![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
NPL-Fitr.
On Saturday, I went to the NPL puzzle party. I don't have my notes at work, but I'll try to remember as best I can.
There were some handouts that were worked on before I got there (since I arrived late). One was the most recent Kegler Kryptic. I don't believe it is on the website yet. Another was a set of puzzles from![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
tmcay. He's been playing around with Google Images for puzzles, and his most recent handout was very fun. Each puzzle was for pictures; each picture represented one part of a famous foursome. The pictures were all chosen by putting the corresponding word into Google Images. Go bug him for examples, since I forgot to grab a copy of the sheet.
The first game (which I also missed) was a simple pencil puzzle from Music Man, similar to something he'd e-mailed around recently. Basically, you got a nonsense phrase that concealed another words or phrase that would be revealed by removing letters without rearranging. "For example, EACH WRIST MASHED can be changed into CHRISTMAS by zapping 6 letters as follows:EACH WRIST MASHED." I don't really know how it played out.
Panache brought in a transaddition/transdeletion challenge. We had to create a chain of words such that each word had all the letters of the previous, possibly anagrammed, plus or minus one letter. (The chain only went in one direction, though, so you couldn't create a chain of three letters to four letters to five letters to four letters to three letters to four letters . . .) Moreover, each chain had to have at least one word that fit into a constraint, like chemical elements, months of the year, movie titles, etc. The example, for chemical elements, went something like: nor / iron / groin / rowing / growing / growling / glowering. With a time limit, this turned out to be pretty difficult, and everyone ended up with mostly same-sized lists, hovering around five and six words. But thanks to a quirk in scoring, my team won (Hooray!), and I got to snag one of Panache's old American Heritage Dictionaries (which was nice, because I don't have any of those).
Bluff came next with a game called "Snare . . . If You Dare." I'm not sure if "If You Dare" was part of the title, but it was on the scoring sheet, so there it is. At its heart, this was a limited-answer trivia game, where a team would be asked a question with a finite number of answers (at least five, in this case). But it also added some scoring complications from the Anti-Match Game. Basically, one team answers the question directly. They get points for correct answers, but lose nothing for wrong ones. Other teams have the option to attempt to "snare" points by also providing an answer. If they give an incorrect answer, they lose points. If they give a correct answer that the first team also gave, they lose points (though less than if their answer was wrong). If their answer is correct and was not given by the first team, they get the same amount of points the first team got plus five.
For the most part, the questions were pitched a bit too hard. There was one category that was a hit: 11C Sandwich. Given two bold-face entries in Merriam-Webster's Eleventh Collegiate Dictionary, guess the main entries that lie between them. These were challenging, and were interesting when it came to tryin to anti-match the other team. The other dictionary questions seemed to be too random, and the trivia questions were pitched too difficult. Since the point of the game was to encourage other teams to risk giving answers, the questions needed to be easier. It was generally a better strategy to not attempt to "snare" because the penalties were too great.
Bluff mistimed his game, so we closed up a little early. Then we had the business meeting. Artistry wasn't there, so I was forced to try to read his mind. I don't know if you know Artistry, but trying to read his mind on organizational matters is just a losing proposition. No offense to him, I think he's doing a fabulous job keeping track of a lot of the LA Con stuff, but I don't know what's going on, so I was getting a little snippy when Bluff seemed to expect me too. At the last party, we assigned a planning committee, and I specifically did not join it. There's a reason for that.
After the meeting,tmcay presented his game Futz, which is similar to Word Yahtzee. Instead of dice, each player gets a deck of cards that contains several letters and one wild. Each team deals out seven cards, and has two "redeals" in which it can choose which cards it wants to keep. The goal is to create words that fill specific categories, like "Name of a character in the Bible," "name of a major sports team (singular form)," and, of course, "chance" which allowed a player to fill in any dictionary word. This was a lot of fun, and I got to play on a team with Pauline, who gets very excited, so we both ended up getting very excited. For example, on an early turn, we pulled out a natural seven-letter word, which we immediately put into the Chance column. Later, we did the equivalent of drawing on an inside straight to pull out "Marlin" on our last draw. It was lots of fun. Sadly, though, we lost by two points.
