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Contry was the 2022 National Puzzlers’ League convention, held in Nashville. For those not familiar with the NPL, people go by noms, rather than their real names and I will refer to them this way in this post.
Wednesday: Con officially started on Thursday 21 July, but there was a picnic on Wednesday evening. I flew in on Wednesday morning, mostly because the airfare was a lot cheaper. It was a long hike from the gate I arrived in to where the hotel shuttle picked up. The hotel was the Sheraton Music City, near the airport, which was not very convenient since nothing was really within walking distance. And it was extremely hot (close to 100 F) most of the time, so walking would have been unpleasant, even for heat seeking creatures like me. Fortunately,, the hotel had good air conditioning. Even more fortunately, my room was available despite my early arrival. So I was able to settle in for a nice long nap.
There was plenty of time to socialize before the picnic, which was more of a full meal than what I think of as picnic food. There were appetizers and a very nice pasta bar. No dessert, alas, but that’s all for the better. A few of us discussed possibly going to an escape room on Friday afternoon, but it didn’t happen because everything was booked up.
What did happen was going to Pacho’s palatial suite to play his (unofficial) con game, Only Connect: The Musical. For those not familiar with Only Connect, it’s an excellent British television game show. This was a music-themed version, with Team Rock facing Team Roll. I was on Team Rock, along with Murdoch and Lyric. Team Roll had Beyond, Elf, and Saxifrage. Pop music is not my strong suit, but I did know certain things that my teammates did not. (For example, I am really good on show tunes. Or, at least, those before 2000.) The game was tremendous fun, with amazing production values and ended up being one of the highlights of con for me. Also, we won.
Thursday: I didn’t really want to spend all of my time in the hotel and got together with Lyric and Shrdlu for some sightseeing on Thursday. I’ve been to Nashville a couple of times before, so wanted to go to something new to me. We ended up taking a Lyft downtown to the National Museum of African-American Music, which we agreed was more likely to be to our taste than the Country Music Hall of Fame. This proved to be an excellent choice. When you go in, they give you a wristband with a sensor, which you can use to save the music you listened to. They send you playlists of what you saved. There’s more to do than we had time for. There are stations where you can mix songs, for example. There are also lots of videos to watch and exhibits discussing the history of various genres, as well as memorabilia from different artists. My favorite part was a series of stations where you could select an artist, listen to some of their music, and move to the artists who influenced them, who they influenced, and who their peers were. This is a great way to discover performers you might not be as familiar with. If you happen to be in Nashville, I highly recommend scheduling half a day to spend there.
The official program started on Thursday evening. After introductions by newcomers, there were three games. There were three puzzle and game activities. The first was Nom Call MY Bluff by Beyond in which four people told stories about the origins of someone’s nom. Of course, only one was the real story while the others were made up on the spot. This was fairly amusing. How challenging it was varied a lot. In several cases, I could dismiss stories because I knew the person’s real name, for example. The second event was Quartets by Rock *. This was, essentially, a twist on Triplets, which we’d played at past cons, but with having to give 4 answers to trivia questions, instead of three. The catch in these is that members of the team are not allowed to communicate with one another. Finally, there was Solution Set by Jangler and T McAy, which was a mixture of trivia and wordplay, e.g. finding all the names of flowers in a wordsearch-like grid. The catch was that you had to choose 8 answers that you thought wouldn’t match those of the other teams at your table. Neendy and I were good at the first part, but not so good at guessing who else knew what. It was still fun. Finally, the over-the-weekend cryptic crosswords (for pair solving) were handed out and Witz introduced a creative contest called Making Every Second Count, about which more later.
There is also an unofficial program, consisting of various games brought by attendees. I know I played Knowledge Base by T McAy and Trick, but I have only a vague memory of it. I know there was a mix of trivia and wordplay and that the wordplay part did include good explanations of flat types. (Flats are a particular type of wordplay puzzle unique to the NPL. There are a lot of types of them and a whole guide to those types.) I remember that this game was played with teas of two and I am fairly sure my partner was JrMan. And, beyond that, my memory is blank. I am sure it was an excellent game because: 1) both of the people behind it always create great stuff and 2) I wrote on FaceBook that it was amazing. But too much time has elapsed before my writing this up to have more to say. Sorry.
I also played Noam’s Jeopardy! XXIII that night. He always writes great Jeopardy! games with interesting questions. I was more aggressive in guessing things too early than I should have been and came in somewhere in the middle.
I am fairly sure there was other stuff going on, but I was trying to get enough sleep for a change. That was largely an attempt to keep my immune system happy and proved to be a good idea, since at least 6 people got COVID at con. (There were tests available in the hospitality suite, so I did verify that I stayed negative.)
