:49: Creep by Radiohead kind of works…. close enough.

 13:53: A couple others work, but Pork and Beans cuts up a line 

[I really wanted the time ranges to match up to phrases in the songs, as a confirmation. Not sure if they do, but they didn’t all seem to in my checking.]

 14:04: Almost all have I or me… no other clear patterns

 14:04: Other people are finishing their puzzles… I’ve been left alone, collecting data. A little jealous.

 14:18: Felt like I was off by one on some (like girls just want to have fun), but the lengths of pieces match up. Just need to pull the lyrics that go with the segment of karaoke given (duh)

 14:20: We’ve solved round one meta, and I have a ways to go… so I’m putting it on hold for now. Still don’t know what to do with the lyrics segments

 14:22: helping with Hammer Time

 14:23: Vraal has about 6-7 solved already

 14:25: looking for some pattern in answers. COIN * phrases?

 14:27: JONAH… ex?  Bench? WARMER… 

 14:28: onelook for MARIA (common words) gives AVE, SANTA, and TIA

 14:28: Cornish or Manx for the language….

 14:29: cornish gives HEATH or PASTY, manx gives CAT or SHEARWATER

 14:34: MARKER maybe for mcfadden vehicle, since it fits pattern

 14:39: hmm, LEG goes with IRONS and WARMER. could be good

 14:46: hmmm, HEX… could lead to HEX WRENCH

 14:54: TAPPER JONAH and COIN seem solid. Looking into those specifically.

 14:56: HAMMER TIME… tools? piano? bones? 

 14:57: BOOBIE (which Craig got) also seems solid

 15:01: got a soda. alone on this puzzle.

 15:11: MAGIC for MARKER?  This isn’t going anywhere.

 15:13: Oops, our spreadsheet was missing the first clue.

[Adding TINGLING as the first one here was key, as it’s one of the easiest to use to recognize the Aha]

 15:17: mike sylvia (whom I didn’t know was working on it) announced a breakthrough

 15:17: “Letter changes of brothers”

 15:21: ok, Mike and I have about half of them. Old->new letter columns, old looks like it might have HAMMER

 15:23: Updated a new person with my karaoke ‘progress’, back to looking for brothers

 15:23: Guessed (correctly) that Mike dropped in, saw TINGLING, and had the a-ha

 15:24: Mike got enough to get TOM’S HAMMERIN BRO, for HANK

 15:28: HANK was wrong, trying HANKAARON 

[HANK seems like the right answer for that clue phrase. Obviously you’d call in both, and I did.]

 15:29: Correct. I didn’t get the aha, but I helped. Especially by noticing the TINGLING clue wasn’t on our spreadsheet!

 15:30: looking at 1-2 meta. we have 4 of 7, 

 15:31: Ertchin pointed out that WINTHROPPAROO contains HOPPAROO

 15:34: ECO could be ECHO THE DOLPHIN? dunno

 15:40: Screw it. Looking [briefly] at mountain pass with nathan and zebraboy

 15:57: Not exciting blogging. I’ve been trying to solve a downs-only diagramless crossword.

 15:58: feels like the top row may have 3 4 letter answers… or not.

 16:02: Had an idea for 1-2 meta…

[I was not close to the right idea]

 16:06: we have 5 roles, with single actors who played them. looking at those names

 16:14: Zebraboy suggested they’ve done video game voices? checking

 16:15: Someone (not working with me) figured out their love interests are flowers

 16:17: And that’s solved. well done to whoever got it.

 16:23: hmm, people have found ANKA, VEGA, and SHAM in 1-3 answers, those are stars

 16:26: Mike Sylvia got P?L???S (first letters of constellations for the stars)

 16:28: Moving to Pattern Recognition

 16:40: My idea is that group 1 has pattern, group 2 doesn’t and group 3 is braille. 

[Was I the first person to get this? Probably not. Others had been working on it]

 16:40: So far, we have east/west mississippi for U in braille…. Dead/alive for T in braille, and with the flags, all-rectangles for A in braille

 16:42: The words are in the declaration of independence?

 16:53: Oh, there are three rules per row. someone already figured it out

 17:08: We have ?URE?????ED?I?UTE?A??  but world 2 just opened… so I (and I think everyone else) move on. 

