Egotism.

[tablesaw]

Beyond Tetris is back with a new article on The 7th Guest and The 11th Hour. Light on the puzzle analysis, because the games were light on original puzzles.

I'm hoping to get back on a biweekly pattern for the column. I'm not sure if future articles will be going up on Wednesdays or Thursdays, but my plan is to still write them the weekend before the publish date, then have a few days left over to finish things up.

After mentioning it again, I've decided to finally tackle The Fool's Errand for the next article. I'd originally planned to coordinate the article with some certainty regarding the long-delayed sequel, The Fool and His Money, but after mentioning it again in the 7th Guest article, I don't think I can put it off much more.

On a related note, I'm looking for information about the history of the word "metapuzzle." I've sent an e-mail to the NPL mailing list, and I'm duplicating it here as well:

I've been wondering about the history of the word "metapuzzle."

Today, it's most often used to refer to puzzles in puzzle hunts and
extravaganzas that combine the answers to other puzzles. When I
googled it, almost everything was someone explaining how one hunt or
another worked. But most of the references are pretty recent.

Looking at the MIT Mystery Hunt page, the earliest mention of it
appears to be the 2000 hunt. It doesn't appear in Eric's _Games
Magazine_ article or in the archived information from early hunts.
(The earliest hunts called the metapuzzle the "main clue" and all of
the puzzles "subclues.")

Recently, I've been looking at Cliff Johnson's videogame _The Fool's
Errand_, and on his website he says, "The metapuzzle, a term coined by
Scott Kim in describing The Fool's Errand, is a tale, a set of
puzzles, a set of clues revealed by those puzzles, and a mapping
device in which to organize the clues, leading to the final 'ah-ha!.'"
This description seems overly tied to the structure of _The Fool's
Errand_ (which was released in 1987) but it may be the earliest
example of the modern usage.

Before that, I believe that Raymond Smullyan used "metapuzzle" to
refer to logic problems where an evaluation of the puzzle's
solvability was a necessary part of solving the puzzle. I believe the
term first appeared in _What Is the Name of This Book?_, which was
published in 1978, and in many of his other puzzle books.

A Google Books search has two earlier mentions, but they don't have
context beyond a sentence:

Discover (1980) Page 88
While mulling over these two puzzles, try to find the relation between
them—the "metapuzzle." 1 Tensions ran high between Earth and the
warlike planet Emet.

New Scientist (1971) Page 58
But the climax of this first part is what the author rather grandly
describes as
a "profound metapuzzle" concerning the fountain of youth: the problem which ...

If anyone has any information about the history of the word, I'd love
to hear it. I'd expecially like to hear if anyone knows

How far back can the current meaning of "metapuzzle" be traced?

When did "metapuzzle" start to appear in discussions of the Mystery
Hunt or puzzle hunts in general?

When and where did Scott Kim describe The Fool's Errand as a metapuzzle?

How common was the Smullyan sense before the puzzle hunt sense dominated?

Were there any standard usages before or concurrent with Smullyan?

Thanks for your help.

Comments

[qaqaq.livejournal.com]

This really feels like a question for our resident puzzle historian. Hope Will sees it; he may have the references to help you do the digging if he doesn't know offhand.

[joenotcharles.livejournal.com]

I don't recall the term "metapuzzle" in What Is the Name of This Book (the only Smullyan I've read) - are you sure he didn't introduce it elsewhere? (I can double-check this weekend, if I remember.)

[tablesaw]

He may have. I recall seeing it in a few of his books, but I can't recall which ones used the term explicitly. For some reason, it looks like my copies of all of his books have disappeared from my shelves.

[rubrick.livejournal.com]

The Guest/Hour article is excellent (as always). BTW, there's a "the" for "they" typo in the first quote from Landeros.

[fuldu.livejournal.com]

I don't know where to find a copy of it any more, since I believe the category it was in was cleaned out years ago, but that draft rec.puzzles archive entry was eventually completed and entered into the archive. I believe I also put together a solution for The 11th Hour, although there was probably a lot more rant in that one.

[tablesaw]

I figured that's what happened. I looked around for more of your posts re The 11th Hour, but I didn't find any. I figured you'd gotten tired of Usenet or something.