It Ain't the Love Boat, That's for Sure

November 4, 2005 11:47 AM

Puzzle Boat: Enjoy the island as long as you want. If you want to know where to go, try looking for some helpful individuals. Flag them down, and they'll not only show you the hottest spots on the island, but help you decide what to do next.
The Puzzle Boat is an online puzzle extravaganza, similar to the MIT Mystery Hunt or Microsoft Puzzle Hunts. It can be solved entirely online.
posted by jacquilynne (12 comments total)

This puzzle makes me sincerely mad and I just registered.
posted by cyphill at 11:55 AM on November 4, 2005

This is one of those things that gets easier as you go along, right?
posted by Bistle at 2:23 PM on November 4, 2005

Man, I'm still on Puzzle Donkey 4. No way.
posted by mrgrimm at 4:49 PM on November 4, 2005

My team (MNG) has made some progress - we've seen about half the total puzzles (and solved 3/4 of what we've seen). They get harder. In generally they're very well put together though, if difficult.

I highly recommend doing this with a team of 4-8 people.
posted by aubilenon at 5:30 PM on November 4, 2005

Awesome. I love the MIT puzzle hunt.
posted by painquale at 5:48 PM on November 4, 2005

And the Microsoft Puzzlehunt starts tomorrow- huzzah!

If you haven't had the good fortune to participate in a similar live puzzle hunt, you've missed out: they are mentally taxing but oh-so-fun! Last year's MS puzzlehunt was riveting and brilliantly assembled- it's a shame the puzzles aren't put online for the public to see, because some of them are truly extraordinary. If this online one is any good, it'll be a nice thing to play once the glow of this weekend wears off.
posted by hincandenza at 6:53 PM on November 4, 2005

hincandenza (hal?): I'm guessing that's a race local to the Seattle area?
posted by aubilenon at 7:47 PM on November 4, 2005

The Microsoft Puzzle Hunt is held on the Microsoft campus in a Seattle suburb. The teams need to have a Microsoft connection and are (or were, when I was taking part) mostly Microsoft employees. There are always a few puzzles that make zero sense if you don't have local knowledge. (In the years I participated, I remember puzzles about prominent pieces of art on the campus, the classified ads in the company newsletter, the numbers of buildings on campus, and product ship dates.) Outside of that, it's a hunt very much on the MIT Mystery Hunt model: rounds of puzzles and metapuzzles culminating in a runaround.
posted by grimmelm at 8:51 PM on November 4, 2005

Well, I have a ton of work to do, but I just wasted a bunch of time solving the Ring around the Rosie puzzle. This timesuck can't be good.
posted by painquale at 11:37 PM on November 4, 2005

Just finished the Boxstep puzzle. These things are extraordinarily well-made.
posted by painquale at 3:46 AM on November 5, 2005

grimmelm, the rules and local puzzles you mention are actually part of the MIT Mystery Hunt too. Generally, teams are supposed to have some current MIT students, and while most of the puzzles aren't related to MIT or the MIT area, there are always a bunch that require local knowledge. But yeah, writing or participating in these sort of puzzle hunts can be both infuriatingly difficult and enormously entertaining.
posted by ubersturm at 11:17 AM on November 5, 2005

Done 8 puzzles so far. The stupid baseball trivia/logic puzzle took me a lot longer than it should have. I notice that teams on the leaderboard who have completed the game have only solved 100 puzzles or so, but there are nearly 200 puzzle squares on the main grid. Some I don't open up, I guess. I imagine this is related to the metapuzzles.

I love this game. Thanks, jacquilynne.
posted by painquale at 8:47 PM on November 5, 2005