Then, E-Wolf brought out a trivia game called Googleplex, which involved the option to use limited Google searches to answer tricky trivia questions. This game had the capability of turning disastrous, since the Google component took much longer than E-Wolf anticipated. Luckily, it was the last game before dinner, so we basically let the Google part of the game continue while we ate. Big timesaver. And it allowed us to better appreciated the clever questions. Some were chestnuts, and for others, the twists were a bit transparent, but it was still fun and had some good trivia. Besides, I think the "transparent" thing was relative, sincetmcay and I were on the same team, and we both have some insight into the mind of a triviator. Also, our team won.
During dinner, I recorded an AudBlog.
Next, Elfman provided a short, sweet suite of puzzles. I don't want to give too much away, because they were very fun, and will probably appear in other NPL venues eventually. If you really want details, you can bug me, but I think you're better off bugging Elfman for a copy of the game.
And finally, I ran Trivia Football. I'm going to post the questions soon, in the same style as last year's Christmas Trivia Challenge, so I won't worry about that just yet. I think I was right that the questions were pitched a bit too hard. The LA group, in general, is a bit soft on trivia, so I should have gone easier. I think that the questions would have made for a very competitive game at the NPL Con, but I accept responsibility for misreading my audience.
More importantly, I have learned that one of my team-dividing techniques is a total failure. I generally divide teams up randomly, then ask teams to check to see if they are evenly matched. However, I misjudge the absurd sense of team pride that attached itself to any team, even if it is randomly assigned. I should have stepped in and redistributed the teams, since it would have made the match-up more fair (the final score was fifty-something to nine). But, I still think the questions were solid. The sign of that is that, even when the round was over, people would ask "Is _____ on the list?" Interesting, yes; but also hard.
After that, the party broke up rather quickly.tmcay, cramerica and I already had plans for Sunday, so I didn't impose myself on their house for late-night games. I'll write up Sunday, when I get the chance.
ThuNYTX: 7. FriNYTX: 16:53. 1 error. There's one square where two letters seem to semi-work. I chose the wrong one.
There were some handouts that were worked on before I got there (since I arrived late). One was the most recent Kegler Kryptic. I don't believe it is on the website yet. Another was a set of puzzles from
tmcay. He's been playing around with Google Images for puzzles, and his most recent handout was very fun. Each puzzle was for pictures; each picture represented one part of a famous foursome. The pictures were all chosen by putting the corresponding word into Google Images. Go bug him for examples, since I forgot to grab a copy of the sheet.The first game (which I also missed) was a simple pencil puzzle from Music Man, similar to something he'd e-mailed around recently. Basically, you got a nonsense phrase that concealed another words or phrase that would be revealed by removing letters without rearranging. "For example, EACH WRIST MASHED can be changed into CHRISTMAS by zapping 6 letters as follows:
Panache brought in a transaddition/transdeletion challenge. We had to create a chain of words such that each word had all the letters of the previous, possibly anagrammed, plus or minus one letter. (The chain only went in one direction, though, so you couldn't create a chain of three letters to four letters to five letters to four letters to three letters to four letters . . .) Moreover, each chain had to have at least one word that fit into a constraint, like chemical elements, months of the year, movie titles, etc. The example, for chemical elements, went something like: nor / iron / groin / rowing / growing / growling / glowering. With a time limit, this turned out to be pretty difficult, and everyone ended up with mostly same-sized lists, hovering around five and six words. But thanks to a quirk in scoring, my team won (Hooray!), and I got to snag one of Panache's old American Heritage Dictionaries (which was nice, because I don't have any of those).
Bluff came next with a game called "Snare . . . If You Dare." I'm not sure if "If You Dare" was part of the title, but it was on the scoring sheet, so there it is. At its heart, this was a limited-answer trivia game, where a team would be asked a question with a finite number of answers (at least five, in this case). But it also added some scoring complications from the Anti-Match Game. Basically, one team answers the question directly. They get points for correct answers, but lose nothing for wrong ones. Other teams have the option to attempt to "snare" points by also providing an answer. If they give an incorrect answer, they lose points. If they give a correct answer that the first team also gave, they lose points (though less than if their answer was wrong). If their answer is correct and was not given by the first team, they get the same amount of points the first team got plus five.
