![]() The Slitherlink, after a great deal of effort and a few more energy drinks, is also dead, and our team congregates for a Whistle Stop. "THE DUCK IS DEAD!" comes a triumphant holler from the main HQ. While five team members hole up in a conference room with the toy ducks several people thought to bring, one of us skulks off into a quiet hall deep in the bowels of Microsoft with seven colors of pencils, an energy drink, and the Slitherlink of Doom. This hunt's Duck Konundrum involves keeping track of five crazed ducknappers around the map on the board game Ticket to Ride. It requires several people to sit around a table following a very long list of instructions that rely on one another. The Duck Konundrum is a type of puzzle that was invented by Dan Katz in the MIT Mystery Hunt, an East Coast event on which the Microsoft hunt is based. The Chicago round comes out, bringing with it the Duck Konundrum we've all been expecting since we saw "a duck, live or otherwise, or an object which can stand for a duck" on the list of recommended supplies. One person dubbed it "The Slitherlink of Doom." Almost everyone who's looked at it has come away cursing. ![]() It's a Slitherlink, a kind of loop-forming puzzle most of our team is familiar with, but this variant involves paths and intersections rather than loops. No one's sure what to do with the "Star Chart" of celebrities, the "Social Network" friend-connections puzzle is causing some frustration, and the "Undersea Railroad Crossing" logic puzzle is being given a wide berth. Fortunately, we were warned before the hunt started that this particular constructing team likes to use a lot of codes, and we have plenty of resources on hand.īack at our team's HQ, we've run into walls on a few puzzles. The answer extraction uses Braille again. Partway through, the rules change, and we get stuck for a while before we realize that now we have to combine the color values of both stick figures to make the pattern. We turn in our answer at the registration desk and receive a manila envelope containing our first round of puzzles. A member of our team notices almost immediately that the holes are positioned to form letters out of the white space around them, yielding the answer ABOARD. ![]() We're instructed to open our envelopes, which contain three identical hole-punched tickets divided into six segments each. It tells us in halting typewritten text that the Space Needle has been stolen, and it's our job to get it back by chasing the thief across the country on a series of virtual train rides. Then comes our introduction to the hunt itself: an FBI case assignment marked "Mildly Confidential" comes up on the screen. (Sabotaging other teams with computer viruses, we learn, is not permitted.) The video gets lots of laughs and a cheer at the end. The event kicks off with an overview of the rules, presented in a highly entertaining little video that intersperses a sternly lecturing train conductor with scenes in which an elderly woman with a paisley laptop explains to a younger woman what constitutes acceptable behavior at a puzzle hunt. Our team files into a row of seats, careful to avoid getting stuck behind the Silly Hat Brigade team, whose adherence to their title makes them difficult to see past. Beside this warm welcome is an illustration of a train engine behind a red-clad woman reminiscent of Carmen Sandiego.
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