WHAT: Puzzle Potluck I WHEN: 8 October 2011 (Sat) 10:00am (9:30am orientation starts) WHERE: AU Student Union (lobby at Foy Desk) WHO: Confirmed Teams WHY: Hahaha hahahaha... Past Parties

EPP11: Puzzle Potluck I

The only thing harder than solving a good puzzle, is making a good puzzle.

Congratulations Charles Pilman and Erin McMullin!

I hope that another Potluck can be organized soon (freed up from the "EPP" branding... taking on a life of its own)... I'm thinking I want to compete in the next one.

Here is the final scoreboard (it's not clear, really, but the team in the first column brought Puzzle 1, team in the second column brought Puzzle 2, etc... I, as referee, provided Puzzle 10). I will link to copies of the puzzles in the near future.

Here are quick pictures I snapped of each team in the first round as they tackled their first puzzles of the day (which are puzzles created by the teams next on the list):

1. Puzzle 1 (no team worked on it in the first round).
2. Andrew and Jenny on Puzzle 2
3. Robert and Emily on Puzzle 3
4. Amy and Calvin on Puzzle 4 (Part 2)
5. Stephen and Jessica on Puzzle 5
6. Charles and Erin on Puzzle 6 (Part 2)
7. Mike and Kelly on Puzzle 7
8. Tim and Edward on Puzzle 8
9. Alex and Kristin on Puzzle 9
10. Daniel and Anna on Puzzle 10

The idea of the Puzzle Potluck is that each team will be required to bring a puzzle of their own which all of the other teams will try to solve. Each team will try to solve all of the puzzles (except their own) and get a total score based on their successes as well as a few other factors.

Here are the quick notes:

• A team will be 1 or 2 people in size (your team only needs to create/bring one puzzle, not two if you are a two-person team).
• The team should design a puzzle beforehand that they hope other teams will enjoy. This can be just about any type of puzzle (see below for more guidelines).
• At the venue one table will be set up for each puzzle. Much like my past Puzzle Decathlons, teams will rotate through the puzzle stations during the day, having 25 minutes per station to try to solve the puzzle there. There will be 5 minutes between rounds, during which teams will submit final answers, evaluate the puzzles they just tried, and move to the next station.
• If there are N teams participating, then each team will attempt N-1 basic puzzles (they won't be solving their own). In addition to the N-1 possible scores earned for those puzzles, there will be three more ways to earn points:
  1. I, the organizer/referee, will be submitting one puzzle for each team to attempt.
  2. A team will earn points based on how many other teams solve the puzzle they entered. Details are below, but you are trying to design a puzzle that exactly half of the attempting teams will successfully solve.
  3. Each team will evaluate each puzzle for enjoyment. The average of these scores will be another "score".
• The duration of the Puzzle Potluck will be about (N+1)/2 hours where the extra half hour is from a built in BYE round that each team will get (at which point your teams gets the BYE will be determined by the random order of teams as they rotate through stations during the day -- to be determined at the start of the Potluck).

Puzzle Design Guidelines

First, TEAMS WILL NOT BE ALLOWED TO USE THE INTERNET. On the honor system we will assume that teams are not using smart-phones or other devices to access the Internet. So, you must decide how much knowledge you believe the players to have when solving your puzzle. Assuming they can name the 50 States is probably safe. Greek letters may be more obscure. If your puzzle is heavily trivia based, maybe you will want to use a lot of obscure knowledge, but you probably don't want to design a puzzle centered around astronomical star charts usless you are somehow provide some helpful resources. I, as referee, will print out a large poster of common codes. This will be brought and prominently displayed near my HQ onsite. Players will be allowed to refer to this poster as they are solving their puzzles (this negates the need for a puzzle designer to provide specific codes for their puzzles -- if needed -- and thus, does not give a hint as to what code might actually be needed). Currently, I plan for my poster to include the following codes:

• Letters/Index Values (A=1, B=1, ...)
• ASCII Values (A=65, B=66, ..., a=97, b=98, ...)
• Morse Code
• Braille
• Semaphore
• Sign Language
• Pig Pen (several variants)
• Phonetic Alphabet
• Dvorak Keyboard conversion
• Telephone Keypad
• Binary Values (1=1, 2=10, 3=11, etc...)

