On the 18th June, 100 lucky Perplex City players received this e-mail in their inboxes:

Hello,

Season 1 of perplex city has come and gone. What a season it was!

100 limited edition silver leitmarks have been awarded to players who
had the top 100 score on the leader board at the end of season 1.

Pat yourself on the back - you are one of those top 100 players!!

As the information we have on the system may be old and out dated, I ask
for you to email me your postal address in the below format so I can get
your hard earned shiny silver leitmark in your hands without further delay.

/Name
Address line 1
Address line 2
Town
Country, Postcode/

If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact me.

Best wishes and congratulations!

Ben @ Perplex City Customer Care.

I was one of the lucky players, and immediately replied with my address. Twelve days later, my post was thrown at me, with a suspicious looking white padded envelope with a box shape inside. Ripping it open I found a purple and silver box inside. From the symbol on the top I knew immediately what it was, and opened it to find a shiny silver leitmark. You can see the photos of the box and the leitmark here.

In the twelve days since the players that were lucky enough to receive the silver leitmark were announced, there has been a lot of discussion and controversy as to how the leitmarks were awarded. It seems that despite what we were told, the silver leitmarks were only awarded to the top 100 players on the leaderboard, and not to those that have worked hard within the community. This left many players disappointed, myself included as I knew many players that I would have liked to have been awarded a silver leitmark. I was also disappointed with the way it was handled, but can only come to the conclusion that it was just to tie up the rest of the loose endings in the Perplex City saga.

The full discussion on the silver leitmarks can be found here, which also shows pictures of my leitmark!

Congratulations to all those awarded them!

There was some pretty sad news posted on Perplex City Stories and various blogs today, to let us know that Perplex City Stories, the ARG side of Perplex City, has been postponed indefinitely. Sadly, the story team behind the ARG side at Mind Candy have been “let go”, and as far as we know, there is not anything happening in the near future with Perplex City.

All that we have been able to gather is that there is a new project instead, and that we have to wait and see if the link with Perplex City will be re-enabled, and whether Violet needs us for any further mysteries. Further information can be found on Perplexorum, here. Violet, Kurt and Scarlett have said their goodbyes also, and you can read those here. They are rather long, but worth the read.

I myself would like to say thanks to the guys at Mind Candy for keeping us fabulously entertained for the last 3 years with Season 1, and recently, the Frozen Indigo Angel part of the ARG. It’s been a brilliant time, and I really hope that it is not over just yet. Mind Candy have worked incredibly hard, and I know that this must be just as hard on them as it is to the players, having been a part of it from the beginning, and putting so much into it, and I, as well as many other players, are incredibly grateful to all of the Mind Candy staff for the amount they have done as well as the huge amounts of time, love and energy they have put into this ARG over the time it has played out.

The community has been amazing, so close knit and friendly, and incredibly welcoming. There have been a huge number of “fan-sites” created, and I hope these sites stay running for a while yet, as they are as much an integral part of Perplex City as the official sites themselves. I’m sorry to see it end, but I hope the community sticks around, as many friendships have been forged, and I’d like to see the community continue on, with or without Perplex City.

I will be updating with the second part of the FIA and Big Weekend this weekend, time and information permitting. I will definitely be sticking around for a while yet, as I know there are going to be many questions that need to be answered, as well as the fact I’m not ready to move on just yet!

It’s been a great ride, and hopefully the ride will start back up again in the future.

Firstly, I’d like to apologise for the slowness of this part of the write up. Due to unforeseen circumstances, I’ve not been able to write up!

Much thanks to Izzy for giving me the notes from which I have written this up, due to me being unable to get there!

For the second day of the event, it was much faster to get the tickets, there was a much smaller queue. Hawk and his friend managed to get wristbands for the VIP area due to being the first people there, which was important for later on that day! The group got together and as hawk had managed to print off the map that had been generated during the first part of the event, each person was given a printout so that they all knew where the transmitters were going to be.

As they had no news on transmitters or anything needing to be done, they headed to watch Calvin Harris (who apparently was very good, I was told!). During this they received a text message from one of the other players, Chris, saying that another player, Ryan, had found a clue on the back of one of the posters that was used to find the map pieces during the first day. They joined back together as a group and started ripping down any posters they could find, in case of other clues. Unfortunately they found no others.

Not long after that the first twitter message came through from Paul Denchfield, telling them that the first box was in triangle 2. I was texting the twitter messages and updates through to one of the players as I saw them on my laptop as well. All the players on the ground ran to the area where the transmitter would be. Two of the players (macmonkey and kksweety) found a locked box. There was a map sellotaped to the bottom which read “FIA WC” and directed them to the portaloos by the entrance. They all started checking inside the portaloos for any posters (due to Izzy finding a poster in one the day before). As it turned out, the combination code that they were looking for was hidden on a whole string of the posters sellotaped together, which was in a bin! Once they had found the code, a player (cpawley) opened the lock and found that in the box there was a battery, a series of wires, and some plastic casing. Paul Denchfield had a penknife and used that to cut the red wire. By this time, quite a large crowd has been attracted, and it can be see in this video.

Around half an hour after this, there was another twitter text from Paul Denchfield, telling them where transmitter number 2 was, in triangle number 5. All the players on the ground run towards it (apparently through the mud and the crowds!). The box had been found by some of the players already by the time that Izzy had arrived, and she thinks that Chris had found it. This time the box was around some trees. The map directed them to a hug area, about half the site, with the clue telling them that they had to look 8 feet up. This time the combination code was found by another player, Katie (Katharos Drakkina). Apparently, yet again, they attracted quite a large crowd, including a streaker! They followed the same pattern as with the last box, they opened it and cut the red wire. This meant that two had been destroyed, with only two to go!

Another half hour later, another twitter message was received, this time the transmitter was in triangle one and proved a lot harder to find due to it being near the bar which was very busy. The box was hidden in a bag this time and was eventually found by a player, Muffin. This is where the combination that Ryan had found on the back of the poster came into play, as the clue that was referred to was “FIA poster”, and as they had the combination already they opened the box easily and cut the red wire. After this the ground players mentioned to Paul Denchfield about the possible problems incurring with the fourth transmitter being backstage, and Paul said that he would see what he could do.

As Izzy had to leave to go home at this point, the rest of this write up is from notes by two other players, sjbuknewc and Chris.

