First of all, I want to say thank you to everyone who played. Thank you for enduring my mistakes, my frequent update emails and my ridiculously long directions for the power games.
This game took a lot of work and time, certainly more than I had anticipated, but as long as y’all had fun it was totally worth it. I know at times, the puzzles may have been cruel, but I didn’t know what to expect from you puzzlers and I needed varying difficulty to separate the field.
It was quite the learning experience, especially on the Power side. I have a lot of tweaking to do with the powers and how everything balances out and interacts on that side, which should improve that aspect of it the next go round. I think the power puzzles themselves were pretty tight by the second half of the competition and I really enjoyed those.
Thank you for the time you guys certainly must have put into it. I got a kick out of the alternative answers y’all came up with throughout the competition. Hopefully I haven’t scared any of you off and you’ll want to come play again once I come out of modding hibernation. My inbox will be lonely, and therefore I will too, in the meantime.
Without further ado, here are the results!
Pure Puzzlers
5th Place: (263) Randy “I always enjoy looking stupid” Sorrell
Devastating last week. He held onto second for most of the competition, but got tripped up, and his Alphabits weren’t enough in the last week. I have been impressed by your puzzle solving all season long. So close!
4th Place: (266) Kelly “Sure I’ll play. I love Survivor! I mean Survivor!” Wells
After being just out of the Top 5 for weeks, Kelly makes a late run to get in.
3rd Place: (267) Brooks “What do you mean I didn’t win?” Maki
Solid from start to end and if he wasn’t in the Top 5, I don’t remember it.
2nd Place: (273) Peggy “I hope these puzzles don’t get me fired” Sorrell
Despite all the self-doubting and all the poubting, she still makes it all the way to #2.
1st Place: (302) Matthew “Puzzle Master” Gilman
This guy was beating down my door at midnight every Sunday looking for the next puzzle. He was looking to do Power puzzles for fun. This guy eats puzzles for breakfast.
Congratulations, Matthew. You are the first Pure Puzzler Champion!
Power Puzzlers
Heading into the last week, the race was very tight. There are so many elements to their scores: Pure puzzle, Power Puzzle & power usage, that it was hard for any of them to know quite where they were and when they could feel safe from attack.
6th place: (156) Andrew “Swamp” Haugen
The lone elimination. Mostly because he was unaware Pure points factored into his Power score. Next time.
5th place: (327) Erik “Ken Jennings” Dikken
He was golden in Let’s Make a Deal. He blew the competition out of the water in Jeopardy. He squeezed in every last possible second of free time in before starting his puzzle. The man was efficient. Plus he has the coolest washcloth this side of the Mississippi.
4th place: (341) Matt “I’m not complaining” Novak
Nobody was more into the Power game than Matt. If he had a Power, he used it. If my inbox wasn’t full come morning, I worried the internet was broken. I really enjoyed his enthusiasm for the game and our lengthy “discussions” about the rules and game setup.
3rd place: (371) Bret “Where’s the Rifle Power?” Higgum
Bret held the lead for a good stretch in the beginning, and he was never far from the top. He was second only to Matt in power usage.
2nd place: (400.5) Brooks “What do you mean I didn’t win this either?” Maki
Brooks was not the mover and shaker I imagined in this. Week after week he took abuse from competitors and their weapons. Week after week he just kept scoring and eventually moved up to the top in spite of all of it. He also had the funniest Pyramid clues out there.
1st place: (465.5) Kelly “I simply have no chance to win” Wells
Despite conceding victory by week eight, Kelly was never far off the lead, if not in the lead from that point on. This game was much closer than the final point spread. Kelly put up Barry Bonds like numbers and hit 9 HRs in the final Puzzle Derby which gave him 4 Stealth Boomerangs, the most powerful weapon in the game. This turned his likely victory into a guarantee.
Nobody could touch the man on Scrambles, Scattergories, or Scrabble (we’ll forget about that one misstep).
Congratulations, Kelly! You are the first Power Puzzler Champion!
If you have some time to kill, here is a link to the exciting notes I took during the game:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1hBXlYqLu7rq0MMhW59A21eL9ipzo3YsuKZrpbgKipcU/edit
I am interested to hear what went on behind the scenes with the Power puzzlers. I didn’t get the impression too much was going on. I will be sending out surveys to get feedback on what was good/bad with this competition and any suggestions you have, but feel free to dump it here. Don’t hold back, I can take it! I just ask that Novak compile all of his advice into one easy to read file.