 17:18: Funny Farm! But it is responding slowly, and is up on our projector… we have lots of people working on it

 17:19: Trying Good Vibrations

 17:19: My second song id puzzle… yay?

 17:27: Server is not doing well

 17:32: I’m ID’ing songs from the in-page copy of the mp3. Can’t download it. whee. six so far

 17:42: Site is working now. I can use the help. [Because other people can download the mp3]

 17:44: Ok, no idea what’s up with the blanks. looking at that now

 18:05: Oh, the artist and song seem to fit, maybe…  sometimes ish….

 18:18: Corey suggests the songs couuld pair up with beach boys songs

 18:21: Maybe phrase-wise, or as #1 songs before/after (corey’s idea too)

 18:29: We still have no idea. Corey, Wes and I muddling through, grasping at stuff.

 18:36: Most are aligned with phrasing?

 18:47: Lucky matters?  earthquakes?  still nowhere really

 18:50: thinking of giving up. 

 18:54: Rock climbing (Rocky Horror) is mostly done but stuck…  checking

 18:57: information passed on. working on what’s there (alone, I think)

 19:06: Ok, sorting the clues by picture read READ HOLDS CLOCKWISE BY LIMB

[Hmm. I may have been the first person on my team to figure that out.]

 19:08: Tape marks have lines and vs, and most are 3 of one color one other, but not all… and some have 2 colors per hold

 19:09: lights off and on? morse? trying first color as far as it goes. line is dash, V is dot (or vice versa, heck)

 19:21: this is the part I’m supposed to be good at. One V per picture…

[As an ex-casual-climber, who mostly bouldered in a gym, how did I forget what the Vs meant? Argh. Between that and the final step which we never get, this one puzzle was responsible for more head-slap feeling than any other in the hunt.]

 19:28: Asked jasters for help.  [Sorry, Jasters! He wasted hours on this puzzle too]

 19:33: Trying V as the start. duh. thanks Andrew who helped us get there

 19:59: Completely stumped. we have tried lots of things

 20:01: with letters MNKIOKKN… guessing KING KONG. 6 letters right

[Those letters are from numbers between 9 and 15… which we were supposed to use to index into the original clues. Why did we never try that? Why did I put the letters but not the numbers into the spreadsheet?]

 20:02: Going for a walk

 20:10: I’m back. not going any better

 20:39: jonathan suggests resistors. colors look familiar

[We have missed the obvious, and is now time to over-complicate. This will be repeated later in Drafting Table]

 20:53: Asked Corey to help. getting food

 21:12: Back from food. Nice and full. putting on music and trying to finish the SAYC puzzle. I think, for the record, I have not solved anything. the SAYC puzzle has stumped others, but who knows… I could crush it

 21:23: Joe has already figured out the correct bids, and how far each bidder is off from having the points required.

[Joe came back to this and figured out where he went wrong at first, and nailed this puzzle just fine. I didn’t wind up getting what was going on. At least I only spent <20 minutes on it]

 21:24: what are the odd of each contract making?

 21:24: in hand 6 they have 0 chance. 

 21:24: Maybe they had interference? But they’d still never have bid 7N.

 21:27: why the simple encryption layer?  

 21:30: I got nothing. Looking for something new.

 21:37: Maybe Metrology. Looks abandoned

 21:39: they have FOOT for the first one. Don’t like it

 21:49: There’s a OO column for some of them… but Vesa Toskala definitely only has one O

 21:52: thomas points out lower grid is divided first into 3x4 grid. interesting…

 21:55: which makes me want to put one answer in each square… hmmm. maybe it’s a cryptogram, and certain letters go in certain shapes?

 21:58: or do the answers wind along the metools path?

[Someone remote found the list of quilting patterns that breaks this puzzle wide open, later. Without recognizing that angle, there’s nowhere to go. The “stuck til you realize there’s an external thing you need to relate the data to” thing happened a lot in this hunt.]

 22:02: Dunno. peeking at Games

 22:15: Nothing. looked at metas. nothing

 22:25: Ntris solved, that’s 3 in that group. let’s solve meta. (w jasters)

 22:31: left it to jasters. not sure what to work on

 22:48: from RO?EU??N??S?M?RE … I guessed RODE UPON HIS MARE… so I guessed THE PLOWMAN

 22:50: it is unsurprisingly wrong

 23:07: jasters thought of T9 for blackberry man. but both smiley and angora don’t have higher probability predictions

[There’s a  Blackberry keyboard with two letters per key… none of our Blackberries in the room had this keyboard, and we didn’t find it online when looking into Blackberry typing suggestions.]