As a puzzle designer, if you would like me to include another code, please let me know. Beyond these resources, you should assume that your players will only have scratch paper, pencils, clipboards, and simple calculators.

You should design your puzzle to be solved in an "all-or-nothing" fashion, no partial scoring. If a team correctly solves your puzzle, they will earn 100 points. If they do not solve it, they will receive 0 points. No in-between. This is pretty straightforward if you submit a manipulative puzzle like a Pentomino, space-filling puzzle; teams will either get all the pieces to fit or they won't. It will take a bit more creativity to force some other puzzles to be all-or-nothing. For example, if you design a trivia puzzle with 50 questions, you should not say that the team will earn 2 points for each correct answer (that would be partial scoring, not all-or-nothing). You could make such a puzzle all-or-nothing in various ways. You could say the teams get 100 points if they answer, say, 30 or more of the 50 questions, 0 points if fewer than that 30 threshold. You could also embed circled letters in the correct answers of each question, and if the team answers enough of the questions correctly, they can then extract a code message... submitting the code message is the all-or-nothing part, they either get it (100 pts) or they don't (0 pts). Similar "embedded messages" can be done with crosswords, word searches, and so forth.

Remember that teams will only have 25 minutes per puzzle, and this includes the time needed to read your puzzle's instructions.

Ideally your puzzle can be graded fairly quickly. I, as referee, will try to grade all of the puzzles during the next round of play as teams are then working on another puzzle. Again, some solves will be obvious and quick, but grading a 50-question trivia quiz could take time (if I'm having to see if teams meet some answer threshold).

You should bring enough copies of you puzzle for every team to have at least one copy plus some extras (for me and others to looks at while you are solving). If you design a physical puzzle, you likely will only need one copy (it will stay at its station, and each team will tackle it after the previous team possibly solved it, and hopefully did any re-scrambling). If your puzzle is paper-and-pencil, though, then each team will need a fresh sheet, so make sure you bring enough copies. You should also bring extra copies (and even an extra copy of a physical puzzle, maybe, in case the original breaks, pieces are lost, or who-knows-what).

You are trying to design a puzzle that will be solved (all-or-nothing) by half the teams. Your Nth "score" for the day (after you have earned N-1 scores of either 0 or 100 points for attempting other teams' puzzles) will be based on how many other teams solved your puzzle. Say there are thirteen teams competing. Then 12 teams will trying to solve your puzzle. For your Nth score, you might earn 100 points if 6 teams solve it. And then, maybe, earn 90 points if 5 or 7 teams solve it, 80 points if 4 or 8 teams solve it, and so on (this is just an example, the exact "point curve" I'll tweak once we lock down the exact number of teams).

At the end of the day teams will be asked to rank all of the puzzles in order of "enjoyment". What does this mean? It means you want to try to make your puzzle more "fun" than all of the others. Good luck with that. Trying to please all of the puzzlers all of the time is tough business, but these rankings will be used to determine another score for your team (from 0-100 points).

You may send your puzzle design to me, the referee, before the Party-Day to have it play-tested, proofread, and so on (I may also show it to other puzzle-colleague who will not be attending the Potluck). But please have a fully-formed puzzle; do not just send me an idea and ask, "how can I make this into a finalized puzzle?" One goal for the Potluck is that it will not require as much behind-the-scenes work from the referee, so I don't want to end up co-designing puzzles for other teams. That being said, I have a soft spot in my heart for physical/manipulative puzzles, so if you have an idea for something along those lines, but need some help with designing or making it, you might be able to coax me into helping you.

If your puzzle has been adapted from another source, you should give credit where credit is due (say what puzzle inspired your puzzle and its author, if you can determine such information).

Final Notes

Highest total wins.

Winner buys everyone dinner. Kidding.

Confirmed Teams

If you have requested a place on the list below, but have not yet submitted a finalized puzzle, you may get bumped off if another new team requests a position and they have a puzzle completed.

1. Robert Ford & Emily Norman*
2. Andrew & Jennifer Thomas*
3. Michael and Kelly Hollingsworth*
4. Steven and Jessica Clontz*
5. Erin McMullin and Charles Pilman*
6. Tim Hardwick and Edward Boudreaux*
7. Amy Steinkampf and Calvin Thomas*
8. Alex Byaly and Kristin Courtney*
9. Anna Wan and Daniel Brice*

Spectators