Penguin Ball

Via Batgirl, a flash game where March of the Penguins goes to the ballpark. (But be warned, this game is only one step above clubbing baby seals.)

Thus far, my record is 320.3 feet (if those are indeed feet... for all I know, they could be centimeters or cubits).

Beauty and the Geek 2

Well, I finally got a chance tonight to see my old 6.046 study partner, Ankur Mehta, embarass himself as one of the geeks in Beauty and the Geek 2. Considering that this is the same guy who I once tricked into eating a vomit jellybean, I'm not all that surprised that of all the geeks I know, he's the one who wound up on reality television. He didn't actually get that much face time tonight -- I, for one, thought his air guitar performance deserved more than the fifteen seconds it got. We didn't even get a chance to see how bad his singing was!

Ankur really showed his geeky side during the toga party when he whipped out the blue plastic sword during his runway walk -- although once again, he only got a few seconds of airtime. His partner held up her end of the stereotype too. When asked what she would do to end pollution, she responded, "Not eating a lot of gaseous foods and not farting a lot." That's almost as bad as my response to "What would you do to end world hunger?" in the 2003 Miss Ugly pageant. (I said, "Eat.")

But let's be honest, if Ankur wasn't on this show, I probably wouldn't have even heard of it, much less watch it. In fact, even with him on it, I kind of want the last hour of my life back.

Oh, and just for good measure, it's all Sheeva's fault...

To: ec-discuss@MIT.EDU, putz@MIT.EDU
Subject: play a nerd in a tv show?
Date: Tue, 02 Aug 2005 20:13:34 -0400
From: Sheeva Azma

sheeva l. azma

S.P.I.E.S.

I just returned from Boston/Cambridge/Somerville for the annual MIT Mystery Hunt, this year run by Phys Plant (aka Random Hall), which was won by the Midnight Bombers What Bomb at Midnight (aka The Dan's team). This year, we hunted as "Big Jimmy's Secret Sex Fantasy," a fitting tribute to our beloved nightwatchman who died shortly after last year's hunt. I was anticipating a long hunt, possibly with a lot of snags in it, so I was surprised when it was actually too short. The hunt ended at about midnight Saturday/Sunday... my ideal length is to have the hunt go into Sunday afternoon. As Anand said to me, we were still having fun and we were neither frustrated nor worn out. A few teams even kept hunting for a few hours -- I kind of wish we had done that. Unlike last year, we didn't set unreasonable goals or try to follow unreasonable rules, and as result we both had more fun and solved more puzzles. However, I did puke for the fourth year in a row.

The hunt started with formal dress in Lobby 7. (And yes, Jeff, that was my only formal dress.) There we were told that we were recent graduates of S.P.I.E.S. and how wonderful and -- Oh no! The Evil Dr. Moriarty has a plan (described through his power point presentation) and we're going to have to find spies around the world to help foil him! Well, it wouldn't be mystery hunt if there wasn't something to do. The layout of the hunt was very elegant with maps indicating the rounds and puzzles (somewhat reminiscent of our hunt, but computer graphics instead of hand drawn Feldmeier originals). At each new city, solving the meta allowed us to meet spies at various locations around campus, such as Ethan Hunt (Mission Impossible), James Bond, Dana Scully, and... the Swedish Chef? I didn't quite understand why he was a spy, but his skit was amusing. ("You take-a de flip-flip!")

And now for my favorite puzzles of the weekend (solutions not yet available):

