Went to the 68th Equinox Party with Seth last night; I used to go more often years ago but haven’t been in quite some time. The theme for the evening was 1968 and I enjoyed the puzzles – of varying difficulty and complexity, some done in teams and some where everyone participated. As always the group is super friendly, nice, and smart; very inclusive.
The cryptic crossword was probably my favorite but I also liked the word guessing game where two people would go “on stage” and guess from clues a partner would yell to them. The clue-givers could see a list of 9 words on a screen overhead (so everyone else could see them too). Each word had letters matching one of two patterns (for example, starting with H, has a G somewhere in the middle, ends in a Y; or has the letters RDA somewhere inside) So as a guesser, you had to take your turn keeping the patterns in mind. Another big group game – group 20 questions, where we all wrote a word down as our (private) guess, with the secret holder on stage (having chosen a word). The audience took turns asking a yes or no question. Everyone whose word matches that question scores a point. If your word is eliminated you don’t get a point and you choose another word with the previous answers in mind. I was SO CLOSE guessing “Earth” when the answer was “Moon”… Anyway, it’s very interesting to study how they structure a game to be interesting to a broad variety of people and keeping all their attention.
On the way there I stopped by 24th and Mission to enjoy Orquestra La 24, as always, lovely & people were dancing & the music was great.