Announcement about the Hunt opening

[jedusor]

This was just sent to all Mystery Hunt teams. If you haven't gotten it by e-mail, you may want to make sure to pass it along to the rest of your team. Feel free to link to this post.

In recent years, there has been increasing dissatisfaction among Hunters with the effectiveness of sound amplification in Lobby 7. The size of the crowd and the echoes in the room tend to make it very difficult to hear what's going on. This year, we're trying something new to get around the problem. This is not a puzzle; I speak as an event coordinator trying to deal with a logistical issue rather than as a puzzle constructor.

Below is a link to an audio file. When you come to Lobby 7, please ensure that you have a copy of the file, a device to play it (such as an iPod or a laptop), and a set of earphones. At noon, there will be a visual countdown to a loud sound; when you hear the sound, press play. If for some reason you have difficulties playing the file or find yourself at the wrong point in the audio, ask someone nearby to share an earphone.

The audio is intended to accompany the opening skit, not to be heard alone, and it contains no puzzles. Listening to it now will not give you any advantage over other teams; it will only spoil the experience for you. This is an honest attempt to address a very common complaint about the Mystery Hunt. I hope you will do your part to make the event a success by refraining from listening to the file ahead of time.

http://web.mit.edu/puzzle/www/10/huntopening.zip

There was a lot of discussion about this among our team before we decided to go ahead with it. I'll post more about that decision after the Hunt. In the meantime, I really hope this goes well. Good luck to everyone participating, do your best to resist the temptation to listen beforehand, and see you Friday!

Comments

[palecur.livejournal.com]

Is there some sort of betting pool on how many participants will be convinced this is in fact a puzzle?

[jedusor.livejournal.com]

I thought I was pretty clear, but some people look for puzzles in everything. Honestly, anyone who's been to an opening ceremony at a past Hunt understands that something had to be done about this. Hopefully no one will waste too much time looking for puzzles that don't exist, but if they do, I warned them, so it's their problem and not mine. :P

[jeffurrynpl.livejournal.com]

I love you. I have no idea how to download it to my iPhone (iTunes never works for me), but that's what toonhead_npl is for.

[jedusor.livejournal.com]

That's all he's good for, huh? :P

[530nm330hz.livejournal.com]

Yay you guys!

(And lucky me, I just got a new MP3 player to replace the one that died last year.)

[jedusor.livejournal.com]

w00t! I'm glad the response has been mostly positive so far--this was my idea, and I was worried everyone would hate it.

[530nm330hz.livejournal.com]

Oh - if it's not too late - I'll bring the DVD, you bring the Bgrams, 'k?

[jedusor.livejournal.com]

Oh man, I'm sorry. We left early on Thursday, before you said this. You'll just have to come visit the @Cave sometime, yeah? :)

[530nm330hz.livejournal.com]

Sounds like a plan.

And I hope we get a chance to see each other this weekend anyway. At wrapup, I guess, if not before!

[jedusor.livejournal.com]

I do hope to go around and visit team HQs sometime during the Hunt, probably tomorrow.

[lemurtanis.livejournal.com]

Might want to x-post to mystery_hunt?

[jedusor.livejournal.com]

Done! Thanks for reminding me that community existed.

[dougo.livejournal.com]

Great idea! Will it be bad if I play it on my G1 phone that has no headphones? Or will more speakers = better?

[jedusor.livejournal.com]

I would encourage you to use headphones; the main reason we're not doing speakers is the echoes, and playing this mp3 on speakers will cause the same problem there. If you don't have access to headphones, perhaps you could keep the volume down and hold it close to your head?

[dougo.livejournal.com]

Good point, thanks.

[ucaoimhu.livejournal.com]

Just downloaded. Are you also planning to post this to the Hunt site itself?

[jedusor.livejournal.com]

It's up now.

[rubrick.livejournal.com]

Ooh, very tricky! I had trouble solving the last part until I realized that "opening skit" anagrammed to "King's Pointe". But what I'm I supposed to do with the falafel mix?

[jedusor.livejournal.com]

Bring it to HQ, of course. There's always a puzzle that involves bringing food to the constructing team.

[bookishfellow.livejournal.com]

For those of us who are (sob!) solving remotely, y'know what'd be cool? If you (at some point after the opening ceremonies) made available a companion audio track of what went on in meatspace, so that we could participate vicariously. I have no idea whether that'd be technically possible—I'm thinking you'd not get a good recording of the actual event, but might be able to do a dramatic recreation (or pre-recreation). Even better is if you people, with your boundless free time and technical skills, could then mix the two tracks into one so I wouldn't have to do it myself.

Just a thought, since I know you're not busy or anything.

[jedusor.livejournal.com]

There won't be additional audio, except for the airhorn blast to cue everyone to hit play. All of the sound is on the mp3. Depending on how much of the crap we have to get done actually gets done tomorrow, I might have someone film a rehearsal of the skit for remote solvers and put it up on YouTube after the actual ceremony is over. I make no promises, though. As you note, we'll be extremely busy.