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Grier Family Picnic
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The Grier Family Picnic Team

Our 2003 PuzzleHunt team. Left to right: Jesse McGatha, Richard Thames Rowan, Karl Barrus, Mike Grier, Martyn Lovell, Colin Robertson, Peter Golde, Stacey Doerr, Philippe Nicolle, Rajeev Goel, Karen Diss

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As you'll know if you've read my profile, one of my favourite activities is participating in or organising puzzle events. Our most regular events are Letterboxing (Anne Grier's one-day event for her friends patterned after the Scottish tradition -- this was the event that got us all involved in this originally), PuzzleHunt (a Microsoft-wide event spanning two days which we've played six times), and Puzzle Safari (an event similar to Letterboxing that we run for the whole of the Microsoft campus).

The first event for most of us was letterboxing, which takes place in teams of two. Anne and Mike organise this every year for their friends. The event is very intimate and social - we have about 20 players, drawn from Anne's broad group of friends. Each person is required to create 2 clues, and hide stamps at the clues result locations on the Microsoft campus. We then play in teams to two to solve everyone else's clues in a single three hour session. It's fair to say that this event was the first that many of us had heard of puzzling, and it was a great introduction. This has become an annual traidition for our friends -- 2003 was our sixth year.

In 1998, the first Microsoft Puzzlehunt was held. Jill Zoeller organised our friends and acquaintances into a team to play, and named our team "Grier Family Picnic" in honour of Anne (who had gotten us all into this). This despite the fact that Mike and Anne weren't actually available to play our first year (since Mac had recently been born, and the first hunt lasted 2 full days - Friday night to Sunday night). Thus, Grier Family Picnic was born.

Our first year performance was quite depressingly poor. We had no idea of the difficulty or type of puzzles we would face. Letterboxing had presented us with puzzles which were designed to take 5 to 15 minutes to solve, and normally had reasonably clear instructions. By contrast, PuzzleHunt puzzles are designed to take several hours for experienced teams to solve, and most often require the solver to deduce the directions as well as the solution. We had no experience of these kinds of puzzles, and by the end of Saturday 24 hours in, we despaired of making any progress at all - we'd only solved one or two of the 20 or so puzzles available in 24 hours. We lost hope, and hardly played on the Sunday. At this point, some of our team felt we'd never be good, never be successful in this game. Perhaps other teams were smarter, or had techniques we didn't. But others of us felt that all of this was a learning process, that we just needed to practice to improve. We've now played in 6 hunts and come in the top 10 in the last two, so those of us with confidence turned out right. :) It's been quite a journey.

The table at the bottom of the page summarises all our results and team data so far. Data from the early hunts is missing.

As well as playing PuzzleHunt, many of the same people are responsible for organising Puzzle Safari, which is an event patterned after Letterboxing. We create around 80 puzzles each year, which lead to destinations on campus. You can find some of my creations on here.

Puzzlehunt has a live updated score web page. From early on, we found ourselves competing closely with a team called the "Fuzzy Bunnies". We've never met them, but nonetheless some of our team conceived a fierce rivalry with them. Ever since hunt 1, we've tracked them closely. This is why our table includes their rank as well as ours (FBR). In the most recent hunt, one of our team members (HCheng) moved over to play for the Bunnies. So they may now be aware of us :)

GFP has brought me a lot of happiness, so my thanks to all the team members for their hard work, support and companionship.

Hunt Rank Solved Solved Score People New People 1st 2nd 3rd FBR Beaten By Comment

1 The Microsoft Games ? 5+? ? ? StaceyD, ColinRo, KarenAD, SamanRo, JillZ, FDiss, JayK, SimonP, HelenMe, BrianMe Everyone 2 0 0 ? ? No known historical data

2 The Age of Puzzles 14/24 11/27 40% 119 ? MGrier, AnneCh 1 1 1 13/24 Cracking Good Toast, The Usual Suspects, TLA Liberation Army, 196, Stagnant Little Incestuous Group, United Farm Workers, Team Suck, See Elk Hilbert, Rubber Baby Buggy Bumpers, Security Complex, Abort, Retry, Ignore?, Searching, FuzzyBunnies

3 You Don't Know Puzzles 12/27 20/42 48% 206 JillZ, KarenAD, MartynL, SamanRo, StaceyD, ColinRo, FDiss, MGrier, AnneCh, JayK, KarlB, RGoel, JonWis, PeterEv, ThelmaW JonWis 1 0 1 13/27 Killer Bees, TLA League of America, The Usual Suspects, The Valiant Return of Team Suck, Sixty Returned (5), 196, Brute Force and Ignorance, Quiescent Undersized Inbred Team, UPS Puzzle Solvers, Security Complex, Rubber Baby Buggy Bumpers

4 Clue: The Hunt 14/37 13/31 41% 131 JillZ, KarenAD, SamanRo, StaceyD, MartynL, ColinRo, FDiss, AnneCh, MGrier, KarlB, JonWis, PeterEv 0 0 1 7/37 TLA Licensing Authority, Killer Bees, Scrubbers, Cracking Good Toast, Staggering Geniuses, Not Yet Implemented, Fuzzy Bunnies, Team SPAM, Krispy Kitty, Puzzled Hunters, Mrs Peas Monkey Brains, The Smart Asses, United Farm Workers

5 Mission Impuzzible 6/41 28/40 70% 294 JillZ, KarenAD, MartynL, StaceyD, ColinRo, MGrier, KarlB, RGoel, JesseMc, RtRowan, HCheng, PhilNi JessMc, RTRowan, HCheng, PhilNi 1 2 3 7/41 Cracking Good Toast, TLA Licensing Authority, Killer Bees, Usual Suspects, Staggering Geniuses Our breakthrough year

6 Time Corps 9/40 28/36 77% 289 JillZ, KarenAD, StaceyD, MartynL, MGrier, JessMc, RTRowan, RGoel, ColinRo, PhilNi, PeterGo, KarlB PeterGo 0 3 0 5/40 TLA Lovers Anonymous, Staggering Geniuses, Killer Bees, Usual Suspects, Fuzzy Bunnies, SCRuBBers, Penguins Cannot Fly, Buzz Lime Pi: Epic Storm