Conclusion

Hello,

Well folks, the Puzzle Party 2008 is over. From our perspective it was loads of fun – we don’t know about the participants though! So, we would like to hear from you and receive your feedback. Please let us know how you felt about the event and what can be changed.

Here’s how it went down:

t – 3 to 4 months – Signed up Balaji in addition to Pattabi with the preparations for the party. This time we wanted to host a “Puzzle hunt” event. Typically in this event, we would post puzzles at various locations. The participants (divided in teams) are given a puzzle to solve at the base station. Solution to this puzzle will point them to the next location where they will find the next puzzle which will point them to the next location and so on.

However, for us it wasn’t practical to post the puzzles. So, we kept it simple. Balaji had done a detailed survey of the park and had come up with quite a few objects at different locations throughout the park. This formed the basis for the puzzles. We decided to have two groups of 3 puzzles. Solution to each puzzle will point the participants to a location and then object at that location. So for each object/location combo, there will be two puzzles. We decided to keep the location puzzle little simpler to keep the momentum going.

Next challenge was to create puzzles. Usually our sources of puzzles are a set of books, magazines and web sites (we do create some puzzles on our own too!). However, for the Puzzle Hunt puzzles, we had to create almost all the puzzles ourselves. We had to find puzzles which can lead to solutions that we were looking for. We picked few options including crypto puzzles, encoding puzzles, rebuses and riddles.

Balaji came up with the idea of “Meta Puzzle”. The idea was to sprinkle the puzzle papers with some inconspicuous content (we had total 6 puzzles) – sentences, numbers, pictures etc. By themselves they don’t make sense but when you look at them by putting all those pieces together, it will lead to an answer.

We were quite careful in creating the puzzles to ensure that we don’t have errors. Unfortunately there was one puzzle (which used the “phone crypto”) which had an error. Most teams wasted time on that puzzle. Some teams did get the answer but not through decrypting it but by correlating things!

Preparing for the “Sit-down Puzzle Solving” phase was little easier. I have collected good many books over the period of last two years. In addition, I found few other good sources of Puzzles that we ended up using.

t-2 days – Getting ready for Production (Printing etc.)

We usually start out deciding how many puzzles should we include and some rough mix of math, logic, hands-on, visual etc. Almost everyone liked the hands-on puzzles which participants had to solve using props. Props usually include Lego blocks, cards, paper artifacts, strings, dominos etc. Last couple of times we had around 50 puzzles and it was overwhelming for everybody and 2.5 to 3 hours weren’t enough. So, this time around we decided to keep the numbers down to 40. We went through quite a few puzzles and eventually picked around 40. However, we dropped few more and finalized to around 24 puzzles. It turned out to be very optimum number of puzzles. There were quite a few “hands-on” puzzles.

Here’s a quick list of puzzles and points they carried.

Ok – so on to the Puzzle Party day…

9:30 AM – I and Pattabi with the first participant Pattabi’s father-in-law roll in the Kensington Metro Park. Our first job was to post the direction signs which I had spent some time preparing the previous night (printed paper sheet with logo and arrow direction taped on a metal shirt hanger which was taped to wooden stakes). I was prepared – I had taken a hammer too. However, the soil was too hard to drive the stakes in. It took quite some effort to drive couple of them in at strategic locations. We decided to put the signs up only on the path from one of the entrance. After all this was a puzzle party and people were supposed to find out the picnic shelter just by looking at the logo and the map!

Ah, did I mention about the weather? It was perfect! Hurricane Gustav had wrecked havoc on the southern states and had brought clouds and rains (not to mention lower temperatures) to Michigan. So I was a bit worried. I was watching the weather prediction for almost 10 days. Lucky for us the weather turned out perfect. It was sunny and getting warm.

At the shelter preparations:

At the shelter we had to setup few things. We wrote “N” on a wooden post located North part of the shelter. This was for the Observation and Memory Puzzle (more on that later). We also hung a Rubik’s Cube from one of the struts. This was the object where the Lego home’s Dish would be pointing to for the Observation and Memory Puzzle (again, more on this later!). Third item was a sign for the Meta Puzzle about Jason Lezak (more later…).

10:00 AM only few people had arrived. Anandhi was there with kids and my mother-in-law.