Another half an hour later, the final twitter message came through to tell the ground players to meet Paul by the entrance to backstage. As everyone arrived, they saw Paul Denchfield talking to Adrian Hon, and then he disappeared to try and get them in backstage to search for the transmitter. A few minutes later Paul Denchfield burst through the hedge, in a fight with ‘V’, a member of the 3P. ‘V’ had the box, but dropped it. Hawk used his pass, and dashed in to collect the box quickly just as ‘V’ punched Paul who fell to the ground, and ‘V’ ran off. Paul got up and grabbed his camera and glasses before joining people in solving the last clue. This time the map showed three different locations and the players on the ground had to find the 3 parts of the combination. Apparently they had taken the tougher chain from Mind Candy from box three, so they had to improvise and this chain was breakable and the players were able to break into the box without needing the combination (cheats ). This time, Paul did not have his penknife with him and so one of the players, Chris, ended up cutting the wire from the “Angel’s Head Massage” tent, which was very apt.

The day was saved, and no brain washed people! If you would like to see Paul fighting ‘V’, then you can see that here.

Thanks to those that helped me put the pieces of the excitement together for this write up, it sounds like everyone had a fabulous time, if tiring, with all the running they had to do. Photos of the transmitters can be found on my flickr, thanks to Muffin who MMS’ed them to me! Despite being ill I still had a brilliant time from my bed, just joining in the general hyperness on IRC and texting the players on the ground to keep them updated. I’m sad to now realise that this was the last Perplex City related event, but pleased to have been lucky enough to have had the chance to be involved.

A brilliant podcast done by Perplexorum can be found here, in which they interview Paul Denchfield and talk about the goings on during and in the run up to the event. Keep your eyes open for a new CubeCast which is on its way!

As most of you know, this weekend was the Radio 1’s Big Weekend in Preston, and it was tied to the Frozen Indigo Angel ARG. It lasted all weekend, with the ARG events on both the Saturday and the Sunday.

For the Saturday we all had to be up bright and early, to be able to arrive at Preston for the gate opening at 11:30. Due to being competition winners, we skipped the normal queue and waited in the competition winners’ queue. We managed to get in a little after 12, where we milled around and waited for a few others to join us! I was logged onto IRC, where people were linking me to images of what we were supposed to be looking for.

We saw the first poster of the day on the side of a bin that was being carted off, which was close to being missed, but Izzy and Ben (I think) ran after it screaming “STOP!”, which dissolved us all into laughter. After that, we started spotting the other posters constantly. I was running around, following the others who were taking pictures of the posters to email to Paul, just telling those on IRC the posters that we were spotting, so they could create a wiki page holding all the poster information. We needed the four letter word, the shape, the shading of the shape, the colour of the shape, and the number inside the shape. We spent around 4 hours searching for all the posters we could. Each poster belonged to a set, and once the set was finished, it created a map piece. Those online were checking for complete sets, getting the map pieces, and merging the map pieces together to create a map for us to use. This was then linked to me, so I could download it onto my phone for us to check as necessary. I felt useful for once!

We got all but one of the map pieces fairly quickly, and manged to corner Paul Denchfield, to show him the map and the progress so far. Absolutely mental and hyper guy, but absolutely awesome. He took a quick look at the map on my phone, and then ran off to get a camera, which he kind of aimed at various people (me included!), and then we all charged around, trying to look for the transmitters. We assumed that the lighting rigs were a possible, and so Paul examined these thoroughly before deciding that they weren’t. We were then taken over to a car near the outdoor stage, where he asked for the roofbox to be opened, while he examined that. There were a lot of cardboard boxes in it, but nothing of interest. The bonnet was then opened, and a box was found, which we thought was possibly a transmitter, and then Paul went off to try to find out if it was! Unfortunately it wasn’t.

One of the people online (Morbus, I’ve just been told!), noticed that the dots connected to make triangles, which we then took the centre point of, and deduced the transmitters would be around that place. Unfortunately it was around this point that my phone battery decided to be low, and so we had to hurriedly sketch a rough idea of the triangles and the map for use to search for the transmitters, and I told IRCers to text me important information! We searched for the transmitters for a while, before finding out that the transmitters wouldn’t be placed until the Sunday! As we were transmitter searching, we came across a new poster which Izzy found in a Portaloo! Sadly, it wasn’t one of the posters we needed for the final map piece.

At this point, we gave up on the FIA side of the Big Weekend, and decided to enjoy the music until we went home, before returning the next day to “smash up” the transmitters and save the crowd! We spotted Adrian Hon during the evening, and had a chat to him, which was nice! I also managed to procure myself two Big Weekend t-shirts, as a souvenir of the event!

Sadly, due to illness and being excruciatingly tired, I was unable to go to the second part, on the Sunday, and am extremely disappointed that I was unable to be involved in the taking apart of transmitters!

The Sunday activities will be written in Part 2 of the Big Weekend write ups, so keep an eye on this page! I have taken a few pictures, which you can find on my flickr (as always). There are also many pictures on the Big Weekend website, as well as video’s and blog entries on Paul Denchfield’s blog and his twitter.

A fantastic day was had, and despite the cold and the mud (even though it was sunny!), I thoroughly enjoyed myself, and think that the event was fabulously done. It was so exciting, and we really had to work as a team to complete it. I didn’t realise how much I missed the events until this one!

As you are all aware, there has been big updates to the Season 2 ARG for Perplex City lately. I have updated Perplex City Side to explain some of the new updates, but due to being insanely busy with university, I have been a little behind, and I apologise for this!

The big news is the merge with the BBC! Apparently Perplex City has become involved with the Big Weekend (the weekend of 19th/20th May), and the 3P are going to launch an attack on the Big Weekend audience during it. We have the task to prevent this. We have managed to find a website where the 3P are launching puzzles for various 3P agents to win tickets to the Big Weekend. We enter these, and so far have managed to secure a great deal of tickets between us.

The only catch is that we need to be able to go to the pick up point to get these tickets. So far the pick up points have been in Liverpool and Bolton.  I was lucky enough to get the chance to go to pick up tickets from Bolton, which was on the 16th May. We were all given our own passcodes, and told a place to meet the guy. We had a half an hour window, and had to pick up the tickets between 7pm and 7:30pm, or we didn’t get the tickets!

I arrived at Bolton around 6:30, and met Mindez at the station. We walked to the meeting point together (in the pouring rain…), and waited for said “shifty guy” to turn up. He turned up at 7pm on the dot, and Mindez went over first. Several other people turned up. The only one I remember was Muffin. (I have a terrible memory!). When it was my turn, I walked up the steps and went up to the shifty guy.

We were directed not to initiate conversation. Just give him the passcodes, take the tickets, listen to any instructions, and then go. However, I had to be different, and needed to pick up two envelopes. The guy was really nice to me. I really appreciated that, as I was struggling to hear him, and managed to understand enough to get what I needed! We get to skip the queue on Saturday, and queue up with the competition winners, which makes me feel special! He also said that “you may be needed on Saturday”, which sounded ominous.