For the most part, the questions were pitched a bit too hard. There was one category that was a hit: 11C Sandwich. Given two bold-face entries in Merriam-Webster's Eleventh Collegiate Dictionary, guess the main entries that lie between them. These were challenging, and were interesting when it came to tryin to anti-match the other team. The other dictionary questions seemed to be too random, and the trivia questions were pitched too difficult. Since the point of the game was to encourage other teams to risk giving answers, the questions needed to be easier. It was generally a better strategy to not attempt to "snare" because the penalties were too great.
Bluff mistimed his game, so we closed up a little early. Then we had the business meeting. Artistry wasn't there, so I was forced to try to read his mind. I don't know if you know Artistry, but trying to read his mind on organizational matters is just a losing proposition. No offense to him, I think he's doing a fabulous job keeping track of a lot of the LA Con stuff, but I don't know what's going on, so I was getting a little snippy when Bluff seemed to expect me too. At the last party, we assigned a planning committee, and I specifically did not join it. There's a reason for that.
After the meeting,
tmcay presented his game Futz, which is similar to Word Yahtzee. Instead of dice, each player gets a deck of cards that contains several letters and one wild. Each team deals out seven cards, and has two "redeals" in which it can choose which cards it wants to keep. The goal is to create words that fill specific categories, like "Name of a character in the Bible," "name of a major sports team (singular form)," and, of course, "chance" which allowed a player to fill in any dictionary word. This was a lot of fun, and I got to play on a team with Pauline, who gets very excited, so we both ended up getting very excited. For example, on an early turn, we pulled out a natural seven-letter word, which we immediately put into the Chance column. Later, we did the equivalent of drawing on an inside straight to pull out "Marlin" on our last draw. It was lots of fun. Sadly, though, we lost by two points.Then, E-Wolf brought out a trivia game called Googleplex, which involved the option to use limited Google searches to answer tricky trivia questions. This game had the capability of turning disastrous, since the Google component took much longer than E-Wolf anticipated. Luckily, it was the last game before dinner, so we basically let the Google part of the game continue while we ate. Big timesaver. And it allowed us to better appreciated the clever questions. Some were chestnuts, and for others, the twists were a bit transparent, but it was still fun and had some good trivia. Besides, I think the "transparent" thing was relative, since
tmcay and I were on the same team, and we both have some insight into the mind of a triviator. Also, our team won.During dinner, I recorded an AudBlog.
Next, Elfman provided a short, sweet suite of puzzles. I don't want to give too much away, because they were very fun, and will probably appear in other NPL venues eventually. If you really want details, you can bug me, but I think you're better off bugging Elfman for a copy of the game.
And finally, I ran Trivia Football. I'm going to post the questions soon, in the same style as last year's Christmas Trivia Challenge, so I won't worry about that just yet. I think I was right that the questions were pitched a bit too hard. The LA group, in general, is a bit soft on trivia, so I should have gone easier. I think that the questions would have made for a very competitive game at the NPL Con, but I accept responsibility for misreading my audience.
More importantly, I have learned that one of my team-dividing techniques is a total failure. I generally divide teams up randomly, then ask teams to check to see if they are evenly matched. However, I misjudge the absurd sense of team pride that attached itself to any team, even if it is randomly assigned. I should have stepped in and redistributed the teams, since it would have made the match-up more fair (the final score was fifty-something to nine). But, I still think the questions were solid. The sign of that is that, even when the round was over, people would ask "Is _____ on the list?" Interesting, yes; but also hard.
After that, the party broke up rather quickly.
tmcay, cramerica and I already had plans for Sunday, so I didn't impose myself on their house for late-night games. I'll write up Sunday, when I get the chance.ThuNYTX: 7. FriNYTX: 16:53. 1 error. There's one square where two letters seem to semi-work. I chose the wrong one.