Dr. Awkward was here, ere H saw Dr. Awkward

[jedusor]

This entry is going to be long. Really, really long. Ridiculously long. You have been warned.

I planned to do lots and lots of reading on the train, as I had about three days of travel time to use up. I ended up reading maybe a quarter of Richard Dawkins' latest book ("The God Delusion," which I will describe further in a separate post when I finish it), sleeping a lot, and listening to a lot of music. I don't often get a chance to listen to full albums, as I'm a) busy and b) easily distracted. Not so on this trip. A list of the albums I listened to, beginning to end: the Avenue Q soundtrack, the Chicago soundtrack, Zombies! Aliens! Vampires! Dinosaurs! by Hellogoodbye, The Magnificent Tree by Hooverphonic, Switch by INXS, Hot Fuss by the Killers, Black Holes and Revelations by Muse, the Phantom of the Opera soundtrack, Stunt by Barenaked Ladies, Pretty Hate Machine by Nine Inch Nails, Is This It? by the Strokes, Drops of Jupiter by Train, and With Love And Squalor by We Are Scientists.

I sat in the Chicago station for about five hours. Every fifteen minutes, a voice over the loudspeakers requested that travelers "add your eyes and ears to that of our own," which bugged the hell out of me. If they're going to go to the trouble of making a monotone recording, they might as well use proper grammar. There were hot French chicks sitting near me, though, so I coped. Oh, and constructing crosswords is seriously not easy.

On the last leg of the trip, from Albany to Boston, I struck up a conversation with a guy and a girl from England, who were apparently just wandering around the States, seeing what they could see. They asked for sightseeing suggestions in Boston (I wasn't much help there) and shared their chapstick with me, as I'd forgotten my Burt's Bees and my lips were in bad shape. Hearing the guy say "lithium-ion battery charger" in his British accent made me giggle a lot. I got his e-mail address, and I'll shoot him a note sometime soon.

What prompted me to wander off to Boston with a day's notice, you ask? Why, the MIT Mystery Hunt, of course: a fun-filled weekend of puzzles and sleepless camaraderie. This year's hunt theme was Hell. Our team leader accidentally sold our souls (gotta read that one-point font in the contract!) at the beginning of the hunt, and the idea was to win them back by completing a series of courses in being Really Really Evil.

There were seven sin events, one for each of the Seven Deadly Sins. I made it to three of them, which is surprising, considering that only three team members could attend each one and our team (Dr. Awkward, which I squeezed into at absolutely the last minute; thanks to Fuldu for accomodating me) was comprised of at least fifty members. Pride was Friday night, and Hathor and Jeremy went to that one with me. It was a fashion show which turned out to be a live-action game of Mastermind, with a judge dressed in white ("Faaabulooouuuus!") and one dressed in black ("Dreadful!") holding up numbered signs to indicate how many clothing items of the correct color each model was wearing.

Wrath was the next morning, and it was probably my favorite puzzle of the whole hunt. Hathor, Tyler, and I met up with the other teams in the designated place and everybody started sniping at each other to gear up for the event. Then the organizers came out and gave us maps and yelled at us, and everyone was swearing and having a grand old time. We all went into a room with Lunch Boy's cartoons on the walls and were told that we were finished when we had taken "an interesting picture." The cartoons were cute, and we all wandered around looking at them for a while. After about an hour, Hathor figured out that one word was missing from the litany of adjectives the organizers were throwing at us: "I'm irate!" "I'm irked!" "I'm wrathful!" "I'm peevish!" "I'm angry!" But no one ever said they were mad, and that was the clue. We had to hold up the map to each cartoon to form a Mad Magazine fold-in. We ended up with the clue THEXMATICBUILDING, which was of course THEMATICBUILDING with an X-marks-the-spot on the map. At the X on the MIT campus, we took a picture of the map in front of the letters on a building to form the fold-in THEORY, which Lunch Boy looked at and informed us that the picture simply wasn't wrathful enough. So we went back, and Tyler found the Rage and Ire Building, apparently well-known to MIT students.

The final event I attended was Gluttony. Our team was assigned a certain amount of food to bring based on the number of members in the team. Al DeSuda, Bowen, and I did this one. As we ate, we wrote down answers to trivia questions. After the trivia bit was finished, we were allowed to substitute other team members to finish the food, and the results of the quiz were announced: we had gotten 27 correct out of 30 questions, earning us the right to give up four items of food.