I then wandered back down the steps, and decided to try and take a picture of the “shifty guy”. But, I’m not good at sneekily taking pictures, so it was fairly obvious I was taking a picture of him, and he stepped forward as I took the picture XD (maybe he wanted to allow me to take a picture). Even then it didn’t come out very well at all, sadly.

I then headed back home (via a 2 hour delay at manchester!).

A very exciting evening, and I’m looking forward to finding out what happens on Saturday in Preston.

For those that are able to attend on Saturday, I will see you there (we need to organise a meet up time!), and those that are unable to go on Saturday, I will be updating when I have free time (probably the Sunday), and I will be taking pictures, as I promised.

Welcome to Season 2!

Well, it went live today as expected! There is a new, extremely shiny Perplex City Sentinel up, containing lots of interesting information, as well as some rather shiny login stuffs! The Violet Underground site also went live, along with a new little puzzle to solve and some background. It’s rather pretty, and nicely set out. I won’t go into details of the new puzzle as you can all see for yourselves!

There has also been a post on the dev blog by the lovely Jo Carter, which outlines a rather shiny new site called Wayback. I urge you to take a look at this as it holds all the information about Season 1 that we thought we’d lose! As they stated, other ARGs tend to overwrite their old sites, and I’m glad that Perplex City decided against this, as I love reading back through the old stuff and remembering the ‘good old days’

I’d also like to thank Mind Candy, seeing the transcripts for the videos made my day, as I could read that after watching the video instead of having to bug someone to transcribe for me! I’m glad to see this, as I did feel a bit left out with others sometimes.

All in all, I think today has been rather a success, as this taster seems to have intrigued the players once more, and I’m now even more excited about June! Roll on the Season 2 ARG!  Well worth the wait it seems.

Adrian Hon posted on The Perplexorum a couple of days ago to say that there will be a preview of the Season 2 ARG of Perplex City coming out soon! He also mentioned this on the Mind Candy Blog!

ARGNet have also reported that a preview episode of Perplex City is likely to be announced on Friday 4th May. Hopefully this will keep players intrigued, and I’m looking forward to finding out what this sneak preview is! The full ARGN article is here.

Roll on Friday!

Been a day for news today. Another new blog sprang up, bearing the news of the ARG side of the game being postponed until June! Bit of a blow for us all, especially those waiting for the ARG part only, but the later date seems to be for good reason. Extensive testing will be taking place on the whole of the ARG part, so hopefully the problems that happened with the card release shall not rear their ugly heads again!

On a brighter note, the hints about the new sites and the writing for the ARG sound rather exciting, and I’m intrigued as to how it’ll turn out! Here’s to hoping there’ll be something to keep us occupied inbetween now and June!

All that excitement made me forget the new blog! Here it is: Perplex City Stories blog.

So, over the weekend I finally got myself into gear and started on the project I need to do for uni. It’s a huge task that I have to do, but I’ve made a good start and have a live website! It’s nowhere near finished as you will see from most of the links just.. not working >.<

Over the next 2ish weeks I hope to complete the website (and then move onto the huge report I have to write about it).

Any help with content is much appreciated, I’m useless with databases and have no idea where to start with the stories so far! Technically there is no story for Season 2 yet, so that’s simple enough! The write ups will be moving, however this website will remain firmly here and will be updated along with the website, as I’m planning to use this to update the write ups page on the website, so no need to worry!

Anyway, you may want the link! The *new* Perplex City Side.

Enjoy

I received an email from Perplex City today, thanking me for pointing out the broken fansite links and saying that they had fixed them. I had emailed them about The Perplex City Side as well, a while back, and received a lovely reply back. In this email today they stated that my site would be added in the future. I popped onto the website to look, and to my amazement my site had been added!

Made my day. I even printscreened it, being the sad person I am.

As expected, Season 2 launched on March 2nd 2007. A little later than expected, as it was around 6pm-ish GMT, but they were smoothing bugs out.

However, I was shocked at the impatience displayed by the players, and the general anger towards Mind Candy. I feel that people forgot that all of the Mind Candies have put a huge amount of work into the new site, and I would like to remind people that it has only been up around 2 weeks, it is a very large site as well as very new, and there are bound to be bugs.

The whole launch problems were made a lot worse by the constant refreshing, and it actually broke their server. But players were not to be daunted and continued to refresh, thus putting the server under more strain, and preventing it from coming back up. I was extremely disappointed by the lack of awareness shown, as this is an intelligent community!

I really hope something like this will not happen in the future, and I hope that all involved will learn from this.

Thank you to Mind Candy for all the hard work last night, extremely appreciated, and I’m looking forward to solving cards and the ARG part of Season 2 starting.

Happy solving everyone, and remember, if the site is down, take a breather and leave it alone for 15/30mins. It does us all the world of good. I think I shall now go and solve some of my Season 2’s!

So yesterday saw the arrival of boxes and packs of Season 2 Perplex City cards to a lot of players, myself included. I am sure a lot of enthusiastic opening then took place! From what I can gather, the distribution has been pretty damn good this time round, kudos to Mind Candy there! You are guaranteed something similar to this in a box of 36 packs:

4 silver
14 black (1 complete set, 4 spare)
24 purple (2 complete sets, 4 spare)
24 blue (2 complete sets, 4 spare)
24 green (2 complete sets, 4 spare)
38 yellow (3 complete sets, 8 spare)
45 orange (3 complete sets, 9 spare)
43 red (3 complete sets, 7 spare)

The general consensus is that they are generally following that order, sometimes only 3 silvers though. The packs and the boxes are extremely pretty, pictures are up (or soon to be up) on my flickr, so take a peek if you’ve not had the chance to see. And there will be no spoilers as to cards on my flickr for those concerned.

There was a pretty excitable bunch waiting for the card solves to be allowed. We reckoned about 5 or 6ish GMT it would open, but alas, it was not to be. I assume Mind Candy had a couple of errors with card solve forms and needed today to work at it, which is understandable, and also more fair on those that were unable to gain access to cards until today, so everyone is happy there!

While we were waiting, it was noticed that http://www.perplexcitystories.com was updated with a video to watch, which kept us occupied for a while. There was also a look back at Season 1 which was posted up, along with pictures and a competition, here! This was great to look through, there were some lovely pictures to see.

So, the official time that Mind Candy have given us for Season 2 card solving now is:

March 2nd 17:00 GMT

Happy solving guys, and enjoy the start of the new Season. I look forward to the new ARG starting! Watch this space for more updates on the official Season 2 launch of the card solving aspect.

