Con report

[tahnan]

I'm no good at Con reports, not really. So a few semi-random passing comments.

• It was a terrific Con. The hotel was fabulous, the food was fabulous. The official program was solid...
• OK, I didn't care much for the mixer. Maybe I don't understand mixers. I'd like something that brings me into contact with a large number of people, especially potentially unfamiliar ones. The mixer here involved learning four facts about a personspecifically, categorizing them as (a), (b), or (c) on four different facts—and then forming "sets", as in the game Set. (Sprout, Sidhe, and I were a set, being, I think, aacc, aaab, and aaba, in no particular order.)
  
  The problem was that people started going around the room asking "What are your letters?" and then walking off. It seemed so pointless. I refused to just tell people letters; I gave them the four pieces of information, if they wanted. (Happily, most people did. Only a few shrugged me off.) I heard some people's letters, but it was so abstract that I didn't feel like I'd really learned anything about them. Ah, well.
• ...but other than that, the program was really good. Spelvin's "Hog the Glory" was a whole lot of fun. The diorama flats, which I kind of feared could crash and burn if people didn't really commit to the joy of safety scissors and glue sticks, came out amazingly well, and were fun to solve.
• And then there was Qaqaq's "World Series of Wordplay". My wife's tired of hearing about it, but I can't help it; I'm really quite proud of how I did. On the qualifying test, I managed to get 20 out of 25, putting me second only to the superhuman Jangler. In the semi-final round, I pulled off victories against Treesong in the "palindrome" category (I'm still kind of amazed that I pulled GOLDENROD-ADORNED LOG out of thin air) and Kray in mentally solving cryptic clues. Mind you, Jangler was meanwhile coming up with things like the only uncapitalized eight-letter word starting with T and ending with U—in two cases, apparently, before the question was even asked, merely from knowing that he'd be asked for the only eight-letter word that started and ended with some given letters. (Did I mention "superhuman"?)
  
  And then in the final round—well, neither Anomaly nor Jangler looked enthusiastic about spelling the winning words from past spelling bees, so I figured I'd take the hit and let myself be knocked out in order to let them stay in the running. I might have done all right, too—being able to pull out succedaneum helped—but I missed a word, while the professional music critic had no apparent trouble with appoggiatura (a grace note; and I just misspelled it with one "g" right after looking it up in MW). I'm still shaking my head at the horrid unfairness, but still, I knew what I was getting into, I didn't have much hope of winning that round, and Trazom won it fair and square. Besides which, Anomaly and Jangler proceeded to victory, so my self-sacrifice worked.
• Oh, and the Saturday night extravaganza? Terrific. I think we were like fifteenth or something, but who cares, because it was a joy to solve and to solve with Expelliarmus, Toonhead!, and Fraz).
• And then of course some terrific games. I haven't played a normal Jeopardy! game at con in a few years, and I think I realized why: it's because the fun of Jeopardy! is winning, or at least knowing stuff. Whereas the fun of a G Natural-and-Xemu game is the interactive theatre aspect: singing, group-based Double Jeopardies, visual categories. Honestly, I had just as much fun watching it re-run as I did playing it. Similarly for Tablesaw's "Remote Control", a truly brilliant idea. Jeopardy! is stodgy: you daren't ring and be wrong, and there's all this actual knowledge involved. Whereas in "Remote Control", where there's no penalty for a wrong guess and the questions are, as Tablesaw himself said, often pretty stupid, it's all just too silly to take seriously. For instance, when asked who the original owner of "The Max" was on Saved by the Bell, a show I never watched, why not ring in and guess "Max"? Especially when that turns out to be right.)
  
  On the slightly more serious side was T McAy's "Touch and Go". But when given the chance to bask in the brilliance that is a T McAy game, you just say "yes" and run with it.
• Plus, you know, people. Who I really oughtn't list, because doing so just means forgetting someone, but I loved solving cryptics with Sprout and Fuldu and Rubrick, and playing in Jeopardy with Qaqaq, and wandering the hotel for a few fruitless minutes with Foggy to find the hidden contest and to then watch Zebraboy tear through it). And people getting engaged. And, for Pete's sake, just, you know, everyone. Sax. Sidhe. Sadome. Spelvin. Sprout. Even people whose noms don't start with S.

As they say, l'shana ha-ba'ah b'Altimore.

Comments

[viking-cat.livejournal.com]

I've been meaning to ask, although I think I already know the answer and forgot. Do you know Mike Selinker?

[tahnan.livejournal.com]

Heavens yes. Slik writes terrific puzzles. I gather he does something with games...?

But, seriously, yeah. He'd be one of those starts-with-S people I forgot to mention. He's great.

[viking-cat.livejournal.com]

Heh. We're old friends with Mike from way back in the early 1990s. That's cool.

[selinker.livejournal.com]

We people-starting-with-S are all pretty much interchangeable anyway.

Hi, Kevin!

[saxikath]

Mom was happy to see you. :)

...so was I. I miss those evenings at the Diesel.