As per the e-mail we all got, Alex (Dean), Geoff and I got there at 11 am, to be greeted by an empty room. We might have been convinced that we were in the wrong place if it wasn’t for the arrival of some other participants shortly thereafter. Ryan arrived at about 11:30, which was also when people from Microsoft showed up to set things up. There was lots of food and a presentation that lasted beyond 12 o’ clock – which meant most other universities had a headstart on us.

Long story short, we mashed our brains over dozens of puzzles and only managed to solve enough to clock in at #5 at RIT. Out of 13. Yes, we didn’t do that well for ourselves, but it was our first time and it was lots of fun. Besides, can’t beat free food, t-shirts and hats. The only advice I can give to other puzzlers who might take part next year is – the hints are dumb most of the time, and e-mail for hints as much as possible, because that might actually be helpful.

Potter’s party is today, I didn’t go since I have to do some work for class and am pretty tired from yesterday’s 12 hour tirade. Needless to say, we’ll do better next year.

Also, I formatted my laptop and so lost all the psd files and such I used to create this template, so now I am extremely limited in what I can change here. Unless of course I happen to find some long forgotten storage device containing the files in question. Unlikely.