Friday: After breakfast on Friday, I worked on one of the cryptics (The Good Ol’ Country Band by Elfman) with Coop. We got through the grid fairly quickly and got through the first step in extracting the answer. But we never were able to figure out the second step and get the final answer. We set it aside and each tried looking later on, but never did figure it out, which was quite frustrating. Later on ManyPinkHats and I solved Ryman Reason by Sidhe, Sprout, and Y_0. We got through it fairly quickly, with my knowing one word he was unfamiliar with and him knowing one I was unfamiliar with. That one we were able to complete all of and I turned it in later that day. I know I also spent some time working on Making Every Second Count and some time taking a nap. But I am not entirely sure where the day went.
Friday evening had more (official) puzzles and games. First was The Dashes Game by Willz. He gave a category and the length of the answer. The room was divided into two teams and Willz gave a word puzzle. Everybody raised their hands when they got the answer and, when a team had at least 10 hands raised, the captain of the other team chose someone to answer. That person then got to choose a letter, to see if it was in the answer, a la “Wheel of Fortune.” The team could then attempt to guess the answer. The second game was Secret Stuff by Murdoch. Unfortunately, Murdoch had tested positive for COVID, so T McAy presented this. Basically, there were clues that were given one word at a time. You got more points for guessing them sooner. I don’t actually remember a lot of the details, but this was my favorite game of the evening. After that was Venn Will You Ever Learn? by Rubrick. This had venn diagrams you needed to fill in, starting with very little information. At each round, you got more clues, e.g. the first letters of answers or what categories were involved. I found this particularly challenging, but it was interesting.
I think that the only unofficial game I played Friday night was one from Tinhorn that I don’t remember the name of. It had to do with giving your partner clues that would enable them to guess words that would lead to the a phonetic phrase for the answer. I was paired with Arcs and our age difference led to enough of a knowledge gap that we sucked at this. For example, I thought that the name “Winchell” would lead easily to “wind chill,” but he had never heard of either Paul Winchell or Walter Winchell. It was still fun, but very frustrating.
Saturday: Saturday morning started with the business meeting. This was more controversial than usual, because the better bid for the 2024 con was clearly for Dallas (the person proposing Portland, Oregon was not at con because he’d lost his wallet on the way to the airport). But Texas politics are problematic for many members. Several people urged those present to abstain, while others defended Dallas as a Blue island in a Red state. (My personal position is that a lot can change in two years. When I first moved to Virginia, my Congressional district was represented by a Republican. Now, I describe my district as so Blue it is practically indigo. I am also highly skeptical of the effectiveness of boycotts, which I think often hurt people who are fighting many of the policies of places with problematic politics.) At any rate, Dallas did get enough votes to host in 2024. It will be interesting to see how things unfold and how many people refuse to come to con there.
In the afternoon, there were a couple of paper and pencil competitions. Extreme Wordle by LeXman required finding the one word that could be the correct answer given the first guess in a Wordle puzzle. This was fun, but I wasn’t quite fast enough to finish it. I don’t remember exactly what Two Bits by Manx was, other than that it required moving around bigrams to form new words. I do remember that I didn’t quite finish that one either. The last thing on Saturday afternoon was the flat competition. I’m not fast enough at solving flats to spend time on this. Instead I went up to my room to finish my efforts on Making Every Second Count.
Making Every Second Count: The idea of this creative contest was to write a story in which every word had the same second letter. This is exactly the sort of challenge I enjoy and here is what I came up with:
An Unlikely Incident
Anthony Enderby, an unconventional entomologist, analyzed insects. Once, snorkeling in Angola, Anthony encountered an undulating undine, snacking on ants. “An unusual insectivorous animal!” Anthony announced, anticipating unexpected entries in entomological annals.
Unfortunately, Knute Anderson, an industrial entrepreneur, snatched Anthony’s annotations and indicated another interpretation. “Anyone knows undines ingest anything,” intoned Knute, “including snakes, snails, and unexpectedly, antelopes and gnus.”
Anthony endured unpublished anonymity in unaccredited universities until an infection ended Knute’s antipathy. Anatomical analysis indicated pneumonia.
Enough!
The Extravaganza: Saturday night featured, as usual, the Extravaganza, which involves a series of linked puzzles. I was teamed with Clio, Obelix, and Groucho. This year’s was called Lady of the Rings and was organized by Kryptogram, who dressed the part. As is typical, some puzzles were straightforward, while others were frustrating. We were able to back solve enough to move on, but we were not able to complete the whole thing. I was still attempting to get somewhat reasonable amounts of sleep and, given that I had an earlyish flight on Sunday morning,called it a night.
Wrap-up: Overall, I had a good time. There were a few after hours games I could have liked to play but didn’t get a chance to, particularly WXYZ’s A Puzzling Seance and Wandersong’s Only Connect games. I would have preferred it if the hotel were in a more convenient location, but I think we all made th most of what it was. Mostly, it’s all about the people and it was great to see so many of my puzzle compadres.
