D&D Puzzle Contest

[jlhorner1974]

I have been thinking about having a D&D themed puzzle contest for some time now. The reason for this post is to try to determine how much interest there would be for something like this. I don't have all of the details worked out at the moment, but I can tell you a little bit about what I am planning. The contest would be held sometime over the weekend of March 25-27, 2005. The contest format would be similar to the annual MIT Mystery Hunt held every January (but shorter).

For those unfamiliar with the MIT Mystery Hunt, it involves solving a number of puzzles that lead to a coin or other object hidden on the MIT campus. Traditionally, the contest consists of a number of rounds, each with several puzzles to solve, and all of the puzzle answers for the round are used in a final puzzle (a metapuzzle). Similarly, all of the metapuzzle answers for each round are used in another puzzle (a metametapuzzle). The solution to the metametapuzzle allows the contestants to begin a final puzzle which leads them to the location of the hidden object. From start to finish, the hunt often occupies most of the weekend.

The variety of puzzles in the Mystery Hunt is huge. I have posted a sample puzzle below. The puzzles require knowledge of many different subject areas to be successful. Some people that would not normally consider themselves excellent puzzle solvers may have a skill or expert knowledge in some area that could be very helpful to solving a puzzle. Also, many puzzles are given without instructions on what to do. Thus, figuring out *what you need to do* to solve a puzzle is often more difficult than *actually doing it*. Therefore, in many of the hunts, the teams which compete often have a large number of members, and the teams often call friends and family to help with the puzzles.

I have wanted to be involved in an event like this, and so I ran a short puzzle solving competition adventure for my D&D group. My players really enjoyed it, and I think I would like to take the next step and run a contest via the internet.

* The contest will happen sometime on the weekend of March 25-27, 2005, if there is enough interest. A typical MIT puzzle contest usually involves about 50-100 puzzles, and lasts about 50-70 hours. I am shooting for something significantly smaller than that, probably around 20-50 puzzles. The exact format has not been set. I would prefer to do it all in one weekend (possibly starting early Saturday morning and lasting all day Saturday) -- but someone has suggested having qualifying preliminary "rounds" earlier that week to break up the time commitment into smaller chunks. I will make a final determination on the format once I see how many teams are interested. This will though require a significant time commitment at least on Saturday either way.
* The contest will be administered via the internet, so it is possible that "teams" can be made up of people that are not geographically near each other, although teams assembled in the same location will have a cooperative advantage. (I had originally had the idea in mind to ask gaming groups to compete.)
* Players will form teams to compete. A team size has not yet been determined.
* The contest will consist of several rounds, loosely based on the MIT Mystery Hunt format.
* The puzzle difficulty will be a little easier than the MIT puzzles.
* A copy of each of the core D&D 3.5 books will be required per team. Having multiple copies of each may help speed up solving times. Other reference materials may be helpful, but not needed.
* All puzzles will have some connection to D&D, which will help limit the scope of things. Knowledge of the core books and D&D in general will be helpful, but even being able to cite all three books from memory will only help so much.
* Teams may use whatever resources they want to in order to solve the puzzles (internet search engines, asking friends, the library...), but cannot interfere with other teams.

I don't know about prizes yet -- I hope if there is enough interest that maybe some prizes could be donated or something, as I'm not fabulously wealthy. ^_^ In any case, the prizes (if any) will probably not be sufficient motivation to participate. This contest is for people who enjoy puzzles. There will be no entry fee, as I am only doing this for my own enjoyment.

If you are interested and have a team of people that would like to compete, please respond to this thread. Also, it is possible that I may need a volunteer or two to help me with the contest (I don’t know exactly what I will need yet.). Since I don’t know how much interest there will be, I've intentionally been vague about details. Once I can better judge the interest, I can start to give more specific information.

 

[Three_Haligonians]

We both love puzzles, count us in! Next time I'm talking to R I'll find out if she wants in as well!


J and T from Three Haligonians

 

[FireLance]

Sounds really cool, more details please!

 

[BigFreekinGoblinoid]

25-50 puzzles sounds like more than I'm willing to commit to , but the idea sounds great otherwise.

I'd love to see a sample puzzle posted & get access to the complete list for my personal game use resource file.

 

[arscott]

Sign me up

 

[stevelabny]

me likee puzzles.

just one thing, if youre doing it over the internet, youll want to expand the timeframe. Cramming things into small time frames will fail, because nobody is going to set time aside for an internet contest the same way they do for the mit hunt, or herald hunt or what not.

But sign me up.

 

[jlhorner1974]

I don't know exactly how many puzzles there will be yet, but I suspect that it will be closer to the lower end of 25-50 than the upper end. For the MIT Mystery Hunt, the variety of puzzle material is enormous -- and the winner of the hunt gets no prize other then being able to host the next hunt.

