Runaround Kickoff

Around 40 solvers participated in the runaround kickoff, which was very encouraging, considering the relatively early start. Thanks to everyone who turned up! Participants got a preview of the hunt Prologue video, and were briefed on their Fremen training, before starting their runaround.

Group photo with all the runaround participants

Last year, we had a similar in-person runaround as the hunt kickoff and it was very well-received by the participants. We also really enjoyed having the opportunity to meet up with the participants before the hand. An in-person thematic kickoff emulates the style of the MIT Mystery Hunt (MH), and helps to provide more narrative immersion and engagement in the hunt theme and story. Another trait of MH are its in-person interaction events and the runaround, which is a story-driven navigation to succcessive checkpoints where tasks need to be completed or solved. So it would be nice for SGPH solvers to be able to enjoy a scaled-down experience of this. At Hong Jhun's suggestion, full-ranking teams also received a bonus hint as a tangible hunt reward for completing the runaround.

This year, we switched to an outdoor venue because of the desert theme, and this also allowed us more flexibility in the timing, as we didn't need to rush everyone to leave the venue by a certain timing. So we took the opportunity to extend the runaround to an estimated two hours to make it more worthwhile for solvers who made the effort to attend. But I didn't plan for the runaround to be actually so long, as the camp tasks were supposed to still only take around 10-15 minutes, and the extra time was to buffer for any delays and the larger runaround area overall.

The original venue was planned to be at East Coast Park, with the sandy beaches being a very thematic representation of the desert planet Arrakis. But Hong Jhun managed to find a more central and accessible location which could work as well, so we settled on that to make it more convenient for solvers. The narrative of the runaround is that solvers are attending training to become Fremen special agents for their upcoming mission. So during the site recces, I identified the four locations spread across the park that would serve as the training camps. The activities/games at the training camps are puzzle-related, and meant to allow anyone within the team to be able to participate and contribute, as well as to interact with other teams/solvers. This one of the ways which we hope to be able to provide the opportunity for the local puzzle hunt community to come together and meet each other, because puzzle hunts are usually just solved online and in everyone's own team. So there is very little chance for interactions, and getting together to solve other hunts in a bigger group across teams. However, we still allowed solvers to go about the runaround in their hunt teams mostly, as we realized from last year that seems to be preferred, and this year's setup allowed for teams to do the runaround at their own pace.

Besides the 4 training camp activities, we also included a meta like last year, so everyone could to cap off the runaround having solved one substantive hunt puzzle. Like last year, the runaround meta only came together pretty late, because it was not really a priority compared to the actual hunt. My original plan was to just use a shell meta and extract the necessary letters from the training camp answers, which would be easy/quick to write. But the pun for the meta answer gave me inspiration eventually for a pure meta that would be more interesting for solvers.

In terms of the actual execution, one thing that could be improved was the timing, as we ended quite late in the end, and teams (as well as us) had to rush back for lunch and the release of puzzles at 1pm. One unforeseen factor was teams taking longer to do the navigation between training camps. We had expected teams to use Google Maps to find the camps easily from the given directions, but this was not always the case. The outdoors walking around the park also sapped energy, and there was feedback from more than one team that the morning's runaround made them more tired during the hunt. But most of all, our time control of the various camps could have been better, and I will probably come up with ways to be able to manage the flow centrally next time.

Camp image	Camp name	Directions to camp	Puzzle pdf link	Solution/Summary pdf link
	Strategy Camp 1	Directions to Camp 1	Strategy Camp 1 puzzle	Strategy Camp 1 solution
	Prescience Camp 2	Directions to Camp 2	Prescience Camp 2 puzzle	Prescience Camp 2 solution
	Sandwalk Camp 3	Directions to Camp 3	Sandwalk Camp 3 puzzle	Sandwalk Camp 3 solution
	Observation Camp 4	Directions to Camp 4	Observation Camp 4 puzzle	Observation Camp 4 solution
	Runaround Meta	[Back to gathering point]	Runaround Meta puzzle	Runaround Meta solution

After completing all 4 training camps, groups returned to the starting point to receive and solve the Runaround Meta with the help of the answers from the 4 training camps they have completed. When the teams have solved the meta, they receive a custom spice-filled snuff box shown below. This also represented thematically the one bonus in-hunt hint that the team received for completing the runaround, as using spice gives solvers temporary prescient knowledge to help them in solving a puzzle.

As always, it was great to see everyone in-person, and feedback from the solvers were positive as well. So this is something that we would likely want to continue doing for future SGPHs as long as it's possible. One potential option for the runaround next year is to hold it on the Friday night instead, which will still be close to hunt but with less impact. Please email us at puzzlesmiths@sgpuzzlehunt.com or message to let us know your thoughts on this - would you have a preference to still have runaround on Sat (hunt) morning, or Fri night instead?

Hunt Editor
Ong Kah Kien
on behalf of Celestine Lau and Sim Hong Jhun (Puzzlesmiths)