• 783658 -- A combination diagramless crossword and sudoku puzzle using phone spell.
• Mysterious Cry; Quiet Habit -- A picture cryptic that I solved with Zoz et al at 3 AM. The clue for TABASCO was particularly clever (can you find it?).
• Second Time's the Charm -- Fairly straightforward for a Mystery Hunt crossword, but still fun.
• Blue Steel -- I was asleep when we solved this, but from what I heard it was awesome. Headquarters gave us a 3-inch floppy and Quinn and Josh deduced that a) there was no reason for them to give us data on a floppy when everything else is on the web and b) there were allusions to Zoolander, which implied that maybe we should tear the disk open. So we did, without bothering to solve the puzzle on the disk (though we did back it up). Sure enough, on the inside of the disk was a piece of paper with "The Answer is..." written on it.
• Grid With a Hole in the Middle -- What can I say... I like (good) cryptics.
• Hollow Man -- The opening part of this puzzle was kind of weak (make links to Kevin Bacon and then index into the names), but the second part (MAKE A SPY MOVIE FOR HQ) was a lot of fun. (That's me ducking out of the way after I hand Big Jimmy to Matt.)
• Land That I Love -- The actual puzzle is kind of uninspiring, but the "A ha!" step more than makes up for it. And there's something about a puzzle that legitimately causes you to think that the answer is "FUCK." (It was actually "PAT BUCHANAN.")
• The Cock Conundrum or the Greatest Joke Ever Told -- This had the potential to be really fun, but we ran out of time. (We really need to get more people who can identify cute boys. Laura Lopez, where are you?)
• Sacred and Profane -- I had a love-hate relationship with this puzzle, because we didn't actually solve it. But I was told later that we did everything we were supposed to, but we were two letters off and failed to see the word... and we triple and quadruple checked our work too.

More Tales of the Fishgina

I've noticed that when you search for Johnny Damon on google images, I appear on the first page. A few hits below me is the infamous fishgina. Of course, I know that that's because they both come from the entry on the Johnny Damon cake (and I don't know why the picture of the cake isn't on the first page), but I've often wondered what other people must think of the fishgina when they search for Johnny Damon. Thanks to the power of referrer logs, now I know.

Mystery Hunts of Yore

The Dan was recently requesting topics for "Top Five" lists, and I suggested that he list his favorite mystery hunt puzzles of all time. He counter requested that others post their lists, so in anticipation of the 2006 hunt, I made my own list, including one from each of the five hunts I've done. (As a warning, these are mostly sentimental favorites -- just because I had a memorable solving experience with these puzzles doesn't mean that others will.)

5. Hum a Few Bars (2002; Brian Tivol) -- My first two hunts both involved me spending far too much time on a song puzzle. Kay Sullivan and I took this puzzle to a practice room and made a recording of all the tunes. We went through soap opera themes, Beatles songs, nursery rhymes, and played them all repeatedly for everyone in the room before that wonderful moment when I looked at jrandall and sang "Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes!" After that, it took about fifteen minutes to get to the solution.

4. We Have Enough Twists, Thank You (2001; Andy Latto and Cally Perry) -- It's not that this was a particularly brilliant puzzle, but it was the one that really hooked me into mystery hunt (and caused my first hunt all-nighter, as I refused to sleep until it was solved). I broke into by looking up where a more famous Highway 101 than the one near my parents' house might be. "San Jose? *hums*Do you know the way to...*hums* Oh! They're all questions from songs!" It was a really satisfying moment for me. This puzzle also introduced me to the song "How Can You Believe Me When I Say I Love You When You Know I've Been A Liar All My Life?" which became a cult favorite on putz. The great irony is that I never actually solved this puzzle -- Zoz backsolved the answer, just as we were getting close.

3. Sneakers (2003; Jennie Hango and Rebecca Christianson) -- My favorite runaround ever (and the only one I've ever actually done). Galen, cposs, jjhu, and I wandered all around main campus while listening intently to the audio track, trying to avoid the VILE agent who seemed to be following us. Of course, we made it more fun because we sent Galen out onto the roof at the end, before we realized that we were supposed to index into the NO TRESPASSING sign. He found a pair of frozen socks out there, so we called that in before discovering that the actual answer was (coincidently) ARGYLE.

2. Quagmire (2004; Mark Feldmeier) -- I test solved this one with jrandall in front of Mark during the final push before the hunt started. After spending over an hour solving the maze, we quickly recognized the hands. When I realized what they spelled, I looked at Mark in complete and utter disbelief. It's the best puzzle answer ever.

1. Take Me Out (2005; Greg Pliska and Chris Morse) -- Is it that surprising that my favorite from last year is a baseball puzzle? This was also the cause of one of my favorite hunt memories: playing "baseball" with amittai and jcbarret using scraps of paper, complete with color commentary. The Microsoft Puzzle Challenge included a very similar puzzle, which I also listed as one of my favorites from that competition.