 23:21: I was tasting a couple white powders. very few are obvious. hmm. Also haven’t figured out the dollars in that puzzle.

 23:23: staring at the dollar amounts for a bit.

 23:35: just did a bunch of little things on various things… nothing interesting

 23:42: Ok, starting in on Stuff Nerd People Like. People have noticed contradictions.

 23:55: wow, the time is flying, and I am not solving much.

 23:58: sucked corey into my morass of not solving (SNPL)

 23:59: and he sucked thomas in. I’m  bringing them up to speed.

 23:59: and now we’re double checking spreadsheet data

 23:59: Corey points out that violations may match # nerds who like it. Seems very good!

 23:59: it feels like #2 has 5 violations, but only 4 likes… hmmm

 23:59: sadly, the nerds who violated prime numbers, were all odd, but one is not prime

 23:59: getting pretty close, it feels like.

 23:59: still plugging away, have words like NERD and SONG likely

 23:59: we have something like SING US A NERD POSTER SONG, but it is 2 shifts too many

 23:59: NERD PASTER SONG, actually

 23:59: but still considering SING US A NERD POSTER SONG

 23:59: we’re trying PATTER song instead

Sat Jan 15 01:35: Confirmed correct. yay. 

 01:39:52: There, fixed my time macro. sorry about not noticing that.

 01:42:24: snacking. relaxing.

 01:52:14: We opened our 5th puzzle for each of megaman rounds… I’m trying The Least You Could Do Is Phone Me

 01:58:50: Many of my answers alternate 5 and 4 letters

 02:12:49: Dart and then Artistry helped me. I had most of the answers (right). They noticed the phoneme trick, and we blew through it

 02:13:08: Then we were going to spring, but I suggested SOURCE, which worked like the other clues in the puzzle, yay.

[A quick solve for us, and a nice get at the end for me, hooray. Wish I’d noticed the main Aha, but my smart teammates got it instead, which is okay]

 02:15:09: with 4 of 6 on blackberry

 02:31:45: and 3 of 6 on craps man. trying that. (after suggesting to jasters that the othello boards need to be played out)

 02:41:44: ok, enough of that. looking for melodies with FA MI SOL LA TI in that order (plus other notes)

 02:50:25: no luck there

 02:51:23: maybe each one is a roulette number

 02:55:37: ok, no. Trying pesky bugs

 03:06:11: ok, no. Going to watch dave and jasters do othello

 03:07:25: going to try finish up the crossword puzzle puzzle, that tyler did a lot of (One More Try)

[We wound up backsolving this. The fact that some of the songs had made the top forty with two artists was just too big a red herring to get past. I must learn to drop those ideas that don’t go anywhere and try others.]

 03:37:04: no progress. moving on to audio

 04:14:57: Gave up on that, now working on Basic Knowledge with Wes.

 04:21:43: ok, spreadsheet set up. Wes left to solve pesky bugs. I’m on my own

 04:41:11: not really making progress. dicking around

 04:55:54: Aha. I fixed a couple answers in Basic Knowledge and got ?????????T, a movie with the form of gambling ???SE*, I guessed HORSE RACING so… SEABISCUIT. which was right.  

[I definitely got help from the room with this one. Not sure who got the answer… I think what happened is that someone else suggested Seabiscuit (we knew the answer was 10 letters) and only when I fixed things so we had a T final letter did I suggest calling it in.]

 04:59:26: Going to help Jasters and Dave on the Othello puzzle

 05:09:05: this is, in fact, hard

[It felt like was *almost* doable. Maybe I was just too tired. It was 5am. Dave and Jasters tried a lot and didn’t really get these. It’s still not clear why not. They don’t branch that much.]

 05:14:03: walking (and snacking) break

 05:24:07: Back to Othello

 05:45:55: it’s fun watching Wes (remote) working on the audio puzzle, Thomas is back (remote), working on a Game of Life Puzzle, etc. Plus we understand the round 2 meta-meta already (we think). Pretty fun, especially for 5:45 am

[Listing people working here because there were very few of us at this point. Lots of people left to sleep.]