The other sin events weren't quite as good, from what I gathered (except Greed, which sounded interesting; something to do with a Wheel of Misfortune). Lust required one dominant team member and one submissive, and everyone was expecting it to be interesting, but it was something to do with pickup lines. Eric and Tyger, our representatives, were not impressed. I never got the details of Envy, but it involved the exchange of items brought by the teams, apparently including a block of sodium. Sloth was held at 4am, and consisted of lying on a couch, without writing implements, and listening to lullabies. Team members had to stay awake and figure out a word that was being spelled out slowly (one letter every minute or so).

I worked on "Legal Men" with Cramerica. It was basically a lot of Googling, which is something I'm not that terrible at. Cram finished it while I was on a bathroom break :( I played the checkers game in "Spellcheckers" using goldfish crackers and chocolate-covered espresso beans, but Tinhorn got it remotely before I finished. (I was on the wrong color anyway.)

Other favorite puzzles: "Unsound Effects" was very nice, though I didn't do it. Same with "Hell Hath No Rhyme Scheme". I worked on "Bloodbath at the Rainbow Room" for a long time, but didn't get anywhere... but I just looked at the answer, and it's pretty brilliant. "Choose Your Own Misadventure" was another one I pounded my head against for a long time without getting much of anywhere, but my incompetence didn't make the puzzle any less good.

There was a woman from This American Life hanging around our team's room, interviewing people about the Hunt. She talked to me for a while after the Pride event, but I don't think any of my quotes were good enough to end up in the ~20-minute segment that will air. I'm still looking forward to it, though.

A new Hunt rule has been formed after this year: Jangler is not allowed to keep thoughts to himself anymore. The first reason for this was "The Stunted Growth Puzzle". We had figured out that the two grids on the left needed to be filled with episode titles from the TV show Arrested Development, and that the numbers next to the grids corresponded to the season and episode numbers, but that wasn't working for the other two boxes. About four of us were stuck on it for maybe twenty minutes. Then I heard Jangler mutter, "I guess I was wrong about the band thing." Pressed for an explanation, he said that Arrested Development is the name of a band. It turned out that the other two grids were song titles, and the numbers corresponded to albums and tracks.

The other reason for the "no more silent Jangler" rule was the Round 8 meta, which stalled our team for something like six hours. We had ten words of ten letters each, and ten sets of ten state abbreviations, but no grid to put them in. I think it was Al DeSuda who finally realized that we had to use the seating plan for the United States Senate. Turned out Jangler had thought of this several hours before, but hadn't taken it anywhere.

After we broke past the Round 8 meta, we barreled right through to the finish line. The answer to Round 8 told us to declare war on another team (but not to tell them), so we declared war on Setec on the grounds that they had all the liquor and we just had soda pop. (That was Ucaoimhu's idea.)

We went back to Hathor's, crashed for a while, then met up with Trip and T McAy for brunch at a place called Johnny D's, where I had the best granola I've ever eaten (coconut pecan granola) AND the best home fries I've ever eaten (they tasted almost like the garlic french fries at the Whole Earth Festival) in the same meal. Truly breathtaking.

Then we headed back to MIT for the wrapup. As they went over "Unscrambled Cable Porn," I nearly slammed my head into the back of Trip's seat. I am not a great solver, but come on. "I appreciate your input"??? I know that song back to front. I should have solved that puzzle. I'm really mad at myself for not seeing it. But hey, what can you do? Sigh.

The answer to one of the puzzles was "submit an almost plagiarized Dan Brown work," and one team submitted "The IKEA Code," which I borrowed from the organizers after the hunt and gleefully read aloud to my table at the post-wrapup dinner. (Interior design emergencies are something the FBI tends to keep quiet about.) I hope it's posted online at some point.

After the post-Hunt wrapup, the post-wrapup dinner, and the post-dinner boozing at a bar, everyone headed back to Hathor's for some post-boozing boozing. (I did not, for the record, drink.) Ed was very cute sloshed, and so were Hathor and Foggy's wife, whose name I do not remember but whose nom I suggested, as she kept referring to herself as such: Mama. Trip told me that Cil and Denine's names are in the running for the geekiest thing he's ever heard. Bill's cats are named after RNA proteins: uracil (you're a Cil) and adenine (a Denine).

Here's the index of all the puzzles. I haven't even gone through all of them yet, and I know there are a lot more great ones in there. Congrats to the Midnight Bombers for a fantastic hunt. It was a hell of a first.