So yesterday was the much awaited PARTAY! We all gathered outside the Gherkin at around 6pm, and as usual Mind Candy were fashionably late to “get the party started”. We were told to form an orderly queue by the door, and the lovely Jey took our names, Sequoya was handing out tickets to say welcome to the party and also granting us a free drink, and Hannah was giving out the goodie bags.

The goodie bags were full of well.. GOODIES!

• Three Season 2 cards, these were random and varied from person to person. I was amused because I got cards #001,#002,#003 ^_^.
• A shiny little badge that said “found the cube, saved the world”, which pinned to my bag immediately.
• A letter from Sente, which has been written up here
• Two “keys”, which were interesting, they seem to have a sort of bar code on them, and much spec was had as to why we need these in Season 2!
• A business card from Violet with a new website: http://www.violetunderground.com and an email violet@violetunderground.com. As far as I’m aware, these aren’t set up yet, and won’t be until March 1st April 1st, when the ARG side of the game starts back up.

Apparently, during the night different people took shifts on the door, and eventually they gave up and decided to PARTAY!

Once I had been let in, and mingled with friends, and met new players, I decided to take a little look round. Our two friendly DJs, idlemichael and Coxtin, were in their corner with music playing… very loudly, might I add. Dotted around the party were various cupcakes with cows, and 3P symbols and Cube pictures, rather yummy cakes too. One of the most amusing parts of the night was the bowl of Ceretin drugs which Adrian and Andrea went to great lengths to get hold of

There were also two very yummy looking cheesecakes available for people to snatch bits off. I didn’t manage to grab any, but I did help to place it on the table! From what I have been told, the cheesecakes were a hit and everyone loved them!

There was a table with the “Cube finding” tools laid out on it. This consisted of a shovel, a metal detector (which apparently was stolen at the end of the night!), a map and various other bits necessary to find the Cube.

The Cube itself was at the end of the room in a showcase. I took two pictures of it. Next to the Cube on another table was a suitcase of Lecks. I’m not entirely sure how many Lecks were in the suitcase, but I can confirm that by the end of the night, it was considerably less

At around 8:30, the music was quietened and a short halt was called to the partying for Adrian Hon to give a speech. He talked about how far Perplex City has come from it supposed to be a 9month game, and turning into.. well a lot longer! He thanked each of the Mind Candy employees for all their hard work in making it the success that it has been, and thanked us (I think, I was having trouble hearing). He then went on to tell the story of how he got the Ceretin. [tiag]Apparently they are just M&M’s[/tiag] and he went onto the website, and put in what he wanted on them and how many he wanted. Now, due to legal reasons (obviously), you cannot have copyrighted stuff on the m&m’s, or indeed swear words.. and the M&M guys rang up Andrea, I think he said, to say that unfortunately they would have to call a halt to the order, because Ceretin is a copyright of a company called Cognivia (apparently they google searched!!). Andrea then had to explain to them that it’s part of their company, i.e. the Perplex City game. She also had to explain to them that Perplex City was an ARG, but of course, they didn’t know what an ARG was, so she had to explain that as well! Eventually they let them have the order, but it brought a good chuckle in the speech! He then ended the speech with a quick S2 spoiler… The card that Violet gave us (in the goodie bags) is because with her reputation for being clever and problem solving, she has become a PI! Apparently there was a short video to introduce Season 2, but sadly the projector was broken. They shall be posting the video up on the web soon (next week?) however.

That left us speculating a little, and the music started back up and fun was had! Sadly, people started leaving us at 10pm, and slowly The Sterling started to empty.

At some point during the party, I don’t remember exact times, Amadeus managed to steal the Cube! I think (if I have my sources correct) he handed himself in to Adrian, and the Cube was put away safely to prevent further mishap. Sadly I was wrong, and the 3P didn’t steal the Cube, just a rather drunk player!

Throughout the night, at the bar there were forms you could fill in with answers to questions, and then you handed that in to the DJ’s table. At around 10:30ish, these forms had all been folded up, and placed in a bowl (an overflowing one I might add), and silence was called for Hannah to pick out 4 winners from the bowl (which Jey was holding). The winners were:

• ManleyM
• Gigabyte
• Skeleton
• and another person whose username/name I don’t remember!

These guys won a poster, an S1 pack (with a guaranteed Gold Card), an S2 pack (lucky!), stickers, and some badges.

Someone entered the competition multiple times, and NEARLY won all four times, much to Hannah’s annoyance. Alas, I forgot to enter (doh!).

After the prize giving, we went back to partying. By this time everyone was pretty much smashed, and much dancing and fun was had until the early hours of the morning, although poor Jey was left chasing people who were trying to steal the posters of the S2 cards that were placed on the staircase!

Sadly no silver leitmark winners were announced, it has been assumed that to save complaints, people that have been awarded silver leitmarks will randomly receive them in the post, which I think is nice (apparently, the actual reason was that drunk people would lose them!). I have heard from my sources that the official list of people will be announced soon.

Many photos can be found, the best selection of which are on Sledge’s flickr, which is in my links. There is also a flickr pool with all the photos in! And of course, there are a couple of pictures on my own flickr.

Many thanks to Mind Candy for a fantastic night, and to both the DJs for entertaining us with music throughout the night until early hours of the morning. It was great to see everyone again, and meet new players, and I look forward to seeing everyone in the near future.

As with any write up, if I have missed anything out, or got any information wrong, just let me know in a comment or an email!

Tonight at 7pm was the second of the Applied IRC Q & A chats, this time with Mind Candy!

The layout of the chats was the same as for the Rand0m interview yesterday, only it was a lot more crowded, as there were 7 Mind Candies talking! The Mind Candy people that dropped in were: Adrian, Andrea, Ben, David, Hannah, Jey and Naomi, along with ex Mind Candy’er, Mike.

As with the write up last night, this one has also been placed behind a more tag, due to the even LARGER length that this one ended up due the the tendency to waffle or go off topic every so often! Please click to continue reading!

Applied IRC very generously held a chat with Rand0m at 7pm (GMT) tonight to enable us to ask those burning questions we have!

There was a special bot coded for the occasion, called QBot which we PMed our questions to and then the ops picked which questions were to be asked, and asked them in the room.

The following logs have been put behind a cut due to the large length of the chat! Click the link to view the rest of this post.

All this week Perplex City have been able to be found at the Hamleys on Regent Street in London! Much to our appreciation, there were special “Hamley’s” cards, number H01 to H05, as well as various Season 2 promo’s being handed out.

Sadly, due to the fact I had work, I didn’t manage to drag myself down to London until the Saturday, but there were still a great deal of the H01-H05 cards to be found, although only one Season 2 promo left!