 05:57:39: Ok, I should try the juggling puzzle.

 06:00:56: Okay, they have siteswaps spelling words in 3 of 5 routines… that’s good

 06:32:31: Confirmed ILLOGIC for the first, getting COO… never mind, if I use ONE for the pool ball I get CONCEIT

 06:39:05: ok, I have all 5 words, ILLOGIC, CATNIP, GRAIL, CONCEIT, OCARINA

[Well, I helped in getting the two that were trickier to read off.  But boy, this was the second most frustrating puzzle, after the rock climbing. I think it was gettable too, but at least it wasn’t as trivial as the rock climbing. We never solved this, or its meta.]

 06:41:22: we didn’t think CATNIP cycled in, but it can stand in for Cauliflower

 06:45:01: Just doing the simple indexing the video number into the weird word in each move, it gives ACRI… and nothing for the last ( a 7 with CATNIP)

 06:56:39: trying to stack the 5 special words by juggling throw height 7-3

 07:14:00: dave points out the 2nd letters spell CORAL. we laugh and don’t call this in. for the record. 

 07:31:33: Nice confirming… the number is present while the word is being spelled out, exactly

 07:35:08: It does suggest that the important words are the ones that are generated during that time.

 07:42:12: short break to look at bebop man meta, we have 4 of 5

 07:44:06: oh, they got it

 07:52:12: back from a walk. we got round 3. hmmm. should I try to finish juggling? I think so. I’ll let them sort out round 3 for a bit (the overnight sleepers got here in the last 30 minutes or so)

 08:02:27: Ok, now back to juggling, though stumped. 

 08:06:06: hmm, some words have a word similar to it where it’s defined… but maybe that’s just to get the right letters. GRAIL/GARLIC, OCARINA/APRICOT

 08:20:10: ok, trying to crack round 2 metameta.

 09:14:36: long time. some very close tries. I guess I should solve a puzzle instead

 09:18:56: Looking at Song of Birds

 09:47:56: Don’t know. Going to look at… Rocky Horror.

 09:58:08: Helping with recombination. wes and projectyl are working on it

 10:08:44: we liked ALL IN (indexing into the generated words, simple). but it’s wrong. The meta has all different length words. ours was 2-3, even more new lengths

[ALL IN is the first half of the answer phrase. The key is to keep juggling the 5 items, which I never tried. Not sure why not.]

 10:35:01: ok, back to rocky horror

 10:54:40: pulled out B N O RI A T E, guessed BARITONE

 10:55:00: kind of looks like NEBRIATE

 11:09:11: another walk. need a soda

 11:27:57: going to ponder ROCKY HORROR and RECOMBINATION til I solve them both.

[Poor Eric. Nobody on your team is ever going to solve either. Or the metas they’re in.]

 11:43:58: heh, text chat had these comments: “Does IKESCIPSCIA look like it’d make a sensible clue phrase?” ” it almost looks like a sort of name”  and I said “MIKE SCIOSCIA?”, which was correct. Not sure why I know how to correctly spell his name.

 11:45:36: Counting the ways need solving punny inverted titles.

[They weren’t inverted. They were all titles from one album. This puzzle … was not a hit with my team.]

 12:10:20: Enh. back to ROCKY HORROR

 12:16:26: we have 2 of 3 zelda meta ideas. looking at other.

 12:24:07: Nope, they have all 3

 12:33:26: trying E, ST, or STM for STEM… none working

 12:35:07: back to counting your ways for a bit

 12:53:35: just chaotic lately. lots of zelda meta progress. I watched/helped a bit.

 13:13:28: more meta stuff

 13:20:11: peeking at EXECUTION GROUNDS

 13:23:44: nope, our megaman section needs help

 13:29:59: staring at rocky horror more

 14:02:00: bowen guessed that STAGECRAFT - AGCT = SERF… looking at what that means for meta meta

[During this hour, I try lots of options, including (correctly) making CRAP be the letters that come out of modifying CRAPS… so we are very close to cracking this. If I’d tried the WILY crib, I would have gotten it. So close]

 15:21:14: cool. jonathan and I did a little, projectyl and another group got some.  we got 

 15:22:08: holy crap. WILY was there on the page the whole time. Why didn’t I try it? So sad.