I am looking forward to 2023 in Montreal!
Wednesday: Con officially started on Thursday 21 July, but there was a picnic on Wednesday evening. I flew in on Wednesday morning, mostly because the airfare was a lot cheaper. It was a long hike from the gate I arrived in to where the hotel shuttle picked up. The hotel was the Sheraton Music City, near the airport, which was not very convenient since nothing was really within walking distance. And it was extremely hot (close to 100 F) most of the time, so walking would have been unpleasant, even for heat seeking creatures like me. Fortunately,, the hotel had good air conditioning. Even more fortunately, my room was available despite my early arrival. So I was able to settle in for a nice long nap.
There was plenty of time to socialize before the picnic, which was more of a full meal than what I think of as picnic food. There were appetizers and a very nice pasta bar. No dessert, alas, but that’s all for the better. A few of us discussed possibly going to an escape room on Friday afternoon, but it didn’t happen because everything was booked up.
What did happen was going to Pacho’s palatial suite to play his (unofficial) con game, Only Connect: The Musical. For those not familiar with Only Connect, it’s an excellent British television game show. This was a music-themed version, with Team Rock facing Team Roll. I was on Team Rock, along with Murdoch and Lyric. Team Roll had Beyond, Elf, and Saxifrage. Pop music is not my strong suit, but I did know certain things that my teammates did not. (For example, I am really good on show tunes. Or, at least, those before 2000.) The game was tremendous fun, with amazing production values and ended up being one of the highlights of con for me. Also, we won.
Thursday: I didn’t really want to spend all of my time in the hotel and got together with Lyric and Shrdlu for some sightseeing on Thursday. I’ve been to Nashville a couple of times before, so wanted to go to something new to me. We ended up taking a Lyft downtown to the National Museum of African-American Music, which we agreed was more likely to be to our taste than the Country Music Hall of Fame. This proved to be an excellent choice. When you go in, they give you a wristband with a sensor, which you can use to save the music you listened to. They send you playlists of what you saved. There’s more to do than we had time for. There are stations where you can mix songs, for example. There are also lots of videos to watch and exhibits discussing the history of various genres, as well as memorabilia from different artists. My favorite part was a series of stations where you could select an artist, listen to some of their music, and move to the artists who influenced them, who they influenced, and who their peers were. This is a great way to discover performers you might not be as familiar with. If you happen to be in Nashville, I highly recommend scheduling half a day to spend there.
The official program started on Thursday evening. After introductions by newcomers, there were three games. There were three puzzle and game activities. The first was Nom Call MY Bluff by Beyond in which four people told stories about the origins of someone’s nom. Of course, only one was the real story while the others were made up on the spot. This was fairly amusing. How challenging it was varied a lot. In several cases, I could dismiss stories because I knew the person’s real name, for example. The second event was Quartets by Rock *. This was, essentially, a twist on Triplets, which we’d played at past cons, but with having to give 4 answers to trivia questions, instead of three. The catch in these is that members of the team are not allowed to communicate with one another. Finally, there was Solution Set by Jangler and T McAy, which was a mixture of trivia and wordplay, e.g. finding all the names of flowers in a wordsearch-like grid. The catch was that you had to choose 8 answers that you thought wouldn’t match those of the other teams at your table. Neendy and I were good at the first part, but not so good at guessing who else knew what. It was still fun. Finally, the over-the-weekend cryptic crosswords (for pair solving) were handed out and Witz introduced a creative contest called Making Every Second Count, about which more later.
There is also an unofficial program, consisting of various games brought by attendees. I know I played Knowledge Base by T McAy and Trick, but I have only a vague memory of it. I know there was a mix of trivia and wordplay and that the wordplay part did include good explanations of flat types. (Flats are a particular type of wordplay puzzle unique to the NPL. There are a lot of types of them and a whole guide to those types.) I remember that this game was played with teas of two and I am fairly sure my partner was JrMan. And, beyond that, my memory is blank. I am sure it was an excellent game because: 1) both of the people behind it always create great stuff and 2) I wrote on FaceBook that it was amazing. But too much time has elapsed before my writing this up to have more to say. Sorry.
I also played Noam’s Jeopardy! XXIII that night. He always writes great Jeopardy! games with interesting questions. I was more aggressive in guessing things too early than I should have been and came in somewhere in the middle.
I am fairly sure there was other stuff going on, but I was trying to get enough sleep for a change. That was largely an attempt to keep my immune system happy and proved to be a good idea, since at least 6 people got COVID at con. (There were tests available in the hospitality suite, so I did verify that I stayed negative.)
