[Hunt03] Re: 2004 MIT Mystery Hunt

[Francis Heaney <f_heaney yahoo com>]

> First, Eric said he had considered doing a
> separate hunt during IAP but *on a different weekend*.
> I don't know how long IAP is, but it seems clear that
> Eric was not trying to create something else to do
> during the hunt.

Yeah, but I still don't understand the need to have planned it for
anytime in January.  I mean, here's the quote:

"If the Hunt leaders had forbidden teams of larger than 15 members,
things would have been clear: I was fully prepared to have our team opt
out and instead *run* our own Hunt during IAP (on a different weekend,
of course)."

Well, if the Hunt leaders had forbidden large teams (which it seems
they haven't, so this is all academic, but still), that wouldn't have
precluded NPLers being involved in the Hunt.  So, given that those
NPLers are probably only available to make one trip out of town in
January, they'd have to pick which Hunt to go to.  So whether it's on
another weekend or not, it'd still be somewhat in competition with the
MIT Hunt.

And if what you *really* enjoy doing is solving on a large team, and
that happened to be not permitted for some reason -- why couldn't you
solve the Hunt with a *non-competing* large team?  Obviously, there'd
be no chance to win, but if you're playing for fun, then why does that
matter?  You can solve what you want to solve, and you can just skip
the MIT-specific puzzles if you don't have enough MIT students on your
team.  Honestly, that doesn't sound that bad to me.

Well, it doesn't sound that bad except for my strong competitive
streak.  But personally, I'd be more satisfied to have my 15-person
team beat all the other 15-person teams than to have my 80-person team
beat all the 65-person teams.

> Second, re this team not being the
> one to invoke a 2-pope schism, iirc this was something
> Eric cited as a reason not to follow through on the
> idea for a separate hunt.

That is perfectly true, although the way it is phrased implies that the
way the current Huntmeisters are planning to run things is so
outrageous that obviously *some* team will have to create a two-Pope
schism at some point.  This seems disrespectful, as does referring to
the upcoming Hunt as a "kinda-Mystery-Hunt-like thingamabob".

-- Francis

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