If you solved all five Hamley’s cards on the day, you were presented with goodies. If I remember correctly, this was a Version 2 starter pack and two packs of Perplex City cards. I was too lazy to solve mine on the day (wish I had though!).

There were two ’stalls’ so to speak. One had all the special cards, and was the stall you went to after solving all the five Hamley’s cards to collect the goodies from.

The second stall had the Perplex City board game set up on it, with the question cards out. You picked a coloured marble out of the bag, and the lady behind the stall asked you a question from one of the cards that corresponded with that colour. If you got the answer right, you were presented with a pack of Perplex City cards!

I wandered around there for a while, discussed with the ladies on the stalls and chatted to Flabyo, Ollie, giggsey, AgentLex, Xena, and another guy (ferret I think?). We then wandered off to a pub where we discussed the cards, spec, and various other stuff over a drink for a couple of hours, then I excused myself and headed off home.

Fun day out, and the cards are lovely. Snagged a few extras, for friends that begged as they can’t get to London sadly, and looking forward to seeing everyone next week!

Hopefully next week I won’t get stranded in London!

After two years of searching we received a tantalising update from the Perplex City Sentinel yesterday, holding breaking news that the Receda Cube had finally been found! It wasn’t until much later, in the evening, that we found out the full details of the finding. The lucky person to find the Cube was Andy Darley (astro_random on the Perplex City leaderboard), known as Rand0m on Unfiction, and a valued member of the community. I always hoped that a member of the community would find the Cube, as we all worked hard towards it!

According to Andy, he never expected to find the Cube (did any of us? I know I didn’t ), and was only in the game for the puzzles and the community, like the majority of us, so it came as a great shock to him when he dug the Cube up! In a spot of dedicated Cube hunting, Andy went to Wakerley Great Wood, Northamptonshire at 4am to search for the Cube! It seems to be that he just pipped a group of Cube hunters, that had been searching all weekend, to the post, as they found a Cube shaped hole and a Perplex City card: “End of the Line” which was a fairly apt card to leave behind!

Two articles have been published about the finding of the Cube, one by the BBC and the other by Gamasutra. The Gamasutra article has a small picture of the cube, if you squint you might be able to make it out. There is a Sentinel article on the recovery of the Cube , and also more information about it all on the Perplex City website. Here is a proper picture of the Cube, apparently drinking champagne, with another article by ARGNet here.

There will be a formal ‘handing over’ ceremony on the 24th February, but we are still waiting on the details for this to be finalised! I look forward to seeing you there! (For those unable to attend this, I will be writing up my account of the event, I promise).

I’d like to offer my congratulations to Andy, and I’d like to thank the whole of Mind Candy for all the hard work they have put into this to make it the success it has been. I’ve been playing over a year now, and it’s been a fantastic (albeit hectic) year! So many thanks to you guys, without you, this would never have taken place!

Onto the next installment of this post, the information we’ve been waiting for… SEASON 2! The Perplex City website officially announced Season 2 is starting on March 1st, where the first wave of cards will be released.

According to the website, we can look forward to a brand new look on February the 14th, with more puzzles for us! Also in the near future there will be “Perplex City Stories”, and apparently a new immersive experience!

All in all, it looks to be an exciting month ahead, with releases, revamps and mucho partying!

See you all for Season Two!
(where the 3P will have stolen the Cube back at the party and we have a mad rush to regain it )

On Tuesday 30th January at 7pm GMT we all gathered in our respective IRC rooms, and waited for the update to the police site ( http://www.perplexcitypolice.com/case_notes.php?cid=PXC978C675&section=OB ) to arrive with the details of the event with trepidation.

At around 7:10pm someone said “it’s been updated!” and we all rushed to get the link necessary to be able to communicate with the people in Perplex City. The link was in a flash applet, and we could communicate with them but not each other. Our messages didn’t appear to us, just to them. We could only see what they were writing and transmitting to us. There was pictures/audio/text/video. Pictures of the applet can be seen on my flickr.

Each puzzle came up as a little flashing box on the picture of Ascendancy Point to the right of the applet. We had to click each one, where a new window popped up with the puzzle.

The first messages started coming through immediately. We were informed that they were all grouped at the subway, and needed to get the platform cleared quickly. The best way to do this was to overload the ticket barrier, by making them think too many people were on the platform. This was our first challenge. In a Mastermind style puzzle, we had to get as many combinations right as possible to overload the ticket barrier. ( http://www.flickr.com/photos/silentlybroken/374829931/ ). We used the numbers 1 -4 (inclusive), and it told us with a green light if the number was in the correct place, and an orange light if we had a correct number but in the wrong place. When we solved a combination, we had to tell Kurt in the applet to get a new combination to solve it. For instance, one of my combinations was 1322. We solved this fairly rapidly, and they moved on towards Ascendancy Point where Violet and Helena split (to go and lay charges on the power system) from Kurt, Caine (who joined at the last minute, much to everyone’s disgust!) and Fitch (one of Helena’s men).

Kurt and co immediately concentrated on getting the lift hijacked and working to take them to the floor they needed. For this we needed to crack a code on the door. We had to watch a video and watch a guard inputting an 8 digit code in to open the door, and then relay this to Kurt. We managed to crack the code as: 74293816. From here we then had to figure out the amount of time we had to get Kurt and co through the door without the guard seeing. We cracked this at every 30 seconds, so not much time!!

They then came across a door which needed “iris recognition” to open it. Kurt linked us to the employee database ( http://perplexcitypolice.com/PXC300D968/employeeinformation.php ), while Fitch gave us a description of the guard via audio: blue eyes, 5ft7, 170 pounds, 50 years old. We managed to come up with the guy fairly rapidly: Damon Booth. This worked and they got through the doors.

The next thing that Kurt asked us to do was to get the operator to reboot the elevator system. We had to do this by ringing a number and coming up with weird and wonderful problems with the lift in order for the operator to deem it necessary to reboot! The numbers were US: (201) 399 2294 AND UK: 0207 870 1174.

While we were doing this, Kurt gave us another puzzle, to find the longest loop, in order for Kurt to cut the correct cable and prevent the alarms from being set off. The answer to this is shown on my flickr ( http://www.flickr.com/photos/silentlybroken/374829661/ ) .

We were told to continue calling to get the operator to reboot the lift (apparently he was being an arse!), and to tell Kurt when the lift is being rebooted.

There were a few puzzle doors we had to solve before they could get into the lift. The first door had a large circle on it. ( http://www.flickr.com/photos/silentlybroken/374829984/ ) Apparently the grey parts of the circle needed to be lined up, and this created letters. The solve to this was found to be “Point Zenith”.