We were at Picnic Shelter C – SpringHill. It is one of the secluded picnic shelters in the park – not to mention hard to find! Many folks had to call to get the directions. Come on – this was a puzzle party and they were in for a big task ahead as the Phase 1 of the party was all about “Puzzle hunt”! We almost wondered how they will do! Let’s see…

Mark Willis of CSM Worldwide was among the first ones to show up. He was one of the participants who meticulously had prepared for the party and it paid off! Good showing Mark.

Kicking off the Puzzle Hunt

10:45 AM Finally we had enough people show up that we decided to kick things off. As usual, everybody had to pick their team names randomly. We had approximately 2 to 3 participants per team. We went through the instructions, rules etc. and everybody was given the Package 1 for the Puzzle hunt which had puzzles pointing to 3 objects and locations. The teams had to take pictures to prove that they had actually found the objects. They also had to call in to one of the Puzzlemasters to confirm that they have found the right object.

Teams were formed as follows:

Some teams immediately got into their cars. Then for next 20 minutes they sat there and started solving puzzles. Slowly they started figuring out the solutions and off they went. Team B stayed there for almost 30 minutes and solved some of the location puzzles before driving off to their first location.

We had 6 objects/locations. Each team was given 3 of these in different sequence just so that they don’t bump into each other. This strategy worked for the most part except when one team was delayed in solving their puzzle.

Participants had a choice of asking for hints. Each hint will award them -25 (yes – negative 25) points! What fun! Only few puzzles required hints.

Puzzles for the Puzzle Hunt:

Check out the puzzles along with answers here:

Puzzle Party 2008 - Puzzlehunt Rules - v1

Puzzle Party 2008 - Puzzle A - Colored numbers – Yardage for hole 1 at the Gold Course

Puzzle Party 2008 - Puzzle B - BORAT's IQ – Island Queen Capacity 37 Board at Boat Rental

Puzzle Party 2008 - Puzzle C - Location Rebus – Walt’s Crawlers at Boat Rental

Puzzle Party 2008 - Puzzle D - Number Crypto – Intermediate slope at Toboggan Run

Puzzle Party 2008 - Puzzle E - Colored Squares and Circles – Shoe/mud cleaner at Park Office

Puzzle Party 2008 - Puzzle F - Green Bits – Wind Mill at Farm House

Puzzle Party 2008 - Puzzle X - Rendezvous Point – Amphitheatre at the Farm House

11:20 AM – First calls started coming in and most of them had found the objects they were tasked to find. The phone calls never stopped after that! Late arriving folks also joined their teams and joined the fun and agony!

12:30 PM – Pizza delivery came to the park entrance

12:45 PM – Food was ready for the hungry and participants were frustrated (not to mention tired and ready to punch the Puzzle masters!). Most of them had solved the puzzles. There were other events going on in the park especially at the farm house which was supposed to be the rendezvous point. One of us were supposed to go there and wait at the Amphitheatre. However, due to the heavy crowd and lack of parking space, we decided to bring the participants back to the shelter itself.

People came and attacked the food. We had a very eclectic collection of food – Pizza, pasta, Indian dishes, fruits and Baklava.

1:20 PM – We handed out the remaining three puzzles for the Puzzle Hunt. Off they went again and calls started coming in.

Here's Dave watching over Team B

By this time we had realized that one of the location puzzles had an error. We had used “phone crypto” to encrypt the “Intermediate Slope board at Toboggan Run”. Phone crypto is very simple cipher. Pick up your home phone and encode the above statement in numbers by using the alphabets on the number keypad! We also had some symbols for “Run” and “Slope”. Some of the teams simply went by those symbols and found the objects. Some other teams started decrypting it. The puzzle had described “if b=2 and y=8 then find the following object”. However, the ‘y’ is on the ‘9’ key and that was the mistake.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telephone_keypad

So obviously we got “boo”ed for that and rightfully so!

Participants got done with the Puzzle hunt by 3/3:15 PM.

3:30 PM – We announced that there is a “Meta Puzzle” and each teams has exactly 3 minutes to answer it. None of the teams figured out that puzzle except Team B. Unfortunately they didn’t remember the answer and the answer was Jason Lezak.

Here were the questions/clues sprinkled throughout the Puzzle Hunt:

1. Sign at the shelter – - Home of Michigan Football team – Ann Arbor where US Olympic Swim Team of Michael Phelps and Jason Lezak trained.