Thanks again everybody! It was a blast! Puzzle on.
Tags: Results
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I adored this competition, and am annoyed with myself for the few weeks where I left the puzzle for too long, and suddenly had an emergency late in the week, or simply forgot about it on the wrong day. Luckily, with Power, it was exhaustive, so I usually got started early.
I hoarded powers on that side of things so I could withstand a late barrage (which never came) and also make one – which I did – on Matt. I thought about spreading it around, but I thought it a better idea to only annoy one person, and to clean that person out so much that I may grab any Stealth Boomerangs that he may be planning to use on me. Turns out he probably didn’t have any, but that was my thought process. I also responded apathetically to one of his late emails asking for attack powers, saying I fell on my face in the Home Run Derby. I got the feeling he was only asking to test the waters and see how people had done in that challenge, and if I’d done poorly I would have no reason to be a target. Again, I’m not sure if that’s why he did it, but that’s why I gave the answer I gave.
As for “Why Matt?”, I had decided weeks in advance that I’d be doing that to one person in the end, but I didn’t want to do it to anyone. Matt used a Stealth Boomerang that took four of my best powers (including a Stealth Boomerang) in week eight, and that’s when I said to Ryan that I wasn’t giving up, but I realized I had no way to win. That, though, isn’t when I decided it would be Matt. A couple weeks later, in the Scrabble game, I passed over three letters where you can subtract points from another person’s board. I subtracted three – THREE! – points from Matt, and he sent me a “Really, dude?” email. He cleaned me out entirely, but thought my three-point swipe was outrageous. That is when I knew I had my late-game target. I still didn’t particularly want to do it to any one person, but I knew it was the best strategy and I was looking for any excuse I could get.
Also, I won something! On my favorite game site ever!!!
Ryan, thanks for your time. Every single week, my first thought upon seeing the puzzles offered was that you were amazingly dedicated.
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Congrats, Kelly! Couldn’t have happened to a more puzzling guy!
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Oh, Cage, you old honeydripper!
…HEY, WAIT
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Heh. Well, pretty much all I was trying to do the entire time was stir the pot, since basically no one seemed to be doing any attacking, and all I had were defensive powers. Even my “really, dude?” e-mail was designed to get things going. I had lot of redirect/reverse type defenses, so I wanted people to throw things at me. I reached out to everyone in the game to try to get them engaged. It worked with Bret for a while, as we teamed up on Kelly and Brooks.
I consistently seemed to get the worse end of those deals (I easily lost more points in both attacks I made and attacks made on me), but at least it got things moving a few of the times.
Also, Kelly, you should know that stealing those 4 powers led me to a net gain of 7 points (Stealth boomerang. The other boomerang was blocked.).
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It’s not that I wasn’t do anything – it was that I was saving it for later. I wouldn’t have done so if I’d been attacked a lot all game long, but week 6 was the only time I weathered a long attack, and by the time I was really worried and out of defenses, the attack was over.
I had something like four point-killing powers set this week in the event that I was attacked.
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Yeah, that was the problem. With the exception of the 2nd boomerang I threw at you the first week I attacked, every single one of my boomerangs lost me points. Defense, even after being adjusted downward mid-game, was way too strong. I almost didn’t throw my normal boomerang the last week, since I knew I’d lose points, but I decided to try to incur some wrath and get someone else to throw something, since I knew the only way I could improve my standing was by being attacked.
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I had four regular boomerangs at the end of the game. I would have used them late, but when I got all those stealths and took all those points, taking the chance just didn’t seem necessary.
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Yeah, you would have ended up losing 20 points with those regular boomerangs.
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Fantastic all around Ryan.
I’ll write more later, but for now I’ll just say this was a blast and I had fun the whole way through.
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I had a great time with both the Pure and Power puzzles. I tended to not start the Pure puzzles until the last day, which didn’t help, but they were fun. And tough!
The Power game was definitely more stressful, and I should have tried using some more of the powers, but I had a lot of fun there, too.
There should have been a rifle/sniper power- I couldn’t have resisted using that! -
Here is a sheet cataloging all the power moves:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AoZ5pH2eA1q1dE1GeEVyU1QwVDJjU3lIdElpUDY5M3c
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I didn’t get any stealth boomerangs all game. Ryan! This is all your fault!
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The boomerang truck came by at 9:00. I stalled the driver as long as a could, but you were just too late.