The second door had a bunch of letters on it, some were overlapping. ( http://www.flickr.com/photos/silentlybroken/374830013/ ). The object was to find the missing letters. These were found to be “H” and “R”.

The third and final door was a maze. ( http://www.flickr.com/photos/silentlybroken/374830071/ ). We had to find the word that came out of the maze. The word, ironically enough, was “LOCKED”. ( http://www.flickr.com/photos/silentlybroken/374829732/ ).

After this, they came across another iris scanner, which wasn’t in the original plans, and they reckoned it must have been put in, in the last few days. Again we had to turn to the employee database ( http://perplexcitypolice.com/PXC300D968/employeeinformation.php ), and get a good look at the guard using video. ( http://www.flickr.com/photos/silentlybroken/374830173/ ). We gathered that the guard was 20-30, brown hair, moustache with a tiny beard, glasses and caucasian. We managed to come up with the answer that he was “Jasper Cohen”.

Here we managed to get the operator to reboot the lift, thanks to the lovely jojojojo! Unfortunately there were two guards waiting by the lift, and the (stupid/brave? you choose) Caine, went up and picked a fight with both, pretending to be drunk! They beat him pretty badly and dragged him off (ouch), leaving the lift free for them! Violet and co. met up with Kurt and Fitch by the lift after they had set all the charges, and they travelled in the lift for what seemed like about half an hour (with a lot of bickering), but then it was 110 odd floors!

They arrived in a storage (?) bay. They reckoned there was movement in Bay 17, so they tried to gain access through Bay 16. In order to access the service ducts we needed to raise the temperature to about body temperature and keep it constant for around 30 seconds. We had a flash applet of several thermometers with an average temperature thermometer ( http://www.flickr.com/photos/silentlybroken/374830088/ ). We needed to click and hold on the bulbs at the bottom of each thermometer to raise the temperature to the right amount, however the temperature fell pretty rapidly if you left it, and you couldn’t leave it too long or you failed!

In the end we managed it and the gas canisters were successfully planted by one of Helena’s men (Harrison). We then had 10 minutes, as when they detonated the power went out. There was a one minute window in which they had to enter, where the power was completely dead. Unfortunately all the vents closed and we had to override the locks. There were 11 locks needed to be overridden and we had 7 minutes to do it in. We had to click on a grey square, which then turned red (to show it was active), and fill the entire grid with green. ( http://www.flickr.com/photos/silentlybroken/374830112/ ). We managed to unlock 10 of the 11, which was pretty damn good going!

From here it all turned to audio, and we could hear shouting and shooting going on. At the end of the mayhem we found that Scarlett was in a bad way and looked like she had been tortured, all we could hear (and read at this point) was Violet saying “Lettie, your hands! What have they done”, and other similar sentences. Caine was handcuffed and pretty badly beaten up. They managed to get the 3P people, some got away however. We think Harrison was killed.. and two others, although we are not sure who. Helena was seriously injured. The last we heard from the group was that Scarlett and Helena were being taken to hospital. Scarlett on a stretcher as she was too “woozy” to walk. Kurt kept reassuring Violet that Scarlett would be fine.

Then a message popped up on our screen, we do not know who it was from but it said:

?* Form the layer. Find the era. Follow the Way. Find the Cube.
( http://www.flickr.com/photos/silentlybroken/374829808/ )

All in all it was a very exciting night, and I would say we had the biggest turn out for an online event yet. It was left on a bit of a cliffhanger and we are anxiously awaiting news and hoping that all injured will be ok.

We are hoping that we have all we need to find the Cube. Let’s get cracking folks!

All audio can be found here. Credit to Skenmy, Arkasha and Sledge for working on this!
All pictures can be found on my flickr.

Please let me know if I have made any errors, or missed anything out! Thankies

I decided to write a View From Earth, because I suddenly had an idea of what to write about and to my surprise, it was published!:

View From Earth: Perplex City Food and Lifestyle

By Sarah Hunt (aka silentlybroken)

In the last two years, we have learnt a lot about Perplex City, but we have never really learnt about the types of food Perplex City eat. It has always been in the back of my mind: “What is their regional food?”. Such as Stoke-on-Trent and neighbouring areas have “Chips and gravy” and Scotland have “haggis” and other such regional foods.

Earth, as a world, seems ridiculously addicted to this so-called “Fast food”, where we go to food chains and order food that is fast to cook and usually fried, such as burgers and chips. This is usually rather greasy and unhealthy food. Eating this stuff is more and more common and accepted as a regular meal. Instead of cooking your own food, why not head out to a McDonalds and pick up a Big Mac meal. It’s cheap, and quick! I hasten to add that I am not in agreement with this at all and am against it, as are many doctors as it is leading to an increase in heart disease and many other related diseases. It also has been linked to an increase in obesity, definitely found in children that eat these fast foods very commonly. It has led me to wonder if Perplexians have similar food chains, and whether they are finding similar problems to those that we on Earth are facing. I know Perplex City is eerily similar to Earth, as it has restaurants and bars, just like we do, but from what I can gather from the research I have done, Perplex City actually doesn’t seem to have these “fast food joints” to use a common term of slang that we on Earth use.

Moving on from this topic, onto another that is greatly debated on Earth. Earth is famous for the “fad diets” that we choose to have control over our eating and our weight. With the increase in the eating of fast food and obesity, more Earth people than ever turn to these fad diets to regain some control and their old figures. They even go as far as to abstain from eating meat, and calling themselves Vegetarians. There are even people that go further along these lines and abstain from eating meat, or dairy products as well. These people are generally known as vegans.

These are the more commonly accepted diets. There are many others, such as low carbohydrate diets and low fat diets. People spend their entire life stressing about their weight, and switching from one diet to another. It can even manifest itself in various mental disorders.

The mental disorders are very little known or talked about. They range from not eating; to eating and then purging your body of the food; to not being able to stop eating. They endanger people’s lives, because of the obsession with food and our bodies that has been caused by “celebritys”.

I cannot help but wonder if Perplexians have similar troubles to us, as Earth and Perplex City are very similar to each other. Are the mental disorders more widely accepted? Is fast food being phased out steadily, along with fad diets? With everything we know about Perplex City, and everything you know about Earth, there are still many things that we can learn from each other every day, both good and bad. It’s healthy to do so, and I believe that learning from other races is important to our everyday growth and expansion, whether we agree with the different views they may have, or not. I feel there is so much more that we can learn from each other, and I hope we can continue to expand each others views.

I also decided that with all the goings on lately, to write a letter into the Sentinel. Wasn’t posted, but I didn’t expect it to be!