2. "We will thrash the Americans" - Really? – This was the reference to the French swimmer Alain Bernard’s quote.

3. One more sign in one of the Puzzle pages - - Home of Ravens – Baltimore, MD

4. Not Him, it's the finisher – This is the reference to the fact that Lezak was the last swimmer in the 4x100m relay to get US the gold.

5. 100 à 100 ß 100 à100 ß - This is 4x100m relay!

Now that you have all the clues in one place I bet you can get the answer right away. However, when you are under pressure to remember these (we had to take away the puzzle papers from the teams!) at will, that’s when the fun starts!

No team got any points.

3:40 PM – Here’s the point tally from the puzzle hunt. We simplified the point scheme to simply count the right answer and took out points for hints asked.

Teams – Please upload your pictures to Picasa album and send me the link (or add as comment to this page)

3:45 PM – We went over the solutions and logic behind each puzzles for the puzzle hunt.

We also gave an overview of the next phase – “Sit-down Puzzle Solving”. Read them the rules – especially first three rules – which are given below:

1. The Puzzlemasters’ decision will be deemed final on any dispute.

2. The Puzzlemasters reserve the rights to make decisions and adjust rules if required.

3. There are no exceptions to first two rules!

4:00 PM – They started off solving the puzzles.

Video of how the teams were situated:

Here’s background on some of the puzzles.

Domino Bridge

Within first few minutes, we started receiving requests for props. Jack (Norm’s son) asked for Dominos for the “Domino Bridge” puzzle. This is a great construction puzzle where you have to figure out a trick to keep the dominos standing and build a bridge. First few attempts will be very frustrating but once you think about it a bit, the solution becomes obvious. Jack solved that in matter of 5 minutes! I was impressed.

After that three other kids also solved the same puzzle! Mallik had tough time with this one but eventually he got it. He also attempted to "outsource" the task of solution finding to his son Aditya.

Object Describing Puzzle

The Object Describing puzzle also generated quite a bit of buzz. Last two years we had constructed a random object using Lego bricks. This time we decide to take things to a different level. I figured that everybody is expecting Lego bricks. Instead we build an object using Play-doh, toothpicks and dominos. Here’s a picture (review the captions for specific details).

http://picasaweb.google.com/ghbhatt/PuzzleParty2008ObjectDescribingPuzzle?authkey=JugBRJCeqbo#

For the most part all the teams did well in this puzzle. I gave them a % complete mark based on how close the built object was to the original object.

Here's Kelly and Troy doing a great job of solving this puzzle.

I believe Troy's construction was very close to the original object.

Here's Team Team E's attempt at the Object Describing Puzzle:

Team C attemping the Object Describing:

Team C: Final result of the Object Describing

Team D at this - note the orientation of the base dominos

More...

Some more...

Anand's reaction when he sees what the "offshore team" delivered to him based on his "specifications"!

This puzzle requires very good communications – two-way communications – between the team members. The describer has to describe the object but the builder should also communicate back – ask questions, describe what s/he has in the tool chest. For example, I had used a screw to make patterns on side of the pink cylinder. I believe only one of the team figured that out.

Also, I had used some plastic toy to make circular imprints on the green pyramid. Now, unless the builder tells the describer that I have such an object, the describer simply asked the builder to create two circular imprints!

Observation, Estimation and Memory Puzzle:

We introduced this puzzle last time around where we had used a $20 bill as the object. This time around we expanded the scope of this puzzle from just memory to observation and estimation power. Personally, I was very happy with the creation of this puzzle and I believe it proved interesting to all the teams.

This was the setup.

Around t-1 months time frame, I had bought the Lego Beach House for my kids (actually it was for adults more than kids!). I sat with Minali and Nimeya for almost 4 hours and built that thing. It was fun and very interesting (even for the kids!).

I started thinking about using this as the object for the memory object. For this puzzle, we need an object with great “information bandwidth”. What I mean is that it should have sufficient “information” that we can have around 10 items for teams to remember and answer questions about. We toyed with Asterisk and Tintin comic pages and some other objects but finally settled down on this one.

Now, couple of questions were trick questions and required you to observe how the house was shown to them with reference to some objects around them which were not in their direct field of vision. Here are the two questions:

· Which direction was the slanted sky window pointing to?

· Which corner the balcony located?

· What was the Dish pointing to?