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Actually, this brings up a good point: Randomness. I’ll say more to Ryan privately about this but I think it’s worth discussing openly… I was routinely irritated by the randomness of the game. Even when things worked out in my favor it wasn’t enough to offset the frustration of when things didn’t. Except for when I stole 4 powers from Kelly – and I got over that pretty quickly, since those powers turned out to ultimately be worth very little – I never felt like the randomness was a good thing. And even when I stole those powers from Kelly I felt a bit of guilt about it.
KG never getting a stealth boomerang is brutal. Kelly getting 2 randomly in the last game? Brutal. 3 bankrupts or whatever for most people spinning? Brutal. You get the picture… Some randomness is ok, but the range of it in this game was too much. Because – and I’d think this even if randomness had favored me, because, until the last day when Kelly pulled a FreeAlonzo on me, it probably had – the good never felt good enough and the bad always felt too defeating.
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I only got one of the Stealth Boomerangs randomly. The other three were because I went back-to-back-to-back three times (I made an out on my first pitch, then hit nine homers).
However, I’d advocate against a whole lot of randomness. I didn’t think it was excessive too often, but I wouldn’t be against separating “best” from “good” powers, and saying if you manage this achievement you win a random “good” power while the much harder achievement is worth a random “best” power. Or, just make the best ones impossible to gain randomly.
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We were supposed to be capped at 2 powers of your choice! In fact, I verified this with Adobery mid-derby! Boooooooo! I want back whatever you stole from me on your 4th throw!
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No, you were capped at two random powers. I said a fourth home run in a row would not qualify as another back-to-back-to-back, it had to be a separate event.
Maybe I miscommunicated or messed up. Wouldn’t be surprising.
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I actually went back and looked at the e-mail I sent you before I posted this comment. I wrote “I can only get 1 more power of my choice, right? (20 points or 5 HR or 2 cycles)”.
Your response was “correct.”
That’s not miscommunication, that’s just lying!
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My bad.
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Kelly also should have had 5 stealth by that rule route I took. 3 sets of back-to-back-to-back HRs. Scored over 20 pts. Won one with random power.
Can we just pretend week 12 never happened?
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I like the “random from a category/level” approach. That’s a good idea.
Also, I should be able to cash in these immunity idols for… let’s say, 30 points each?
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I didn’t like the randomness, but that’s purely because I got hosed by it multiple times.
I’m sure Ryan will point out plenty of examples where it benefited me, but all I can think is when the stealths took worthless powers from me.
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That’s kind of my point… even if there were good times, they sure didn’t feel like they offset the bad times.
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My point is that I’m whining that I didn’t have any good times.
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You’d better not be satirizing me…
Here, I’ll just put up your response for you:
daneekasghost /Waggles eyebrows.
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What? Me waggle?
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but no. I’m not making fun of you, just lamenting my bad luck.
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Yes, I got rid of the first W.O.F. because it was a pain and too random. Let’s Make a Deal was totally out of place in this game.
I think the randomness would have been OK if I had worked out a better set of odds for power distribution. But there’s a lot of work to be done on what powers do.
One thing I already thought of for next time was being able to trade in powers for other powers (each power has a relative value) or to have a store where you could buy powers in the first place. I still think some randomness is in order.
P.S. Kelly only got one randomly in the last game. He earned the other 3. I underestimated the hint usage on the last puzzle, and likely there would have been only one stealth boomerang earned by any of you otherwise.
P.P.S. You randomly won more Stealth boomerangs than anyone.
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What? I only ever threw 4 of them (look at my spreadsheet on power usage, which obviously wasn’t updated for the last week). 2 the last week that I earned in the puzzle, 1 stolen from Kelly, and, thus, 1 random.
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the steal was random.
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The one you stole from me was random, dillweed.
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I took “won” to mean “randomly received without an action.”
Yes, I got that one randomly from you, I’ll concede that. But by that approach, you randomly won significantly more points than anyone else.
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It was random, period. You can’t pick and choose which ones count as random just to make yourself look better. Your lawyering here is getting tiring.
But by that approach, you randomly won significantly more points than anyone else.
You have no. Clue. In Wheel of Fortune, I hit Bankrupt on all but one puzzle, which stole probably as many points as I ever got randomly. You weren’t party to my game. You only wish your luck was as bad as mine early on in this game.
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No, you got one randomly in Week 5 and Week 8, plus the one you stole from Kelly. That was all before week 12.
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So you mean I still have an unused stealth?
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No, you used all 3 before week 12. Week 8 on Kelly, Week 9 on Brooks. Week 9 on Erik.
