CAUTION: INCLUDES SPOILERS
(go to MN0PQ1 if you want to try out the puzzles before reading my completion.)

So, technically, I competed in premn0pq1, as a play-tester because I had another engagement for the date of mn0pq1. We had much lovelier weather, a week earlier, no rain, no hail, no tornado warnings. But, for my part, I don't so much trust myself to do puzzles- because, as I told my friends, "I have a short attention span if I get frustrated. If I feel like I'm getting nowhere, I don't want to even try, because if I push myself more and still don't get it, I'm bound to get so frustrated I cry." Crying is embarrassing and frustrating, which really just makes things worse. That said, Star and Olly are my friends, and I wanted to help them.

So I was on Team Wynne with my roommate, curiosir, and vaxjo- and from the very start there was some frustration. The pre-puzzle involved inter-team collaboration, and the other playtest team was pretty sure they could screw us over by just not collaborating, and wasted what seemed to be an unnecessary amount of time, not even *trying* to barter or bargain or whatnot. Eventually, Olly made a rule that teams *must* collaborate (if only to test his puzzle.) The other team won the pre-puzzle at any rate, and were awarded the first puzzle first as their prize.

We completed the first puzzle, a tangram, before the other team and in spite of the wind, and headed off in the wrong direction, given we didn't calculate the first location properly. Luckily our oversight was pointed out to us, and we headed to the second location with renewed vigor.

(I somehow lost a good chunk of my proof, and it's been long enough, that I don't quit remember what order things happened in, and as I was a playtester, it wasn't in the same order they decided on eventually. Forgive me if my recollections are hazy.)

Puzzle Two. Colors. The puzzle what made Inky cry. What can I say about this aside of the fact that it was beyond frustrating. I hid in the bathroom of the coffeeshop to wipe my face off. Finally we bought a clue. The clue told us to make the colors disappear, and I was infuriated, I wanted to throw the piece of paper and make the colors really vanish. We eventually bought the second clue, too, and my teammates had the brilliance and clarity to finish the puzzle.

Puzzle Three. The typewriter. Quickly something to make me feel less stupid, and our team to shoot into the lead. For a moment. A knowledge of Qwerty was definitely helpful. My roomie rocked this puzzle like something you rock a lot.

Puzzle Four. Paying attention pays off. My friend Jesse has been playing BANG type games for ages now, and sometimes recounts his adventures. Jesse described some years ago, with a radio repeatedly playing the same snippets of songs... something about his description of it managed to stay with me, so I knew immediately how to discern the answer. I felt very good about myself- if not for my puzzling skills, for my memory. We rushed on to the next puzzle.

The fifth puzzle was to be death to our team. There were cookies, and an offhanded answer to a question we had ended with us frustrated and roadblocked entirely. Again, the first clue was useless. We worked through multiple options and kept working, and maybe, eventually would have gotten it, but not in any sort of a timely manner. The other team was there and gone, and we puzzled and puzzled and puzzled, fruitlessly. Cookielessly, too, because we'd eaten the cookies. They were tasty cookies. Notice how I don't talk about the puzzles all that much? It's because my mind resists revisiting the frustration. Luckily, our frustration and confusion gave the puzzle-masters a means to avoid similar frustration in the real run of the game.

Eventually we made it to the sixth puzzle. We picked out the morse code immediately, and I started naming off things that rhymed or sounded alike, but we decided the objects on the ground were dots and dashes and set out entirely on the wrong track. My roomie and I were about at the end of our ropes frustration-wise, and the other team was far far ahead of us- maybe had even finished. We got a clue. Eventually the relationship between the items was discerned, and we loped off to puzzle 7.

We went down a wrong route trying to figure out puzzle 7, but eventually did solve the puzzle, and the meta-puzzle was a breeze, given my Scrabble obsession. We did finish the puzzle in time, wiser, tireder, more stressed out, but Team Think McRunfast beat us. Afterwards, I was fairly sure I didn't want to have a damn thing to do with the next puzzlequest.

Things I learned: Your team is best made of people who have different thinking styles and expertise. Your team is best made of people you communicate well with and get along with. Someone else will figure it out, if you can't.