Up Late drumming (sorry for the delay)
20000 Puzzles I didn’t have to edit this year.
Another Hunt review
Thoughts on the hunt overall and somewhat spoilery thoughts on specific puzzles.
Some of the Kraken’s encounter with Up Late
Up Late’s backup snowman
Up Late actual snowman
Hey, we came up with a neat survey about your experience with Hunt. The results may not directly influence the next Hunt, but will help future writing teams learn about current Hunt trends.
Answers we didn’t call in
Early on in the Pod of Dolphins round, with 3 or 4 answers in hand, I pointed out that each of the answers was the same length, and had one ‘I’ in a unique position – could this be an “iPod” of Dolphins? So someone else picked up this idea, and started playing with the answers. With only 3 or 4 out of 9 answers, there were way too many possibilities to be sure of anything, but our intrepid meta-solver reported that he had found something. “If you arrange the answers by the position of the 'I’ and read up the other diagonal, you can spell an upgrade that is definitely thematic.”
“What is it?”
“CODPIECES”
We didn’t call that one in. I hope.
Are you aware that there was an episode of Person of Interest that aired this past September which had a puzzle hunt as its major plot driver? (Albeit an ARG-like one, possibly inspired by the whole Cicada 3301 thing.)
Are you aware that the name and emblem of said hunt was a nautilus shell, and the episode itself was called Nautilus?
I was aware of these things, and kept one eye open for the expected tie-in puzzle which never came. When I talked to members of Random after the hunt, they had no idea that this specific episode existed; I suspect that if someone on Random had seen the episode, they would have tried to tie it into a puzzle somehow.
By the way, if you decide to find this episode and watch it, be aware that the puzzles in this episode appear to have been crafted by someone who knows and understands puzzle hunts. At least a couple of them - I’m thinking of the one on the banners and the one on the wall of the bar - should be possible to solve at home provided that you pause the episode and don’t let the characters spoil you on them.