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What happened on the elimination puzzle? I received the puzzle but never got the right answer, and then somehow that was enough to eliminate Andrew? I was surprised.
Also, I loved the stumper, I would have liked to have more opportunities to do those, but with the minefield I and others had set up, that would have been tough.
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He got it wrong, so it didn’t matter what you did.
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Man, I need to read the rules now and again.
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That would give you a huge advantage over everyone else.
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AMEN!
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I have no idea why it took me so long to read the rules to this thing. I mean, there were a lot of them, but I don’t know why I kept putting it off. I was certainly having fun from the beginning, but I only started to understand the scope of what I could do in week six or so, and that’s because getting attacked forced me to figure it out.
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I did feel badly about how often I procrastinated myself into poor situations, strategically and puzzle-wise.
Hopefully I didn’t ever push too hard in my attempts to
bendinterpret the rules to recover from my own laziness.
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Also, Matt actually tried to keep him in the game. He offered to use his immunity idol on him, but Andrew was sick and didn’t check his emails until it was too late.
Even then he contacted me and said,”i got a mysterious email from one of your friends. I thought it was a wrong number but he was asking about the puzzle challenge. Asking what i wanted foir immunity. A creepy email if you dont know who they are or what theyre talking about.”
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“Creepy?” “Mysterious?” Andrew may have some paranoia issues to work out.
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Werewolf is great for that.
“We need to kill Kelly before he finds us out.”
“I would like to spy on meat.”
etc.
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Congrats to spooky and Gilman! deserving winners all around.
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First wins for both of us, discounting Werewolf, which I am because it’s a short game where players can win despite being terrible in some cases.
Who’s the best CdLer to never win anything, then? Beau, maybe? DK? MAKE YOUR PICKS, BITCHES
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I haven’t won anything in August. That has to put me in the running.
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Unsurprisingly, I’ll allow it.
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I vote for Josh Mitchell
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Oh, puzzles.
Thanks for the challenges and the competition everyone; this was right up my alley in terms of fun (there’s no way to use that idiom without it seeming dirty). Big ups to you Power Puzzlers…even though I did some of the powpuzzies just for kicks, I never dabbled in the social strategy element of it, and I can’t for the life of me figure out how you guys could wrap your brains around that AND do the pure puzzles AND the bonus quizzes week after week. My brain might be massive, but it deflates quickly.
Ryan, for tracking this and designing it, much praise and admiration. Don’t worry about week 12; something this delicate and complex was bound to have a hiccup somewhere along the way, and you managed to keep it to one major one throughout the whole event. Mazel tov.
Looking forward to the next one…for a few different reasons….
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What’s the major event, though? If it’s that he gave me one too many Stealth Boomerangs, it doesn’t matter, because the last one I used only took worthless powers. If it’s that he gave me one too few, that doesn’t change anything either. This potential Chernobyl was nothing more than a mere Three Mile Island.
I’ve gotten on my own back several times throughout the game for not giving myself enough time to do the Pure challenges, but given how thin I’ve been spreading myself, it was probably inevitable.
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Uh…
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Uh, what? Am I…
…oh, right, the spreadsheet snafu. I’d forgotten about that. Don’t mind me!
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No, that was an “uh…” of utter bewilderment. I wasn’t involved in any of the boomerang stuff, so that comment went way over my head, and I figured you meant to respond to someone else’s comment with it.
Boomerangs SHOULD go over my head, of course. Not directly at it.
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I think he meant week 12 as a whole with my screwups on the pure puzzle in addition to the Power stuff.
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Yeah. That’s what I meant.
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I loved the nicknames above, by the way.
“Sure I’ll play. I love Survivor! I mean Survivor!”
This sounds like me. In fact, did I say this at some point? A similar conversation feels familiar. “Where’s the Rifle Power?” made me smile, too.
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Nope, never had a convo like that.
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Goofy. I definitely had a conversation with someone recently where I made a joke to that effect – pretending I was coming up with two game formats I loved, and ending up with Survivor both times.
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…I seem to remember this.
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Sweet. I was going to be seriously irked if I couldn’t figure out who I was talking to.
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Everyone else’s nicknames are fun or funny, but I think mine ask legitimate questions. What do you mean, I didn’t win?
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Yeah, I’m perplexed about yours too.
So, in Pure my main motivator coming into this week was “BROOKS IS ONLY ONE POINT AHEAD OF ME!!!!” Poor me. I jumped two spots but you had one of the only two other perfect crosswords.