Hello,

With the recent lockdown and firewall, I am unaware of whether this will pass through and be allowed to be put on the Sentinel. I wish simply to express that we are all working hard to find the cube, and hope to regain it soon, as we have made several breakthroughs. I sincerely hope that the next time we communicate with you, it is on better terms, and indeed, after the “firewall days”.

Thanks for reading,

Sarah Hunt

I doubted they’d be used, not the best written, but it passed the time and gave me something to do! So I was incredibly surprised (and pleased) to find my VFE was published!

Extreme Puzzling: The World of Extreme Chess

Earlier this week I was lucky enough to catch up with one of the top 10 in the world that takes part the latest craze in this new fad of Extreme Puzzling. This guy is part of one of the top teams in Extreme Chess.

This uses an entire floor as a chessboard, and the team members are the pieces. The fad came about from reading about “Wizard’s Chess” in the Harry Potter: The Philosopher’s Stone book by J.K. Rowling, and it really took off. There are worldwide tournaments and “friendly” meets.

Unfortunately it can be extremely violent, as when an enemy takes a member of the opposing team off the board, it usually involves a squabble as that member is reluctant to be taken off. Many injuries have been sustained, and there have even been competitions and comparing as to who has the worse injuries!

The world renowned (and sex god) Victor Halsall is here with me at the moment to answer some burning questions about this latest craze.

Me: Hi Victor, I’m glad you could join us!
Victor: Hi Sarah, I’m happy to be here.

Me: So, Extreme Chess. How did you get into it?
Victor: Well, I was bored one day on the computer, and just browsing through random websites. Came across Extreme Chess. I’ve always been rather into playing Chess, and this really intrigued me, as it was something that appealed to my wild side! There were contact details on the website itself, listing the Extreme Chess teams in different areas. I rang up and secured a chance to go along and take a look. As they say, the rest is history!

Me: Sounds good! Is it much different than the board game?
Victor: No, it’s actually pretty closely combined. The same rules for the game itself really. The only major differences are the size of the board, and the fact we are the playing pieces! (Victor laughs)

Me: A lot of people have said it is increasingly violent. Have you had any serious/worrying injuries? Does the violence concern you at all?
Victor: I’ve been pretty lucky as far as injuries go. There’s never been any really serious injuries, no deaths or anything like that. My worst injury was a cracked rib really. That was pretty painful! But it does add to the adrenalin rush in the game, adds to the fun a great deal. And really the violence doesn’t worry me at all, because there are medics on standby, and it is watched to ensure it doesn’t get out of hand. No serious injuries have been recorded either.

Me: A lot of people see it as a stupid idea, with the fighting as someone is taken off the board. I know there have been protests and requests that this game is stopped. What is your view on that?
Victor: It’s simple really. If they don’t agree with the game they don’t have to play it do they? (Victor laughs). It’s not a compulsory thing, although I do understand families and friends of the players getting worried.

Me: That leads me nicely into my next question. How do your family feel about your involvement?
Victor: My mum was a bit worried about it at first, but once I sat her down, and showed her how it works she was a bit better. Her nerves were put at ease somewhat when she saw me in a tournament. It does cause a bit of a problem with the love life though! Many girlfriends cannot deal with it at all!

Me: So still single then? (I laugh)
Victor: (Victor laughs and shuffles in his chair) Yes, unfortunately I am still single. (Victor leans forward a bit) I am definitely looking though! (Victor winks).
Me: I’ll keep that in mind!

Me: Changing the subject back to Extreme Chess! Do you always play the same chess piece, or is it different every match?
Victor: Well it depends. I tend to play a Bishop most often, but they like to switch it around a bit, people get awfully bored playing the same pieces constantly! Especially if they are a Pawn.

Me: I can imagine! Do you have to wear costumes for the game?
Victor: Well we tend to wear padding as a precaution really, in case of injuries. We do wear costumes as well, naturally padded out with the shielding for the more sensitive areas, if you get me (Victor winks). The costumes also help with remembering who is what chess piece during the game.

Me: Sounds pretty fun! So when is the next tournament for you?
Victor: Well there isn’t a big tournament until next year really, but we do have a friendly match coming up in November. You can come along if you like! It’s pretty exciting to watch.

Me: I might take you up on that offer! Thanks a lot for coming along and giving us an insight into Extreme Chess Victor, you have definitely opened my eyes to the game, and it sounds a lot less crazy than I thought.
Victor: Always glad to speak to you, Sarah!

I managed to grab a few pictures, as well as a neat t-shirt with the Extreme Chess logo on it!

T-shirt:

Victor

Extreme Chess Game

You can click on the images to view a full sized version of these. I do apologise for the quality of the pictures. The incredible likeness to the playing pieces we see on the board sized game is amazing, you wouldn’t know the difference!

So last night, Wednesday 25th October, was the much awaited Recedas Revenge 2. Everyone was hyped up and looking forward to the event. After my experience with the San Francisco online event, I wasn’t getting my hopes up.

Skenmy created this awesome link between the different servers that were going to be used for chat during the game, as the chat for Recedas Revenge was going to be insanely mad, and very difficult to keep up with. It meant that we could be on the Mind Candy IRC server, Chat-solutions IRC server, or the AppliedIRC server, and still talk to each other. It was really nicely done.

At around 6pm the website was updated with a link to the play webpage. I signed into the interface, and was pretty much dumbfounded with the shinyness. It was very cleverly done. It had a drawing pad at the top, which had an animation for Recedas Revenge 2. There were two rooms at the bottom. One to chat in, and the other was solely for the game itself.

Recedas Revenge 2 rules were as follows:

• Only one person could be in control of the game at any one time.
• You had to press the “Queue” button at the top if you wish to have a go, controlling the game.
• You had to navigate your way using text commands such as “move north” or “take lecks”
• You also had to draw where told to.

I think the most surprising moment for us was when a voice suddenly boomed: “Recedas Revenge 2: Coming Soon!” as we were waiting for the game to start. We all were startled, then we started guessing at who was the voice. I was the first to say it was Guy, and apparently I was right!

The actual game didn’t start until 6:40pm, which was 10minutes later than we expected. I was a little concerned about the game, as the chat included in the interface was completely mad, and I was having trouble keeping up. I decided to ignore the game chat, and just read the IRC chats, and read back at the end (if I could be bothered!). There was a live log page for the Game chat and the actual chat, which was bloody marvellous. It live updated every 15seconds.

When the game started we all got excited. A voice boomed: “Welcome to Recedas Revenge 2″ (or words to that effect). The Game chat started instructions. PenH was the first person up to control the game.

