BAPHL 6

Any unsigned commentary below was written by Dan Katz and may or may not represent the opinions of the other members of Mystik Spiral.

This page is under construction.

Successes

• Increasing difficulty and puzzle distribution throughout the rounds: We made an effort to put the most approachable puzzles in the first round, medium puzzles in the second, and the hardest puzzles in the third, which was friendly to new solvers. We also tried to spread around the puzzle types; for example, there were three pure logic puzzles, one in each round, and their difficulties clearly ramped up. (The third one was one of the hardest puzzles in the event, but teams were able to bypass it if necessary... see below.)

• Ability to skip bottlenecks: To advance, we required teams to solve 3 out of the first 5 puzzles, then 8 out of the first 10 puzzles, and then 13 out of the first 15 puzzles. This meant that if a team was completely stuck on a puzzle (or even two), they never had to solve it, provided they could solve the others. Teams were most likely to be bottlenecked in the last round where the puzzles were harder, but at that point it was likely the top teams had finished, and so we could be more open to giving hints.

• Effective pacing: Timing-wise, we kept solvers moving without being rushed, and we were also effectively able to control solver locations so that the event was easy for us to run; we staffed the event with seven people, and none of them were ever in a rush to get somewhere or dealing with a panic situation. (One exception was at the very end: see Problems.) We also had a lot of teams finish the hunt in the allotted time.

• Used public transportation well: BAPHL 6 was, as far as I know, the first BAPHL to use the T extensively. This allowed us to achieve a (less intense) Game-type feel, where solvers were traveling to very different locations and having an "adventure". We were sure to give teams puzzles before changing locations, so they had something to do while traveling.

• Strong integration of setting and theme: We had an up-and-coming band theme, and we based the event locations around three well-known live music venues in Boston, so that the physical path gelled with the story. We also managed to book a wrap-up party at the Middle East, which had a major cool factor for the theme.

Problems

• Too much chaos at the end: For prizes, we created a Raphl of the Bands, which allowed teams to fill out a ticket for each puzzle they solved, allowing us to award (some) prizes based on a weighted random drawing. The problem is we made the deadline to fill out tickets the same as the starting time of the wrap-up, which meant we were desperately trying to have tickets filled out before we went in and started the party. In retrospect, if we were going to have a time-consuming check-in for each team, we should have allotted some buffer time.

Apart from that, it's been a long time, and I don't remember any significant problems... We didn't do anything too risky, and we were very happy with how the event turned out. If anyone recalls issues from the event, please feel free to post them.