Wrap-Up
And that's a wrap for Puzzle Weekend! Congratulations especially to the first four teams that completed the hunt: The Puzzledome (4:15), Ez Acertou v2 (7:19), :eyes: (11:25), and shitty name (15:04) for winning (or turning down) the hefty WGO bonus points! In total, 8 teams completed all the puzzles, and 15 completed at least one puzzle.
Going into writing this hunt we had aimed to present puzzles with clean and intuitive solves, mostly to make up for last year's Puzzle Weekend, which had haunted us all year with how unintuitive and inelegant it was. It was great to hear that many solvers enjoyed this event more than last year's, and it was amazing to see all the new solvers that joined this time round!
Some quick reflections:
All in all, we'd like to thank everyone for sharing their weekend with us, and we sincerely hope that everyone here had fun solving the puzzles we wrote for this event.
Going into writing this hunt we had aimed to present puzzles with clean and intuitive solves, mostly to make up for last year's Puzzle Weekend, which had haunted us all year with how unintuitive and inelegant it was. It was great to hear that many solvers enjoyed this event more than last year's, and it was amazing to see all the new solvers that joined this time round!
Some quick reflections:
- This hunt was—probably for the better—rather uneventful. Besides a bunch of errata on day 1, nothing much really happened, but then again it was only a weekend long so that's probably to be expected.
- After an additional year's worth of writing experience, we felt that the general quality of the puzzles indeed went up, though there were obviously a few things that we'd alter if we could do it again: tedious and slightly mindreading-y puzzles like Reaching New Heights, and of course the unfamiliarity of the metapuzzle mechanics to new solvers.
- A surprising number of teams failed to make progress even after some hints we felt were very significant. It's possible that we've forgotten what it's like to be new solvers—a good idea for next year, perhaps, would be to have some newer solvers testsolve, instead of keeping testsolving mostly among the writers. (Ironically, the only puzzle successfully tested by a novice solver this year was also the least-favoured regular puzzle: Reaching New Heights.)
All in all, we'd like to thank everyone for sharing their weekend with us, and we sincerely hope that everyone here had fun solving the puzzles we wrote for this event.
Statistics
Overall stats
Hint usage, by puzzle
Feedback ratings, by puzzle
First solves, by puzzle
Guess accuracy
Brute Force (or: what happens when there's no limit or cooldown on wrong guesses)
- 72 solves...
- ...along with 1,108 incorrect guesses.
- 43 hints given, mostly after the bonus WGO points were all claimed.
Hint usage, by puzzle
- Advent Calendar: 5
- Arctic Circle: 4
- Movers and Shakers: 3
- Reaching New Heights: 10
- Venn-Ding Machine: 0
- Awards Ceremony: 21
Feedback ratings, by puzzle
- Advent Calendar: 4.00
- Arctic Circle: 4.09
- Movers and Shakers: 4.33
- Reaching New Heights: 3.40
- Venn-Ding Machine: 4.21
- Awards Ceremony: 3.15
First solves, by puzzle
- Advent Calendar: The Puzzledome (0:21)
- Arctic Circle: The Puzzledome (1:23)
- Movers and Shakers: Hit or Miss (1:07)
- Reaching New Heights: The Puzzledome (4:15)
- Venn-Ding Machine: shitty name (1:31)
- Awards Ceremony: The Puzzledome (4:10)
Guess accuracy
- Special mention goes to The Puzzledome, who completed the hunt in 7 guesses, with an accuracy of 85.71%, and :eyes:, who completed in 8 guesses and an accuracy of 75.00%...
- ...and on the other end of the scale, Funwaa Squad took 335 guesses, winding up with an accuracy of 1.79%. Their inaccuracy was beaten only by Hit or Miss, who registered 403 guesses and an accuracy of 1.49%. "Hit or Miss / I guess they miss 98.51% of the time, huh"
Brute Force (or: what happens when there's no limit or cooldown on wrong guesses)
- Another special mention ought to go to guishark of Funwaa Squad, who contributed almost one-third of their team's guesses with their 104-guess dictionary attack on Venn-Ding Machine, trying everything from BIGSIRE to BIGSIRI to BAGSIRI to BIGSHIRT to BIGSLOT and eventually, the correct answer. They racked up 195 guesses over the entire hunt.
- They were, of course, supported (so to speak) by their teammate, Cleo, who rang in 140 guesses over the weekend.
- Last but not least, let's not forget cseel of Hit or Miss, who was responsible for 396 guesses in total. That's over one-third of all the guesses of every team.
- ...maybe next year would be a good time to revisit the guessing structure.
Credits
Puzzles
Advent Calendar: Written by Level 51
Arctic Circle: Written by lovemathboy, testsolved by Level 51
Movers and Shakers: Written and performed by lovemathboy
Reaching New Heights: Written by Level 51, testsolved by Meicoo
Venn-Ding Machine: Written and diagrammed by Level 51, testsolved by lovemathboy
Awards Ceremony: Written by lovemathboy and Level 51
Hint Coverage
Special thanks to WhirlwindBulbasaur for learning all the puzzles on short notice in order to give out hints while the two hosts slept!
Moral Support
Meicoo and Alexender
Starbucks
Alexender still owes us. Don't think we've forgotten.
Advent Calendar: Written by Level 51
Arctic Circle: Written by lovemathboy, testsolved by Level 51
Movers and Shakers: Written and performed by lovemathboy
Reaching New Heights: Written by Level 51, testsolved by Meicoo
Venn-Ding Machine: Written and diagrammed by Level 51, testsolved by lovemathboy
Awards Ceremony: Written by lovemathboy and Level 51
Hint Coverage
Special thanks to WhirlwindBulbasaur for learning all the puzzles on short notice in order to give out hints while the two hosts slept!
Moral Support
Meicoo and Alexender
Starbucks
Alexender still owes us. Don't think we've forgotten.