I never come away from an NPL event without an overwhelming sense of awe at the amazing people I know. (Well, this wasn't technically an NPL event, but most of my teammates were NPLers.) I can't believe how lucky I am to have regular opportunities to spend time with this group. Their brains are intimidating, and most of them have great senses of humor and are fun to be around, and they somehow manage to make me feel included and part of the team even when I'm not doing anything but watching with my mouth open. Three of the people in that room were in Jeopardy! episodes airing during the first half of this year. I had dinner on Sunday night with the national crossword champion and the world pinball champion, for Christ's sake. How cool is that?

I stayed with Hathor (who, after this weekend, is in the running for Most Awesome Person On The Face Of The Planet) and her man Ed, who is also pretty neat. Artistry crashed at their house too, and I got some good chatting in with him. I spent some time talking to Jeffurry (who is utterly adorable and gets drunk entertainingly quickly) at the first post-dinner boozing session.

I met Tyler in person, after six or seven months of talking online. He's pretty much made of awesome, too. I immediately stole his hat; temporarily at first, and then I won it in a bet over the results of a hockey game. (This is the second time I've won a hat in a bet with a guy.) We hooked up for the weekend, which rocked. I don't think he's looking for a longer-term FWB thing, but it was fun anyway, and I'm glad it happened. Oh, and he got me this. I can't wait until I have my own fridge to put it on.

I met some new people too. Bowen, the pinball guy, kicks some serious ass and needs to join the NPL pronto. An MIT freshman on our team, Katherine, added me on Facebook, and I got the LJ name of a Stanford grad student called Nathan. Tabasco was very cool, too; I hope she makes it to the Michigan con, though she didn't sound optimistic. I also met Tablesaw's girlfriend, Jonaya, whom I liked from the moment she told me she wanted a shirt with the words "I'm not polyamorous, I'm just a slut" on it.

The trip back went a hell of a lot faster than the trip to Boston. There is no food near the Albany train station. I wandered for three blocks before I found someone who directed me to a grocery store (after confirming that I am in fact from the same Kansas City that is home to the Chiefs; from his expression as he asked, I fear what might have occured had I been from a different Kansas City). On the train to Chicago, while talking on my cell phone between cars so as not to bother the other passengers, a guy came in with a case of beer and sat down to wait for it to cool off, explaining that inside the car, it was too hot. I chatted with him for a while. He's fighting the Man by not paying taxes, drinking a lot of alcohol, and smoking medical marijuana for his back pains. Interesting guy.

In the Chicago station, I found out that not only do I have enough front desk hours at the T/LC this semester, but I also got the Student Activities Grant again, and Scooter's Coffeehouse called me about an interview. So that's good.

I got back at midnight to discover Kansas City coated in three inches of solid ice. Home sweet home.

The answer to one puzzle was "make a bad sequel to Wordplay." Here's our offering, as best I can remember it.

Wordplay II: This Time It's Numeric

Cast of characters:
TRIP PAYNE: Tyler
TYLER HINMAN: Trip
AL SANDERS: Bowen
ELLEN RIPSTEIN: me
INTERVIEWER/ANNOUNCER/CELEBRITIES: Quiz

INTERVIEWER (to Tyler): How did you get involved in sudoku?
TYLER (bouncing around like a kernel of overly zealous popcorn): Well, my name is Tyler Hinman and I'm eleven years old.... I've been counting since I was three, and I'm good with numbers. My friends say I know some really funny numbers.

JON STEWART: That's gotta be a nine. And that's a nine, too. You know what? Screw it, I'm just going to put in nothing but nines!

ELLEN: I had this boyfriend who used to put me down, and I said to him, "Well, how high can you count?" (throws baton into the air, watches it fall without even trying to catch it)

KEN BURNS: Numbers are everywhere. They're the basis of everything we know. And the best thing about sudoku is that it includes all the numbers... except zero. Can we cut that?

TRIP: I like some numbers more than others. 7 is a good number. Some numbers are boring, like 2. 2 is a boring number. But when a number ends in 7, it's usually prime, except you have to be careful, because sometimes you'll end up with a number like 27 or 77. And sometimes it'll end in a decimal, like 7.2... or 7.49... Anyway, 7 is a perfect number. Well, no, it's not. 6 is a perfect number. But 7 is a very good number.

INTERVIEWER: Is there a computer program that can solve sudoku perfectly?
TYLER: Yes.

