Thu, 30 Aug 2007
Svíčky 2007
Last weekend I took part in another puzzle-solving outdoor game, Svíčky. This time Svíčky took place in Jičín, which was quite far from Brno.
The first (and fatal, as we will see later) weak point of our team was the qualification. We were too busy to seriously solve the qualification tasks: we have solved only one puzzle, which allowed us to qualify. However, solving more would have given us the points which were later usable in the game itself.
I will not describe the whole game in detail, hopefully somebody will write a more detailed report. We were quite good, after the game we have found out that we were the first team at majority of the stages. We have arrived to the penultimate stage together with another team, Prahory. However, they had many points left from the qualification, so they have immediately used them to receive the solution, and even the rest of their remaining points allowed them to solve the last stage quite fast. As a result, we have lost to them three hours during the last two stages. The Prahory team won, finishing the game at 3:43 am, while we were the second at 6:48am. After that, there was a long gap - further teams started to arrive to the final stage at about 11am, and only one more team has solved the last puzzle (they were short of time, but they had a laptop with them, so they have computed the solution using frequency analysis).
The second place is not so bad - after long time another puzzle-solving outdoor game where we have solved all stages before the time limit (my previous one was - I think - TMOU 4). As for the puzzles - Svíčky 2007 was excellent! The only puzzle we did not like - as we have found later - could be solved by a more elegant way than we did, so even that one was OK.