Revelations

[fauxklore]

Ghoul Pool: Lists are now published so I can reveal mine. Note that the number next to each name reveals how many points that person is worth. There is also a 12 point bonus for a unique pick. When someone dies, you get to reload that slot. You also get two trades during the year, which is useful if you hear about somebody going into hospice or the like.

20. Kirk Douglas
19. Harry Reid
18. Sultan Qaboos
17. Olivia de Haviland
16. John "Sonny" Franzese
15. Alex Trebek
14. Beverly Cleary
13. Jean Erdman
12. Naomi Replansky
11. Freeman Dyson
10. Jimmy Carter
9. Ned Rorem
8, Al Jaffee
7, Rachel Robinson
6. Lee Adams
5. James L. Buckley
4. Neddy Smith
3. Lawrence Ferlinghetti
2. Jiro Ono
1. Stirling Moss

Note that Sultan Qaboos has died and I reloaded the number 18 slot with John Lewis. I am currently in 2nd place, as another player not only had Sultan Qaboos in the number 20 slot but scored on another person on his list.

MIT Mystery Hunt: I participated this year, remotely, as part of Halibut That Bass. I didn’t have a lot of time to devote to it and being remote poses a lot of limitations, especially as my power (and, hence, internet) went out for a while. I had a few contributions here and there. There was one puzzle (Old West Revue) that was right up my alley, but I didn’t have time to do more than get a start on. (It had to do with movie quotes transliterated into different scripts. Since I can read Cyrillic, Greek, and Hebrew fairly easily, I figured out what was going on. I really do need to learn to read Arabic someday. Indian languages, alas, I have no clue on.) There was another puzzle (Arts and Witchcraft) that involved crocheting a hat, which someone else did, but we failed miserably at figuring out how to extract the answer. And reading the solution, I doubt we’d have ever figured it out.

It was fun, but I think I’d have been happier had I been able to be there in person. Hopefully, next year.

Household Stuff: I did manage to get various household things done over the weekend. But I really need to unshovel the living room, given that I am hosting a story swap in three weeks.

Comments

[nonelvis]

Old West Revue came in for Palindrome right as I was about to go to bed, and I could tell something was up with the Hebrew, but didn't try pronouncing it. Fortunately, others on the team cracked it pretty quickly.

The one I'm still kicking myself about is Tech's Big Adventure, a "runaround" we could not for the life of us figure out how to start – and it turned out that it involved moving from square to square on a timeline map located literally right outside our HQ in Building 56.

[fauxklore]

I actually saw what was going on with the Cyrillic first, which then made it easy to do the Hebrew and Greek. But we only got the puzzle about 3 something on Sunday and (aside from the Arabic) I couldn't figure out what the rest of the alphabets were. I don't think I even heard of Telugu before.

Obviously, being remote, I have no idea on the runarounds.