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You'd think that, when testsolving for a competition where most puzzles don't have given rules, people would read the rules for those puzzles that do have them very carefully. I know I thought that. I was apparently very wrong. [facepalm] - ZM UPDATE: More importantly, you'd think that the testsolvers would be given the complete instructions to begin with. [headdesk] But even more importantly than that, you'd think that the constructor would provide an error-free puzzle so that the previous two would even make a difference! [bodyfloor]

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I'm glad you like them! I have done more Seeking Syren puzzles, right here on this blog! Puzzles 14, 16, 34, and 48 are Seeking Syren puzzles; I don't have them individually tagged yet, but I do have a "puzzles" tag to narrow down the search space. It was actually considered at first to not put the instructions in with the Hunt puzzle and instead let people find the four-year-old original rules on my blog, but we decided against that. At first, the instructions I wrote for the Hunt were a cross between my "concise" instructions and the numbered list I have with Puzzle 14; they were being misinterpreted to the point that one of the editors actually removed a rule, apparently thinking it just a grammatical touch-up, before giving the testsolvers the result - which led to this post. Of course, I had made a silly lettering error (where it now reads 'TAXI COGITO' in Treyarch's Big, it used to read 'HEYY ABBOTT', which breaks the final grid), so it was hopeless at the time anyhow, but the whole affair led to the way I presented the rules in the Hunt. The specific issue was that solvers were thinking that only routes that used all nodes had to be considered to determine uniqueness, which of course led to seven solutions for Skywalkers' Callsign (which was designed to showcase that one omitted rule...).

The sample has the spirit cell adjacent to a node. Somehow, someway, HQ still got a call from someone claiming the puzzles had no solutions until told the spirit cell could be adjacent to a node. Which justifies this post, come to think of it.

I would love to be able to put out a book of these, if anyone's offering (especially given my current state of unemployment...); if I had such an opportunity, I would likely do what Thomas Snyder did in Battleship Sudoku and present path-only puzzles and island-only puzzles for starters to make sure the rules are clear for each half, along with solving hints between difficulty levels for the main attraction. One thing I definitely would NOT do is say each node is adjacent to anything, as you suggest, especially given the rule that nodes CAN'T be adjacent to each other! I know, you were referring to nodes connected to one another by the path, but I hope you see why it is that I worded the instructions VERY carefully. Sometimes the simplest concepts are the most difficult to rigorously put into words; people go into most anything with a certain set of assumptions, and the job of a puzzlesmith (or at least a good one) is to dispel all the false ones, but at just the right pace.

I also wrote "A Letter to the Prince of Kong", and made the underlying logical element for Bowen's "Mystery Hunt Puzzle 3000". I also ended up re-scripting and hosting Mike's "The Cash Corridor", which despite the immense soreness it gave me for days afterward (and the continued numbness in my left foot) was by far my favorite part of running the Hunt. - ZM

Should I try to interest my contact at Sterling in doing a book of Seeking Syren?

Yeah, right after I hit send on my post, I realized the sloppy way I had used adjacent, and realized that writing accurate instructions for puzzles is even harder than I realized. Your style on the blog of giving two completely independent definitions is a good one; if some one reads an ambiguity into one of them, whether or not it's actually ambiguous, choosing the interpretation that's equivalent to the other set of rules will disambiguate.

I enjoyed "Letter to the Prince of Kong", mostly because it gave me a chance to tell people about the movie. I found the contrast between King of Kong and Wordplay to be very interesting.

Wes was telling me about his experiences hosting "Cash Corridor", so I guess you split the duties. Hope your foot recovers, and just be glad you didn't host "Runaround" in the Normalville hunt, which was even more strenuous.

<Groucho Marx>
I don't think he'd be interested in doing a book of them, but I hope he'd be interesting in having ME do a book of them and him publishing them.
</Groucho Marx>

But seriously, I'd be all for that, and I'd owe you big time if I walked into a Barnes and Noble and saw my book on their shelf!

I'm really glad you like my two-sets-of-rules presentation. I've found it really helps people get to the heart of matters, and when an interpretation issue between them crops up, it lets me know exactly how I can tweak one or the other to make them better match. I said it in my very first post in this journal, and I'll say it again: disambiguity is one of the noblest purposes one can pursue - it is justice for logic.

I actually didn't see The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters until it came out on DVD, and I only saw Wordplay for the first time a few months ago! There is a lot to compare between the two; perhaps the most striking is the producers' influence on the events. Wordplay gets Merle Reagle to make a crossword for the film; KoK invents an underdog story to make Michael Moore proud. (On a side note, the IMDB "STARmeter" says my popularity is up 81% this week, and my teammate Tyler Hinman's is down 5%. Somehow, though thoroughly unintentional, this pleases me.)

Wes took over for me once I was physically incapable of doing The Cash Corridor anymore (I had been awake over 24 hours and walking all over the place before I started hosting). Actually, Todd Radford, creator and host of Normalville's "Runaround", was one of my contestants! He told me about that past event, and said that his participation in "The Cash Corridor" was poetic justice. It is now an absolute given that ANY Hunt I'm on the constructing team for WILL have a gameshow-style puzzle, and I'll be hosting every episode of it if at all possible. Wes supposedly has a short video of me hosting, and if memory serves, it's of Todd's second (and successful) attempt; I'm hoping he still has it and can get it to me. - ZM

So I know nothing of the competitive Arcade-gaming world other than what I saw in King of Kong. So I'd be very interested in learning how it distorted the facts. I've been to the ACPT, and know a lot of people who are featured in the Wordplay, and I found it to be quite accurate and undistorted.

Let me say this right off the bat before I mention anything else: Steve is the real deal, and he's a great guy. My telling him that ape is very cunning wasn't the only interaction we had that weekend, and there was certainly a sense of people mistrusting him about. I didn't buy into it, and let the man play, and he proved them all wrong, and I'm glad I was there to see it. In that sense, there really was an underdog story come true.

With that said, the editors definitely took liberties. There was no faked footage in KoK, as you might imagine (and yes, I really am that much of a dork), but certain things were presented out of order or out of context to paint the picture of a conspiracy. (It's not like they needed to - there was plenty of stupidity going around without them needing to make up a villanous appearance. Suffice it to say that TG is now under new management.) Perhaps the greatest fact-bending is that Steve Wiebe was depicted as wresting a 20-year-old record from Billy Mitchell; he didn't. The editors of the film practically bent over backwards to erase Tim Sczerby from existence, the man that in 2000 did beat Billy's score from 1982. Steve beat Tim's score in 2003, and held the record until January 2006; when his million-plus score was rejected, his earlier score was still the record, and Billy's old score was still third place. The Twin Galaxies forum has a section devoted to the film's inaccuracies.

My personal experience is... well, what I put in the letter. Nothing I wrote in "A Letter to the Prince of Kong" is fictional. There really is a great sense of camaraderie - at least, among most of the players. - ZM

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