BILL CLINTON: I worked with numbers a lot when I was president, and there are a lot of similarities between that and sudoku. You start with a 1, and before you know it, there's a 2, and eventually you've got a whole lot of numbers. And then the Republicans steal your surplus.
BOB DOLE: I hate puzzles. I don't know what's going on.

(AL, TYLER, and TRIP are all scribbling numbers on a board)
AL: Done!
ANNOUNCER: And Al is finished... but wait! There's a zero in his grid!
TYLER: Done!
TRIP: Done!
AL: (murders Trip and Tyler with his headphones, hollering about one too many third-place finishes)

ELLEN: (walks across the stage with an umbrella)


Quotes from the trip:

Trucker in the Chicago train station: "Kansas City's just stuck on themselves."

Guy behind me on the Albany-Boston train: "You know, Japanese sake? Ice wine?"

Artistry (to me): "If you ever write a book, I'm buying it, because I know I'll learn something from it."

Hathor: "My mother is a master of single entendre."
Some dude: "What is single entendre?"
Hathor: "'You have a really big penis.'"

Me: "Lost sucks. It was good at first, but then they kept adding more and more questions without giving us any answers, and soon there were so many questions that you couldn't figure any out because you'd forgotten what the first ones were."
Hathor: "You realize that's exactly what this weekend is going to be like?"

Hathor: "We should not reject any solution because 'it would be too hard to construct.'"

Tyler, after five hours of being stuck on Round 8: "Let's get loaded."

Name withheld upon request: "I would never want to sleep with Spelvin, because he'd probably post the next day about how it only took him three minutes and forty-four seconds."

Toonhead! (to Jangler): "You'd better donate that brain to science when you croak."

Somebody from the team that brought a brick of sodium to the Envy event: "You didn't tell us not to bring hazardous materials!"

Tyler: "Isn't [pinball] a lot of luck?"
Bowen: "Good question. No."

Tyler: "We're going to write the most offensive hunt ever. And the best part is that we're going to write the most offensive hunt ever... the year after the hunt about Satanism."

EDIT: I forgot Jeffurry's attempt at solving the Round 8 meta: "The last letters of the solutions to Round Eight anagram to spell 'Shit Sonnet'! Call it in! Call it in!"



The British travel(l)ers who shared their chapstick.



This was really funny. I was laughing a lot. I don't remember why. Hathor, Ed, Artistry? Help?



Part of Dr. Awkward's room. The shirt says, "Is't mahnu uterna ot tyr ot geifur hingts uto."



The rest of the room. This is mostly what it looked like during the hunt. I didn't count the laptops in the room, but I wish I had.



Mmm. Pretty eyes.



Tyler... eating the coin. Yeah, I don't know either.



This was just before the wrapup. I didn't take many pictures during the actual hunt, unfortunately.



The blackboard we used to keep track of puzzles and their answers. That's Jeffurry on the right there.



Toonhead!, Fuldu, someone whose name/nom I don't remember, and Jeremy.



A guy whose name I don't know, Al DeSuda, Cramerica, Logic, Artistry, Ucaoimhu, and Zebraboy. I think that's Toonhead!'s arm.



A very tired Ed.



Me and Tyler. I didn't manage to get the hoodie, though I wanted it. It was a nice hoodie. But the hat shall have to suffice.



Tobasco, the chick who saved the Cambridge Tea Party puzzle. Tyler and I would have drowned on Mass Ave without her.



Eric and Hathor.



The person with the musical notes for a nom (So La Ti Fa So? So Ti La Re Mi? Something like that), Tyger, and Hathor.



Nathan is a big fan of Threadless t-shirts. The first day, he was wearing the "The Screamo" shirt Bill got me for Christmas.



Apparently, the woman to whom this display is dedicated is the president of RPI, so Tyler wanted a picture with it.



Dick Cockburn. Coolest name I've ever seen carved in stone.



The Wall of Quotes:
"We should not reject any solution because 'it would be too hard to construct.'" -Hathor
"If it weren't for back-solving, nobody would ever finish a hunt."
"Pride is a sin?!?"
"It's been awful quiet around here since the goldfish died."
"Let's get loaded."
"I would never want to sleep with Spelvin, because he'd probably post the next day about how it only took him three minutes and forty-four seconds."
"For this puzzle we need lots and lots of painkillers."
"There is no such thing as a wrong sin." -Tyler
"It's hard to fill a Klein bottle."
"You'd better donate that brain to science when you croak." (To Jangler) -Toonhead!
"You're looking at me as if I have any chance of understanding that."
"PRAP: preparatory crap <--not crep"



Puzzle remnants.