Now, if you read through the introduction part of the puzzle, you will remember that we wrote “N” in one of the poles of the shelter. That “N” pointed to North and the house was setup in exactly the same way for all the teams. In addition, the house was always put on a towel which had “W” written on one of the corners which would point to West! I don’t think any of the teams actually observed that part.

In addition, the satellite dish on the house was pointed to the Rubik’s Cube which we hung before everybody came in. I don’t think any team observed that part either.

Some of the teams did get the measurements estimates close. In and all, this was a good puzzle.

Here's a video of Team B "observing and memorizing" the object:

Team C Observing the Object...

Team A puzzling over the "Estimation" part of the puzzle - the aftermath of the "Observation"!

Team A: Asha's frustration...

String and Chalk or Straight Edge and Compass puzzle:

This was another one of those puzzles with practical applications in real life. The idea was for teams to draw some geometric figures on the walkway leading to the shelter. Now there are right ways of using the straight edge and compass and then there are some “short cuts”. Mark Willis did a great job drawing up the first puzzle and received the full marks.

Here's a video:

In fact, the participants of Puzzle Party 2007 may recall that we had included a puzzle around drawing some of the simpler geometric shapes using straightedge and compass except that we expected people to demonstrate that using pencil on paper.

Here’s Wikipedia reference on how to draw some of these diagrams.

What about the practical applications? Landscaping or other similar land measurements can be done using this method.

So, how many "architects" does it take to draw a square with four circles inside? Apperently many...

Team A's attempt at this puzzle

Word Puzzles:

I believe most of the teams found these puzzles fun to solve. These puzzles were taken from Will Shortz’s book. He is the Puzzle master who comes on NPR with word puzzles. We did have one typo in the Categories puzzle (it should have been Basketball TeRms and not TeAms) and teams may have wasted some time. We took out 5 points from that puzzle.

Folding Puzzle:

These are my favorites. This was about a spider sitting on one face of a rectangular box needing to take the shortest route to the opposite face. The trick was to unfold the rectangular box and then take the straight path. You can calculate the length of this path using the dimensions given.

Other Puzzles:

There were few other good puzzles. Here's Mallik attempting to calculate the volume of the bottle using just a ruler without opening the bottle!

Results:

At around 7/7:30 PM we gathered around again and went over solutions. This time everybody was in a hurry (we were at it since 11 AM!) so this phase went fairly quickly. Usually this is the phase where participants get to take out their frustration on the Puzzle masters!

There were few disputes and I believe some of you may not have fully satisfied your questions! So, please communicate your issues to us and we can address those. Don’t expect to change any points etc. as the Team B won by a great margin!

Winning team was determined by adding up the points from the Puzzle hunt and the “Sit-down Puzzle solving” event.

The winning team was Team B – Mark Willis, Raj Gattu, Aamir Najam and Jack Meluch. Congratulations guys on the job well done.

Here are the certificates which were distributed to them after the party.

Prizes:

Oh yeah! We had prizes to hand out too! Prizes were large prints of pictures taken by me on location. Locations include Glacier National Park (July 2008), Yellowstone National Park (July 2008), Antelope Canyon, AZ (Dec 2007) etc. Here’s the Picasa Album where you can view these pictures. I have mentioned the location for each picture in the album.

Kids:

Amazingly enough, the kids kept to themselves and had loads of fun playing in sand and swing etc. Babies and Toddlers took little bit of attention but for the most part they were OK and parents did have some time to participate.

Here's Aahana - Ashok and Vidhya's baby doll giving me "Hi-5"

Thank you!:

In closing, “Thank you” all for coming and joining us for the party. Thank you all for bringing wonderful food.

To folks who joined us for part of the event – Thank you for coming in by adjusting your busy schedules. Hopefully you can join us for the entire event next time!

Feedback so far:

We would love to hear your feedback and other ideas. In my conversations with some of you, we have heard following feedback:

1. Shorten the puzzle hunt (or eliminate it completely – save gas and the Earth!)

2. Shorten the duration – agreed! We will have either hunt of sit-down puzzles but not both on the same event

What else? Leave your comments on this page or send me an e-mail.

Until next time…

Hiren, Pattabi and Balaji

All the videos are YouTube - Just search for InnowixPuzzleParty2008 (no spaces between words) - http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=innowixpuzzleparty2008&search_type=&aq=f.