Re: [Palindrome] mystery hunt rooms (warning, ridiculously detailed)

[Michael Korn <mikekorn gmail com>]

Hi.

Here's my take on the room situation.

Movable tables are a must.  Restricting to rooms with movable tables, and removing "singleton" rooms, we are left with:

(A) 4-145, 4-149, 4-153:     phone jack, net drop, adjoining.

(B) 4-261, 4-265:     net drop.

(C) 26-204, 26-210:     net drop.

(D) 26-302, 26-310, 26-314, 26-322, 26-328:     net drop.

(E) 56-154, 56-169, 56-191:     phone jack, net
drop, not next to each other, 169 and 191 not available until Friday at
9 PM.

(F) 13-4101, 13-5101:     phone jack, on different floors.

Presumably we would want two rooms out of these.  It seems clear
that option (A) is the complete package and should be our first
choice.  Options (B), (C), and (D) are all pretty similar.  I
would rank these in the order (B), (C), (D) simply because the rooms in
(B) are the largest, and (C) has the advantage that we wouldn't be
right next to another team.  As for (E) and (F), one could argue
for the pros and cons of either.  56-154 is large (1036 square
feet), so we could keep all our stuff in the main HQ and not have to
worry about stuff getting stolen from the secondary room.  On the
other hand, it's somewhat annoying to have to wait until 9 PM to move
into the secondary room.  Option (F) gives us the usual benefit of
two rooms, and if I recall correctly, the rooms are right next to a
staircase, so getting between them should be very quick.  But it
doesn't have a net drop.  I prefer (E) over (F) myself.

Personally, I think any of these 6 options would be acceptable.

Of course option (A) is the best choice.  Among the others, I am
having trouble deciding whether I prefer (B) or (E).  In favor of
(E) is that it has the phone jack, which is nice.  Also, I
remember that one one the major hassles of having non-adjoining rooms
is the necessity of keeping both rooms continuously occupied so that
people's stuff doesn't get stolen.  By having a large room and a
small room, we could keep all our valuables in the big room, meaning
there's only one room we need to keep an eye on.  The other
room(s) could be used for food, sleeping, or further puzzling.  In
favor of (B), on the other hand, is the fact that those two rooms are
next to each other, and we'd have them right from the start of the
hunt.  Also, the rooms in (B) are in a less busy part of campus,
so there'd be less concern about always having the door shut and so on.

Anyone else have any opinions on (B) vs. (E)?  (Or any of the choices for that matter?)

mike

On 12/8/05, Carol A Meyers <carol mit edu> wrote:

Hello,

For those of you who are concerned about land lines, I figure it is worth
mentioning that my cell phone should be better than the one we used two
years ago.  Different providers have varying levels of coverage around
MIT-- and Verizon's is the best.  T-Mobile, which is what I believe we had
two years ago, is the worst.  (For what it's worth, Cingular is next best
and Nextel/Sprint is in the middle.)

However, of course a land line would be more solid than any of these.

>From what I can tell, the only rooms with moveable tables and chairs that
also have a phone jack are the rooms 4-145, 4-149, and 4-153, and 56-154.
I dunno if a phone jack is more important to you guys than tables.  There
is one other possibility if we are willing to have one room with desks and
one room with tables that does include a phone jack-- 36-153 and 36-155.


Carol

On Thu, 8 Dec 2005, Dan Berlin wrote:

> I whole heartedly agree on the land line front.
> As for the network setup, the wireless setup @ MIT makes for easy networking
> all around.  The only thing that we NEEDED the hard-wired network for was
> the printer (which I no longer have access to).  If we find another high
> speed printer, chances are, it will need a wired network connection.
> DB
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Scott Purdy [mailto: smpurdy btinternet com]
> Sent: Thursday, December 08, 2005 16:20
> To: palindrome cosmos phy tufts edu
> Subject: Re: [Palindrome] mystery hunt rooms (warning, ridiculously
> detailed)
>
>
> After our experiences of the past two years, I would personally rank
> phone jack above adjoining and defer to someone with a better grasp
> of our network setup to clarify whether a wired net port is still
> necessary. Cell phones have been notoriously inconsistent in the
> past, and last year's direct phone line served as an enormous boon. I
> would also add that while I have high hopes for Phys Plant's ability
> to produce a quality Hunt, if there are problems with it, our phone
> time will increase sharply. With Kappa Sig two years ago, this meant
> a heavy cell phone burden, and I would prefer to place that on a land
> line which isn't going to have reception, battery, etc. issues.
>
> Scott
>
> At 01:07 PM 12/8/2005, Carol A Meyers wrote:
>> Hello Mystery Hunters,
>>
>> Thanks to those of you who sent congratulations.  :)  Our team rocks.
>>
>> OK, here's the news on the mystery hunt rooms.  Most of the rooms are
>> the same as last year, with the notable exception of the *two rooms we
>> had last year,* (26-204 and 26-210) which have been remodeled and are
>> completely different.  Most notably, they no longer contain phone
>> jacks, there is no longer a door between them (though they are still
>> next to each other, of course), and they are supposed to have a wired
>> connection but I believe it is in a locked cabinet I couldn't get into.
>> On the plus side, the furniture is about a million times nicer; it's
>> modern moveable tables and chairs.
>>
>> I consulted with Mike Korn (who has been helping this team with rooms
>> longer than me) and he prioritized the team's room preferences as
>> follows:
>>
>> (1) some kind of internet access.
>> (2) When put together, sufficiently large for everyone on the team to
>> be there at the same time.
>> (3) Movable tables and chairs.
>> (4) Net drop.
>> (5) Adjoining.
>> (6) Phone jack.
>> (7) Good location, nice-looking, blackboard space, whatever else.
>>
>> (1), (2), and (3) should be easy enough to get-- everywhere at MIT has
>> wireless now, and there are plenty of rooms of varying sizes.  A lot of
>> places have (4), although our old rooms no longer do.  (5) is pretty
>> rare; only a few rooms on campus satisfy this now.  (6) is rare too,
>> but not as rare as (5).  (7) I suppose depends on your opinion.
>>
>> The only rooms on the list that satisfy *all* of these things are
>> 4-145, 4-149, and 4-153, which are all three adjoining.  I'm guessing
>> these will probably go to a bigger team, though, since they have the
>> capacity for tons of people.
>>
>> (If you want to check out what rooms do and don't have, you can look
>> at:
>> http://student.mit.edu/roominv/roominv.cgi)
>>
>> So we will probably have to settle without a thing or two.  4-261 and
>> 4-265 have everything other than the door between and the phone jack,
>> so I think they make a good second choice.  Our old rooms (26-204 and
>> 26-210) would be a good choice if I would feel confident that we could
>> get in the magic locked cabinet, or if people don't feel as strongly
>> about having a net drop.
>>
>> After that, the rooms on the third floor of building 26 are also
>> decent; none of them have a door between or phone jacks, but they do
>> have MIT cable, which I suppose is an added bonus occasionally.
>>
>> Finally, there is 56-154, which has everything we want but it is only
>> one room.  (Albeit, it is a room that seats 56 people.)  I suspect that
>> people won't like this, but I figured I'd throw it out.
>>
>> Anyway, all that babbling is to say that I think our preferences should
>> be:
>> 1) - 2 out of 4-145, 4-149, 4-153
>> 2) - 4-261 and 4-265
>> 3) - 26-204 and 26-210 (our old rooms; I'll ask about the locked
>> cabinet)
>> 4) - 26-3xx rooms
>> 5) - 56-154
>>
>> Let me know if you object to this, or if you have any other opinions.
>> I can register the team this weekend, once we get this sorted out.
>>
>> Thanks!
>>
>>
>> Carol
>>
>> P.S. If we wind up not having a phone jack, we can use my cell phone
>> (it has a 617 number).  It is free after 9pm on Friday and on weekends,
>> and so we would just need to go a little easy before then.  I have
>> Verizon, which works OK (though not wonderful) in most parts of campus.
>>
>>
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