ACROSS LITE PUZZLE: [ THEMELESS MONDAY]
PROGRAM: [Across Lite]
PRINTOUT PUZZLE: [ THEMELESS MONDAY]
PROGRAM: [Adobe Acrobat]
The gimmick for this years hunt appeared to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the Hunt, only it really wasn't the 30th anniversary, more like the 29th. No matter. The gimmick was thrown out the window fairly quickly as after solving the first meta revealed we were celebrating 300 (fictional) years of the hunt. There was something about time-travelling and in doing so various events throughout history were changed (which were the answers to metas). Believe me, it made sense at the time.
The Hunt started off (for me at least) on an encouraging note: the first puzzle I stumbled upon was built around the Charles River running map, a map I know all too well from using it while training with Liz. The breadth of the puzzles, and knowledge required to solve them, was amazing. Just a small sampling: we had to decode pages written in lorem ipsum, manipulate famous paintings in Photoshop, make our own zero-budget remake of a famous movie, and play poker wherein the entire deck (save three cards) represented different cards than what their faces showed. Not surprisingly, I stuck (mostly) with the word games. One particularly satisfying puzzle was one unholy mash-up of a diagramless puzzle whose theme was a "SUB" rebus. Only, when that grid was done, the puzzle became four overlapping battleship puzzles. Yikes!It was with great disappointment that when I woke up on Sunday to hear that the Hunt had been completed that morning by Francis Heaney's team, no less. (Astute readers of this site know him to be one of my friends and puzzle editors.) I had enjoyed what little I was able to contribute to the team and I guess I was expecting it to continue well into Sunday afternoon. Whatever, I just want to say I was awed the ingenuity of some of these puzzles. There are times I feel like the word game has all been done before, yet some of these metas blew holes in that theory coming up with crazy making new interpretations of the old standards. Granted most of the material is for the 1% of 1 of the puzzling community. If I posted anything that complicated here on this blog, the traffic would cap out at 3 unique visitors. No matter, they were inspirational from a puzzlemaker standpoint.
On a strictly personal note, the hunt ended with my own satisfying discovery. At the explanation of all the puzzles on Sunday night, I met Andy Arizpe of Austin Texas.
Andy wrote later: "I forget if it was Tyler [Hinman] or Eric Berlin that turned me on to your blog, but I've been following it avidly pretty much since it debuted. As I mentioned, I'm a video game programmer living in Austin, and working for Disney on the new Epic Mickey game for the Wii. It was a real pleasure to meet you - my wife got me your t-shirt for Christmas, and I've been wearing it proudly and sharing the puzzle at every opportunity." For Andy's bravado, I'll be sending him some junk from my condo I don't want anymore.
NOTE:I was hoping to end this post with a link to a really rewarding puzzle by Craig Kasper, but they haven't archived the Hunt yet. When it does go live, I will link to it here (as well as the next day I post).
UPDATE:The Craig Kasper puzzle is here.
Share the puzzle. New one on Wednesday.