Friday: After breakfast on Friday, I worked on one of the cryptics (The Good Ol’ Country Band by Elfman) with Coop. We got through the grid fairly quickly and got through the first step in extracting the answer. But we never were able to figure out the second step and get the final answer. We set it aside and each tried looking later on, but never did figure it out, which was quite frustrating. Later on ManyPinkHats and I solved Ryman Reason by Sidhe, Sprout, and Y_0. We got through it fairly quickly, with my knowing one word he was unfamiliar with and him knowing one I was unfamiliar with. That one we were able to complete all of and I turned it in later that day. I know I also spent some time working on Making Every Second Count and some time taking a nap. But I am not entirely sure where the day went.
Friday evening had more (official) puzzles and games. First was The Dashes Game by Willz. He gave a category and the length of the answer. The room was divided into two teams and Willz gave a word puzzle. Everybody raised their hands when they got the answer and, when a team had at least 10 hands raised, the captain of the other team chose someone to answer. That person then got to choose a letter, to see if it was in the answer, a la “Wheel of Fortune.” The team could then attempt to guess the answer. The second game was Secret Stuff by Murdoch. Unfortunately, Murdoch had tested positive for COVID, so T McAy presented this. Basically, there were clues that were given one word at a time. You got more points for guessing them sooner. I don’t actually remember a lot of the details, but this was my favorite game of the evening. After that was Venn Will You Ever Learn? by Rubrick. This had venn diagrams you needed to fill in, starting with very little information. At each round, you got more clues, e.g. the first letters of answers or what categories were involved. I found this particularly challenging, but it was interesting.
I think that the only unofficial game I played Friday night was one from Tinhorn that I don’t remember the name of. It had to do with giving your partner clues that would enable them to guess words that would lead to the a phonetic phrase for the answer. I was paired with Arcs and our age difference led to enough of a knowledge gap that we sucked at this. For example, I thought that the name “Winchell” would lead easily to “wind chill,” but he had never heard of either Paul Winchell or Walter Winchell. It was still fun, but very frustrating.
Saturday: Saturday morning started with the business meeting. This was more controversial than usual, because the better bid for the 2024 con was clearly for Dallas (the person proposing Portland, Oregon was not at con because he’d lost his wallet on the way to the airport). But Texas politics are problematic for many members. Several people urged those present to abstain, while others defended Dallas as a Blue island in a Red state. (My personal position is that a lot can change in two years. When I first moved to Virginia, my Congressional district was represented by a Republican. Now, I describe my district as so Blue it is practically indigo. I am also highly skeptical of the effectiveness of boycotts, which I think often hurt people who are fighting many of the policies of places with problematic politics.) At any rate, Dallas did get enough votes to host in 2024. It will be interesting to see how things unfold and how many people refuse to come to con there.
In the afternoon, there were a couple of paper and pencil competitions. Extreme Wordle by LeXman required finding the one word that could be the correct answer given the first guess in a Wordle puzzle. This was fun, but I wasn’t quite fast enough to finish it. I don’t remember exactly what Two Bits by Manx was, other than that it required moving around bigrams to form new words. I do remember that I didn’t quite finish that one either. The last thing on Saturday afternoon was the flat competition. I’m not fast enough at solving flats to spend time on this. Instead I went up to my room to finish my efforts on Making Every Second Count.
Making Every Second Count: The idea of this creative contest was to write a story in which every word had the same second letter. This is exactly the sort of challenge I enjoy and here is what I came up with:
An Unlikely Incident
Anthony Enderby, an unconventional entomologist, analyzed insects. Once, snorkeling in Angola, Anthony encountered an undulating undine, snacking on ants. “An unusual insectivorous animal!” Anthony announced, anticipating unexpected entries in entomological annals.
Unfortunately, Knute Anderson, an industrial entrepreneur, snatched Anthony’s annotations and indicated another interpretation. “Anyone knows undines ingest anything,” intoned Knute, “including snakes, snails, and unexpectedly, antelopes and gnus.”
Anthony endured unpublished anonymity in unaccredited universities until an infection ended Knute’s antipathy. Anatomical analysis indicated pneumonia.
Enough!
The Extravaganza: Saturday night featured, as usual, the Extravaganza, which involves a series of linked puzzles. I was teamed with Clio, Obelix, and Groucho. This year’s was called Lady of the Rings and was organized by Kryptogram, who dressed the part. As is typical, some puzzles were straightforward, while others were frustrating. We were able to back solve enough to move on, but we were not able to complete the whole thing. I was still attempting to get somewhat reasonable amounts of sleep and, given that I had an earlyish flight on Sunday morning,called it a night.
Wrap-up: Overall, I had a good time. There were a few after hours games I could have liked to play but didn’t get a chance to, particularly WXYZ’s A Puzzling Seance and Wandersong’s Only Connect games. I would have preferred it if the hotel were in a more convenient location, but I think we all made th most of what it was. Mostly, it’s all about the people and it was great to see so many of my puzzle compadres.
I am looking forward to 2023 in Montreal!