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Indeed, poor you.
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Okay, that’s fair. Also, shut up.
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Playing around with the power play spreadsheet. With the caveat that I could be misunderstanding the rules concerning which points are transferred vs. which appear or disappear.
Overall, power plays destroyed 11 points over the course of the game.
Spooky and greek were the only players with a positive point differential for power plays (+60 and +7 respectively)
If you remove power play results, I win. (me – 412.5, spooky – 405.5).
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These numbers are almost all wrong. Wow.
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Redid.
Kelly, +45
Greek, +7
Erik, -8
Bret, -9
Brooks, -12
Matt, -41That includes spooky’s 34 point attacks on Novak week 12.
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these are similarly all wrong now. (except Bret – I get -9 for him every time)
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I think the compilation Power Usage sheet is missing a Matt/Erik duel worth 10 points. Explains that. Can’t guarantee that sheet is totally accurate.
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I have Kelly at +40 from the power plays and you at -17.
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What’s mine? Minus 40?
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+3
Until Kelly’s attack. Now it’s -31
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Pretty sure I’m -12.
-10 from first boomerangs
+5 from stumper
-12 from two stealth attacks
+5 from trap-
Oh look, the rules say I don’t get points for a stumper played against me.
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Here is the power play effect:
Kelly +40
Bret -9
Brooks -17
Erik -18
Matt -31Power Points without Power Plays
Kelly Wells 174.5
Matt Novak 166
Brooks Maki 165.5
Erik Dikken 164
Bret Highum 128Power + Pure Points
Kelly Wells 425.5
Brooks Maki 417.5
Bret Highum 380
Matt Novak 372
Erik Dikken 345Power Points without 1st W.O.F. and LMAD
Kelly Wells 152.5
Brooks Maki 142.5
Matt Novak 135
Erik Dikken 115
Bret Highum 90Power + Pure Points without 1st W.O.F. and LMAD
Kelly Wells 403.5
Brooks Maki 394.5
Bret Highum 342
Matt Novak 341
Erik Dikken 296However you want to cut it, Kelly still comes out on top. This also further illustrates how much work I have left to do on the Power game.
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What if you threw out scattergories too? 😉
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My blood pressure would drop considerable.
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Question: What do you mean I didn’t win?
Answer: You suck at Scattergories.Power Points without 1st W.O.F., LMAD & Scattergories
Brooks Maki 137.5
Kelly Wells 122.5
Matt Novak 110
Erik Dikken 95
Bret Highum 80Power+Pure w/o 1st W.O.F., LMAD & Scattergories
Brooks Maki 389.5
Kelly Wells 373.5
Bret Highum 332
Matt Novak 316
Erik Dikken 276-
I do suck at Scattergories.
Now do the pure standings throwing out everything except the “missing link” bonus and I think we’ll have something we can work with.
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Here’s the thing (and this is going to sound whiny). I’m not sure what I could have done differently to improve my power-play differential (except not throw those first two boomerangs at Bret).
When I threw stealth, I ended up with powers (and not useful ones). I never had a reflect or a trap power until the very end of the game. I guess I could have dueled, but I think that power got stolen from me too.
I would have liked to have a bigger power presence, but I just didn’t see the way to use what I had in a way that wasn’t just feeding points to my targets.
(in retrospect, I very much misused my Get-a-clue and sneak-a-peek hint powers – as Kelly and Matt’s final derby runs show)
I don’t know, I didn’t have great powers, and the ones I did have, I didn’t use very well. I guess that explains the -17.
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I get it. Everyone could rightfully complain at how the game went down. The first WOF was too random, LMAD was purely random, and I kept tweaking how to score things and award powers along the way. The offense/defense balance was a huge deterrent to doing anything.
I know it will be much better next time now that we’ve played through it once and I’ve seen the flaws in the design and how things play out.
I created all the pure puzzles ahead of time. Next time I can do the same for the Power side and have that play out more evenly from week to week.
Consider this first season a trial run on the Power side, with hopefully enjoyable puzzles and goofiness.
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I very much enjoyed it all. There’s a ton of potential here, so I’m really looking forward to seeing what could come of it all.
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To be perfectly clear. I loved this game. I would sign up again right now for round two if you said you weren’t changing a thing.
my comment was merely lamenting my luck in the game (which is going to happen, this game it was me, next game it could be someone else), and acknowledging that I also missed opportunities, all of which combined to give spooky an almost 60 point advantage in that aspect and win the game.
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