As I mentioned in a previous entry, I played in a Seattle area Game a couple weekends ago. Despite not having much time outside work these days, it’s time to start writing it up before I forget too much. I’ll make it a series so I don’t feel like I have to find hours to write up the whole thing in order to start getting my thoughts out there.
Leading up to the game, all we had to work from was the web site. On it were a few simple puzzles that either indicated things to include in our applications or to be sure to bring with us. Two of the puzzles particularly stand out in my mind.
[Warning: spoilers for the puzzles posted on GalacticConsortium.com follow. If you have any intention of solving them yourself, please go there now and come back when you're done.]
The first one was the handbook entry for a planet called Waxxo. It told some story about how the people of Waxxo wear things called flibs that come in size 40 or the next smaller size of 50 or the next smaller size that’s a larger number still. We struggled for days to come up with something that met that description, and never really did. What they were looking for were t-shirts measured by interpreting their sizes (XL, L, M) as Roman numerals (which was obliquely hinted by the phrase "All roads lead to Waxxo"). Cute. But hard.
The second puzzle from the web site that stands out in my head was the handbook entry for senka, "a style of poetry popular among the inner planets". It’s like a cross between a limerick and a haiku, only weirder. The puzzle hidden on that particular page is fairly straightforward, but the invented poetry form is pretty cute.
The site started out with a staticky background that we thought for sure ought to be a stereogram, but it wasn’t. Eventually, they snuck in a stereogram. Who knows how long they had that planned.
In part 2, I’ll talk about the Friday night activities. I’ll have more things to both rant and rave about then.