PPPPPUUUuZZZLLLEEE QUUEEESSSSTTTT!!!!!

So I was involved in this puzzle quest action not once, but twice - once when playtesting and again when helping run. The playtest took place on a beautiful summer day. Doktor Harmon, help i'm a bear, and I formed the team "Think McRunfast"* and we were dead set on beating the other team.

For those of you who don't know, the basic design of the puzzle quest was as follows: The game would begin with a puzzle. Solving this puzzle would give you a word. This word would be converted into a scrabble score, which we would look up on the map. Once we got the location, we hurried with speed and quickness over there and we found another puzzle. There were eight puzzles in the playtest:
1. The Tanagram Puzzle - Which was hard, and we couldn't figure out, and made us sad
2. The Color Puzzle - Which was hard, and we could figure out, and made us happy
3. The Typewriter Puzzle - Which wasn't too hard, and I wasn't helpful at all for
4. The Music Puzzle - Which rick rolled us
5. The Cookie Puzzle - Which was delicious
6. The Stuff Puzzle - Which we pwnzored
7. The Chess Puzzle - Which I was helpful for
8. The Meta Puzzle - Which we solved with quickness and winning!
Think McRunfast lagged on the first puzzle and then were following up until puzzle 5, where we were able to pull ahead. After that we were on a roll - we solved the rest of the puzzle quickly and without the need for hints. We were the first to get to the end and we were the winners! Hooray!

So that was the play test. The next week, I alone went out to uptown Minneapolis to help staff the puzzle. Unlike the playtest, the actual test took place on a... slightly less beautiful day. When I arrived at the start around 6, there were a few ominous clouds on the horizon. At the start I met up with star5, who gave me the packet of required stuff. Then I biked over to the location of the puzzle, picked up more stuff, and waited for the players to arrive.

The puzzle I staffed was like this: You walked up to a little plaza in front of a statue where you found 12 items, arranged in a 3 by 4 square. The objects were:
(-- --- .-. ... .) **

Not those exact objects actually - there was real physical objects at the actual puzzle. Just objects that are the same thing as those pictures. Plus a sign taped to the statue, indicating that this was a Tweedledee and Tweedledum's puzzle with their :
"I can't image anyone wanting her dead"
"Contrawise, I can't image anyone wanting her alive"

That's it. Can you figure out the answer?

Answer: The objects can be paired (paired like Tweedledee and Tweedledum - get it? That OliverX is a clever one) into groups that share all same letters except one. If you take all the extra letters together, you get the final word. So it's
MORSE - ROSE = M
LEAF - ELF = A
PLATE - TAPE = L
ELASTIC - CASTLE = I
CLOCK - LOCK = C
LEGO - LOG = E
For a solution of MALICE.

I had a bit to wait - during which time I arranged the objects, explored the area, climbed on the statue, hastily gathered the objects back up again and ran into a bus shelter to avoid the hail, came back out again, arranged the objects again, worried about the paper getting wet, walked around some more, and generally waited.

But soon enough, I got the fateful call indicating that players were coming my way. And soon the first team had arrived and they were busily puzzling over the puzzle. My job at the puzzle was to give out clues when needed, record when people did take puzzles, and to make sure that everybody got there eventually. Other than that I was free to stand around, looking over people's shoulders and watching them try to figure things out.

Throughout the evening, only one event of particular note took place - while the first team was at the station, it started to rain again so we all went to hide in the bus shelter again. But this time I neglected to take the objects with me and when the rain let up, I came back to find that the clock and the elf had disappeared! Some malcontent had made off with them while we were in the rain! (It later turned out that they were across the street, in a doorway, so that malcontent might've been a concerned citizen who wanted to save the clock and the elf from the rain. Maybe) Disaster! Oh no! I ended up drawing pictures of the clock and the elf which I left where they had been already, which proved to be enough for everyone to figure out the puzzle. Which is good - I was worried that nobody would recognize my elf***.

Having completed this task in a group, it was interesting to watch people try to solve the puzzle, especially watching when they went off on track. Some things I noticed:
-Almost everybody assumed that the arrangement was important, which it wasn't
-Taking the castle for a palace, the elf for a gnome (which my picture can be blamed for), the lego for a brick, the log for a branch, the morse for paper, etc.
-At least one group got the point where they had all the letters but it still took them like five minutes to figure out what they meant (Don't feel bad - I can 't tell you how long Think McRunFast spent stuck on "DIAL FORM")
-Many groups noticed some of the word connections early on, and then went off on some crazy direction. It was crazy.
Everybody who made it too my station figured the puzzle out eventually, everyone using at least one clue and most people using too. I don't think many people though the clues were particularly helpful. I think the last group (group #1) solved the puzzle fastest and I couldn't say who took the most time. At least one group was really angry when they got the solution, which I found hilarious.

After the first team arrived, it was a pretty solid stream of teams, each one arriving around the time when the last team figured it out. As the evening began to fall, I got in contact with star5, who told me that the last team wasn't going to make it, so I packed things up. From there, I biked over the common roots café, where the winner was annouced, and then to the after party, where I ate like five of those puzzle cookies. Seriously, those things were delicious.

All in all, a great time. Many thanks to OliverX and Star5 for putting it together and to all of you suckers who didn't make it this time: come to the next one!

*A terribly obscure MST3K reference
**This isn't the exact arrangement - I can't remember the exact arrangement. Especially since it doesn't matter.
***Important qualities of an elf - pointy ears, curly shoes