More puzzle remnants.



Meta-meta remnants.



The front of the coin we got for winning.



The back of the coin.



I don't know who wrote the first half of that. Hathor turned it into a palindrome, and Tyler added the arrow and "Heh."



The national crossword champion and the world pinball champion. (Despite all evidence to the contrary, the crossword champ is not stoned in this picture.)



Hathor and Ed's shelves of cool crap. Note EneMan up top.



The toilet in the hall.



An ad in a T station. I wonder when "google" will be officially added to the English language.

I'm insanely excited for next year. Artistry came up with a puzzle idea that I really really want to do (I think Cramerica's going to do it with me) and I have a couple of other vague concepts I might try to write. Whatever happens, with this team behind it, it's gonna rock.

Comments

[rpipuzzleguy.livejournal.com]

Nice. I know the Albany train station well. Hope you enjoyed it as much as I always did.

Our Hunt's going to kick ass. Glad I made your cut in both pictures and quips.

[jedusor.livejournal.com]

Glad I made your cut in both pictures and quips.

But of course, T-bone! You were one of the best parts of the trip :)

[vito-excalibur.livejournal.com]

Dang, that sounds like a great trip. I like the quotes. :)

[jedusor.livejournal.com]

It was so fantastic. I'm really glad I decided to go.

[qaqaq.livejournal.com]

I think you should probably delete the "Al DeSuda at the front of the room" picture due to some certain visible writing in the background.

Great wrapup!

[dacrons-lair.livejournal.com]

I agree with Qaqer. At least edit the image and blur the upper-left half of the picture. Heck, with a coupla mods, you can make it so that the chalkboard appears blank (says the knight of forgery. I'm not quite the master, nor a king; I figured a knight would be an appropriate class range).

Sounds like you had fun in the NahthEast. Wish I could get my hands on a coin like that. Something along those lines, anyway. With the whole "one soul" thing. Yeah.

-M

[jedusor.livejournal.com]

I don't think Fuldu is letting go of the coin anytime soon.

I am, however, getting a Mephistophelean Institute of Turpitude t-shirt! :D

[jedusor.livejournal.com]

Crap, I can't believe I didn't see that! Deleted; thanks for pointing it out.

[hahathor.livejournal.com]

** blush **

I think you're wicked cool too. I wanna be just like you when (if?) I grow up. It was fantastic having you as a teammate and as a houseguest. I hope we'll get a chance to work on a puzzle together.

[jedusor.livejournal.com]

I wanna be just like you when (if?) I grow up.

Ditto! :D Thank you so much for everything.

[rubrick.livejournal.com]

Letters 4-11 of his name are particularly good.

[jedusor.livejournal.com]

Ha! I didn't even notice that.

[rubrick.livejournal.com]

Unsurprisingly, Eric did. It was used as a clue in a previous Hunt.

[imagines.livejournal.com]

It worries me that Unscrambled Cable Porn is the only puzzle up there that I would have had a prayer of solving. I know that song too goddamn well.

Google *is* officially in the English language, AFAIK... o.O

[imagines.livejournal.com]

..."A prayer of solving" means I think I know what the answer might be, but the letters on the sides of the picture mean nothing to me.

*in awe of you people*

[jedusor.livejournal.com]

Yeah, me too. I was SO PISSED when I found out what the answer was. If I'd actually read through the puzzle introduction instead of just looking at the pictures, I totally would've gotten it immediately. Or if I'd even spent more than a few seconds looking at all the pictures, instead of glancing at it, giving up and wandering off somewhere else. I suck.

[jedusor.livejournal.com]

(And I mean "to google" as a verb.)

[imagines.livejournal.com]

Ta-da! I remember reading a magazine article last summer about this.

[cramerica.livejournal.com]

Wow, what an excellent writeup. I'm so glad you were on Palindrome, and I'm looking forward to that co-authoring!

[jedusor.livejournal.com]

Thanks! Me too! :)

[dalryaug.livejournal.com]

I only just saw this write-up; these pictures are great! I think the expression on my face is kind of strange, though.

[jedusor.livejournal.com]

Oh my gosh, I haven't responded to this! Hi! I'm sorry. I haven't been ignoring you; I've just been stupidly busy, and not on LJ much. How's it going?

[dalryaug.livejournal.com]

Things have been going well, though I've been pretty busy lately, too. I can hardly believe that March is already almost here.