[Hunt03] Re: 2004 MIT Mystery Hunt

[Ken Olum <kdo cosmos phy tufts edu>]

I don't understand the issue of needing to make it harder for larger
teams explicitly.  Isn't it sufficient to not have very many puzzles
active at once?  Then it will not be very fun to be on a gargantuan
team, because there isn't anything for all those people to do, so people
will be motivated to form smaller teams in order to have more fun.
Announcing in advance that the Hunt would be structured in that way
would encourage people to split early instead of not having a good
time and splitting next year.

Making things explicitly harder requires a definitive list of who is
on the team.  At least on the palindrome team we've never had such a
clear specification.  In fact, last year, I wasn't completely certain
if I was on the team myself.  (But when we needed some of our "team
members" not to be touching the floors or the walls my twins suddenly
became members of the team.)  I think puzzles which are an explicit
function of team size are a bad idea.

                Ken