[Ok, done with megaman meta-meta.. At least I don’t have to do Recombination or Rocky Horror ever again]

 15:28:06: We need one more zelda to get that runaround. Jasters and I will get it!

[My optimism was not well-founded]

 16:03:32: the hangman one didn’t go so well. trying The Crypt next

 16:44:52: Been thinking about Crypt. meanwhile we got virtual round 3 runaround, cracked another round 2 meta (and wildly backsolved). I tried to ignore all of this to stay focused.

 16:45:21: But now i’m going to write a quick program to solve the last missing backsolve, I think

 16:50:25: The best from my list was SWAYINGS. I suggested it, and it got called in, correct. They’d thought of SWAYING already, but this had 8 letters.

[Or maybe they’d thought of SWAYINGS, and my second vote for it convinced them to try it]

 16:54:23: convinced jasters to help with rocky horror

[Wait? Why am I working on Rocky Horror! Stop it!]

 17:02:28: new puzzles came out a bit ago, in civ round. we should go!

 17:33:52: Drafting Table: We id’ed all the teams. I noticed the logo commands under each one. I guessed draft order, which looks right…

 17:34:11: Now looking for a good logo interpreter.  The shape is not quite anything recognizable

[Somehow we didn’t get the correct shape. I’m still not sure why night. Our upper arc was instead a full circle. Should have just been done at this point.]

 17:46:16: stepped through it in logo. it’s doing little waggles while it’s making the shape

 17:51:25: Jasters already gave up.

 18:06:28: Dave and I still working. not sure what to do with this symbol.

 18:07:30: stepping through logo again. pauses oddly. may just be noise. actually, break first

 18:13:25: back, chatted a bit. stepping through logo

 18:18:37: AFK pizza!

2011-01-15 Sat 18:46: Back to the old time stamps. which have decided to work. *shrug*

 Sat 18:46: ok, figuring out the end of each step of the drawing… not entirely sure why, TBH

 Sat 19:50: A teammate suggested swapping in teams’s instructions after someone got traded..  seemed to make a cool logo… that we can’t identify

[We have made this simple puzzle much more complicated because we somehow got a step wrong. So we go off on a wild goose chase for … over two hours now. At least I gave up at this point.]

 Sat 19:58: ok, This SHOULD Be Easy looks like an RFCs puzzle (with the all caps SHOULD). diving in.

 Sat 20:02: Yay, found the chicken RFC

 Sat 20:44: Well, a teammmate and I found 5 of the 7… but the input/output and 5 state ones are not yielding.

[So, we had 5 of 6… but we mis-identified one… so we got the *29 number, preventing me from going with letters from the second two numbers … which was the right path.  I was *so* close to getting this one at this point. But instead we are stuck, and I try dumber ideas.]

 Sat 20:49: Trying to count the capital letters in the titles

 Sat 20:56: giving up. time for another break.

 Sat 21:07: Ok, free to solve. Dunno on what.

 Sat 21:16: someone asked for help on quotes puzzle Oratory

 Sat 21:22: But there are already a bunch of people working on it. It’s a fun puzzle. little ahas, not a brick wall. I’m going back to my brick wall puzzles.

 Sat 22:27: looked at recombination, helped people with stuff, got a snack.  too many stuck puzzles, I can’t bring myself to attack another new one (after the basketball and rfc become stuck as well. blah)

 Sat 23:08: a group is stuck at the end of amateur hour. maybe I can get stuck on another puzzle!

 Sat 23:11: VOCE BAND MATE?  there’s a band VIVA VOCE, so I guessed VIVA

 Sat 23:32: Thomas has changed V to R (I agree). tryiing to nail down everything after M.  ROCK B?ND 

 Sat 23:33: The logo puzzle was just mercury. W T F. Grrrr. I liked our trade idea.

 Sat 23:35: Got a suggestion (switching parity male vs female)

 Sat 23:44: trying to nail down last few letters with remote thomas…  ROCK BAND MO[ST][ED]… blah

 Sat 23:48: ROCK BAND MOTD sucks… I joked there aren’t enough band members in the last one to be ROCK BAND MOT[ORHEAD]

 Sat 23:59: Crap. need to fix my timestamp again 

Sun Jan 16 00:31:58: Ok, that’ll fix it. Emacs confuses me.

