Puzzles

For the second year in a row we were able to attend the day-long puzzle fest hosted at the local library. It's a really fun day with lots of different puzzles. And even though we didn't win anything, I did noticeably better than last year. Especially on the crosswords.

The day kicked off with the group challenge, which was slightly different than last year. We had to cut out one of the rounds due to time constraints, but the rounds we played were fun and different. It started with a categorization-type game where we were asked questions like "Of the US states, which begin with an uncapitalized English word of at least 5 letters?" (Colorado is in the set, Indiana is not). Then there was a difficult "coordination" activity where we had to select where on a picture something was located (say the appendix on a picture of the human body), but the people selecting the horizontal coordinate couldn't communicate with the people selecting the vertical coordinate. We did surprisingly well. The final round presented questions, but with only the first letter of each word filled in. As time ticked by more letters were filled in, and the sooner you got the correct answer, the more points you got. For example the first question started as "W--- w-- t-- l--- -N-- t--- t- w-- t-- S---- B---?" in the category sports. (the answer, which we got right away, was The Patriots).

After the group challenge we moved on to the crossword puzzle game, where you're given 20 minutes each to complete 3 crossword puzzles, and the three people who do it the most quickly and accurately compete on a final puzzle in the front of the room. I didn't even finish any of the puzzles, but I came very close on the first one. I did somewhat better on the Sudoku version of this later in the day. I finished every one of those puzzles in the time limit. Alas, everyone else there was much better, too, and the lady who ended up winning was consistently finishing the puzzles in two or three minutes.

It was a fun way to spend the day, even if I wasn't nearly as good at puzzles as most of the people there. It's fun to stretch your brain a bit. I just wish a bit more time could be devoted to the group competition, since that's my favorite part of the entire day.