When I get the puzzles to my group, they solved some of the easier ones in as few as 10 minutes. Some of the tough ones took closer to an hour, with an average of about 20-30 minutes per puzzle. With a decent-sized team of very smart individuals, 30 puzzles could take as little as 10 hours, especially if everyone is in the same place and working together well. Part of what I have to do to prepare for this is to get an idea of how difficult the puzzles are to solve and how long it will take. I did a 9 puzzle mini version for my group a few months ago, and it took them about 4 hours.

But BFG's point is important -- the idea is that it will likely take a fair amount of time. It won't be like a 2-4 hour event. I hope to have enough material for it to take at least 10 hours, and I want very much for the contest to be finished no later than about early Sunday afternoon. Since I am pretty much writing all the puzzles myself, I can make it about as long as I want. If many people say they can only commit to a one day (all day) contest, I can work within that timeframe. We'll see. That's part of the reason for this, to figure out how much interest there is and what amount of time people can commit.

To give people a pre-preview of what a puzzle is like, all the puzzles have a title, and many have what the MIT group calls "flavortext" at the beginning. Both set the mood of the puzzle, but in most cases, the title and/or flavortext provide cryptic hints on what you need to do to solve the puzzle. For example, a puzzle titled "You've Got Mail" may hint that the puzzle is about armor. For this contest, all of the puzzles will relate to D&D in some way, so it should make things easier, since there is really a finite amount of material to draw from. But, the people who write the puzzles are very clever and many of the puzzles have a twist to prevent things from being too easy. Some of the worst MIT puzzles consisted of a title and one gigantic number (no joke) -- but I won't be quite that cruel. In almost all cases, the answer to the puzzle is a single word or a short phrase. In traditional MIT fashion, if the contest extends longer than anticipated, then hints are provided to the teams every so often until the contest is won. It sounds very tough, but you would be surprised how well you can adapt to this kind of mental activity.

I was planning on posting a sample puzzle soon (to give people a feel for what they are getting into) and also posting the puzzles and answers somewhere after the contest is over. Perhaps if the good people here at ENWorld will let me upload the files to their download area, then people could get to it easily.

 

[Li Shenron]

Sounds interesting, but I doubt I can have an extended time over the net for this

 

[Stegger]

I'm in. And would probably bring some friends along
Cheers,
Stegger

 

[jlhorner1974]

Perhaps I should clarify what I mean by "it will happen over the internet". What I meant was that it won't be held at a physical location, like at a con or something.

The basic idea is this.

The contest is a marathon puzzle solving competition where you compete against the other teams. All that you will need is a bunch of friends, a copy of the three core D&D 3.5 books (Player's Handbook, Dungeon Master's Guide, Monster Manual), and an internet connection. Puzzles will be given out either by e-mail or posted on a web site. (Traditionally, with the MIT hunt, either new puzzles are posted at regular time intervals, or solving puzzles unlocks other puzzles.) You can print out the puzzles or just save them to your computer and work on them off-line -- you will not actually be solving the puzzles on-line. To answer the puzzle, you will either send an e-mail to a specific e-mail address, or type the answer into a form on a webpage. In either case, e-mail, IRC address, or an instant messenger contact will be provided for communication purposes so that teams can ask questions. Also, I will contact the teams every so often to provide hints, announce corrections/errata to puzzles, or provide further instructions.

Ideally, the contest is set up as a number of "rounds," each consisting of several puzzles, and a metapuzzle, that uses the answers from all of the other puzzles in the round. To finish the round, you must give the metapuzzle answer for that round. It is possible to solve the metapuzzle without solving all of the round puzzles (however, the contest is usually set up so that solving more of the puzzles gives an advantage later on). It is also possible to solve a round puzzle by "reverse engineering" if you know the metapuzzle answer (this is called backsolving by the MIT folks). A team will need all of the metapuzzle answers in order to get the metametapuzzle. Solving the metametapuzzle traditionally gave the teams their final puzzle of the contest, a runaround puzzle that led them around the MIT campus to the location of the hidden item (a coin or some other object). The first team to find the coin was the winner. Given that a final runaround will be physically impossible, I will change the format a bit.

As far as time goes, I know that the time commitment will be difficult. I welcome suggestions on how to work out the details to allow more people to compete. In my experience in trying to get people together, I think it would be easier to have it start Saturday morning (I am in the GMT -05:00 time zone) and end late Saturday night or early Sunday morning. Teams from Europe and Asia may be at a slight disadvantage here because of the time zone difference, and I'm sorry about that, but there isn't much I can do. For this to work, I have to be in front of the computer almost continuously during the contest so that I can verify answers and answer questions. Because of that, it probably will have to be compressed into a smaller timeframe, as I can't do this during the week.

More info to come.