 00:47:26: Still no resolution on Amateur Hour. grrr

[It’ll be a long time before we google ROCK BAND MOTD and find the thread about the puzzle answer hidden in the Rock Band MOTD]

 00:57:56: helping Artistry with Crowd’s Chant… he’s figuring out the order from minor key Take Me Out To The Ballgame

 01:04:56: “helping” was a bit strong. he’s sorting songs, and I’m not really helping. Going to look at STAGECRAFT MAN puzzles we left behind. that’s our really stuck round.

[We already got the meta-meta for megaman. Sure it would be nice to get that meta, but why am I not working on Civ puzzles? Weird]

 01:07:19: Where’s Antoinette looks fun.

 01:12:10: Our spreadsheet has walking maps on google maps already, and everything. I’m going to look at them as numbers or as-the-crow-flies or something.

 01:48:10: Just told my answer for the puzzle was right, and then that it wasn’t, 15 seconds later. Thrill of victory, agony of defeat.

 01:53:02: With ROCKBANDMOTD or ROCKBANDMOTP… we have tried 7 answers (not all by me) and all are wrong. This is not the best times of hunting.

 01:55:02: Bowen googled. Someone at Harmonix got forced to put a secret message in the Rock Band MOTD this weekend.

 02:08:43: Ok, working with with Marc and Dave on the Fascinating Kids puzzle again. We got the missing id. now trying to understand the who-wrote-what part…

[Not sure we’d have ever gotten this puzzle, looking at the answer explanation]

 02:36:47: still kind of working on it… we are losing momentum

 02:41:56: Dave suggests going back to the juggling puzzle.

[Don’t do it! Why?]

 03:32:14: We finally noticed all the AGCT letters in the clues… but we still don’t know what to do

[Those don’t matter! Even though the puzzle is called recombination. I didn’t spend too much time on them at least.]

 03:39:25: Hey, round 5! new puzzles! 

 04:36:51: That was so fun (Plotlines) we didn’t want to solve when our teammates got the right answer (with just 3-4 ids)

 04:41:17: Jonathan and I doing Losing Our Nerve, which looks great.

 05:02:08: went to get a drink. jonathan and i are gearing up to plow through this grunt work puzzle. always fun after being up for 46 hours. w00t!

 05:10:25: Screw it. I’m going to write a program to ease the pain of the manual translations.

 06:21:24: codex won. J and I are still going strong. my program seems to be working.w e’re debugging our understanding now

[We never understood this puzzle fully. So this work was all wasted without the right aha]

 06:41:28: We’re not happy with… the thinking required for this puzzle. Moving on for a bit.

 06:53:26: Group was talking about the first round 5 meta for a bit…. 

 07:03:05: Ok, looks our best bet for a 3rd meta-meta is round 4 (round 3 being roadblocked by a few key puzzles)… so J and I are back to that.

 07:18:59: It’s quite thin here. Four folks debating where to buy our free puzzle. Jasters and me half-solving. Whee! Tired post-coin-found solving!

 07:42:14: We bought an answer in zelda, trying to crack the 2nd meta there.

 08:06:50: I know, I’ll try the scheme puzzle!

 08:15:26: That lasted about a minute. Working on Study Materials, after a quick break.

 08:23:19: Ok, looks the point values are maybe partial answers’ scrabble values? 

[Nope, this is another puzzle that refers to some external data, and is hopeless until you figure that out]

 08:37:14: Scrabble values not working. My focus is lagging. hunt being really done? tired? both? who can say… I think I’m done helping.

[I decided here to stop blogging puzzle by puzzle. I thought our chances of reaching the runaround were low. My brain power was certainly low, and I don’t think I helped on any puzzles after this. ]

 13:00:30: Hi. I slept for a bit (at my seat. you’re welcome, people in neighboring seats). I helped a bit with some meta-ish things (and maybe puzzle things, dunno). still very sleepy. We are getting close to squeaking in a runaround before the cutoff. Not sure we’ll make it. Not sure I want to.

 15:59:07: We went on the runaround! We found a cube, no longer holding a coin! Yay, sort of!