The basic set up was we (as a singular person) had been captured by a man called Lord Flaganroth, and he had also captured a princess. We needed to escape our surroundings so that we could release the princess. But it wasn’t going to be easy as we had to collect three things in order to save her:

• “The first is the Trophy of Amandier. You can find it at David’s Quays, at the north of the city, in the Amandier Art Tournament.”
• “The second are the Ancient Lecks of the Academy, which are held in the Bell Tower.”
• “The third and last is a Pelt of a Tretretretre, which you could find in a zoo. Now go with haste! And Gyvann!”

From then the game consisted of finding these objects, with obstacles in our way and challenges to face. And of course, many deaths! We had to solve the challenges to get the three objects needed to free the princess, and then take them back to her.

The details for the game chat are logged on the wikipedia by the lovely Mindez, who actually did the wiki in realtime, copying/pasting/formatting the entire logs onto it as well as having to control the game at one point. You may read them here.

Of course, when she was free, it wasn’t over, as Lord Flaganroth stood in our way, with his evil sock puppet. This led to the grand finale, where our sock puppet fought Lord Flaganroth’s sock puppet. We eventually defeated the sock puppet, through gruelling attacks, only to have Lord Flaganroth take the princess through a portal. Unfortunately the portal also took our sock puppet!

We were left with the following information:

• You are alone in the dungeon. Sans pelt, sans trophy, sans leck, sans puppet, sans everything.
• Just before the portal closed, you heard a strange whisper through it…
• Project Visor report 23 October 2006
• Intermittent signal recorded, weak, faint.
• Unable to determine location or direction.
• Signal lost after 0.278 seconds.
• Dispersal pattern suggests target located in arboreal area.
• Report ends.
• You wend your weary way home from the dungeon, making a mental note to sort out that wardrobe. Possibly with a shotgun.
• You don’t know how you can continue to live without your beloved sock puppet.
• You are sustained only by the knowledge that one day you will be reunited!
• You will have your revenge! Stay tuned for more Receda’s Revenge!

So, look forward to the next installment of Receda’s Revenge. I’ll be there. I hope you will too!

All the images drawn for the Receda’s Revenge 2 game are uploaded onto my Flickr, as I spent my time in the game screenshotting every image (and being donked every few seconds so I didn’t miss an image). I will mention that I missed two images. The very first puzzle, which was basically a similar version of the “Strange Loops” card. Slightly different  solve though. I also missed an animation of the “Surprise Attack” in the finale. I didn’t miss any player drawn images however.

As a side note, the small technical faults that occurred were greatly amusing.

I also wish to thank Mind Candy for that brilliant set up. It was the best online event I’ve attended. Brilliantly done, and hilariously enjoyable. I was crying with laughter at more than one point throughout the game. It was brilliant, and I really look forward to the next installment!

So.. Cubefest 2006 has been and gone. And was fabulous!

I got up bright and early on Saturday 7th to train my way down to London. Arrived at Charing Cross at 1pm, where a group of us were going to hand out leaflets about Billion To One at Trafalgar Square for a while, before we headed off to Cubefest!

We split into little groups so that we could cover Trafalgar Square as best as we could, and headed off to accost the various passers by with leaflets and cards. I was grouped with the lovely _izzy_. We started handing out leaflets (and by we, I mean _izzy_, I was quite frankly, useless) until one of the officials there came up and started telling _izzy_ off, apparently it is illegal to hand leaflets out there and we had to traipse all the way up the steps to hand them out there! We managed to give a few leaflets out, surprisingly people didn’t want them!

Then _izzy_ and I met mj, and Jo (angelsk), to head to a Pizza Express for lunch, while the rest of the team traipsed off to Leicester Square to see if they had anymore luck there!

We all grouped back together at the Cubefest place, which “coincidentally” had a 333 poster on a billboard right next to it :O !! Coincidence..of course We went in, and got given a piece of posh paper to write our real names and usernames on, so people knew who we were, and a special Perplex City wristband, with a code on for a raffle that was happening later!

I also managed to snaffle a very shiny unofficial Cubefest card, designed by Ixalon. Uber shiny! I also spotted a rather yummy looking cake made especially for Cubefest! You can find the pictures on Dan Hon’s flickr.

There were loads of people there. We milled around for a bit, randomly chatting and greeting each other, with Dan Hon and Sledge taking pictures everywhere! Then Guy gave a short speech, followed by Adrian (I don’t know what about at all, I couldn’t hear!). But I do remember (with Jot’s help just now), that he said that Season 2 would be out in February regardless of whether the cube was found. And that there will be more hints for finding the cube soon in the next few weeks, but they are not spoon feeding us, because after all, it is £100,000! After that Guy came back on stage, waffled on a bit more, and said there would be a “Get to know each other” game, and to get into groups (eek!!).

The game told us to choose 4 items of 8, to do an “interesting interpretation” of. The items were:

• Show the effects of taking too much Ceretin
• Prepare a presentation for Perplex City on the new game, Earth: The ARG
• Demonstrate the Perplex City game of Third Wheel (bonus points for a running commentary)
• Re-enact a 3p appearance at a live event on a low budget
• Provide conclusive evidence that a member of your team is a 3p agent
• Give a seminar on the Art of Seduction in Perplex City
• Demonstrate the effects of sleeping in the same room as the cube for over one month
• Give a reconstructionist sermon on cubes and the evil of triangles

This is all from Ollie’s memory (someone has a good memory!!!), so he says it’s not perfect, but that’s basically what we had to choose from. There was prizes for the winning team, so we all made a good effort.

The performances were fantastic, really well done, and greatly amusing. Amadeus’ team was the winning team (Amadeus, Flabyo, Ixalon, Bakers_12 and Elfredo), and they snaffled shiny Perplex City goodie bags (which had gold cards in the PXC pack!!!!).

There was also a raffle, and one of Amadeus’ team members won that too! Ended up with two Gold cards IIRC! (lucky git ). There was an extra goodie bag left, so Guy pulled another ticket out of the beer glass (how typical), and Agent Lex won! He also received a Gold card in the PXC pack. I attempted to steal it, but failed miserably! (At least I got a close look at it!)

After that we just milled about and chatted some more. Mind Candy brought along three board games so we could try them out, so various people did. There was also some trading going on. But mainly, lots of drinking, fun, and chatting. At 7pm people started to drift off slowly, some went home, others went for food, or onto somewhere else.

All in all, it was a fantastic time, and I’m extremely glad that I decided to go.

I want to thank Ollie and Mind Candy for organising this, because they went to a huge amount of trouble. And thank Coxtin for finding the bar

Everyone was extremely lovely, I was so pleased to meet people finally. And I look forward to meeting you all again in the near future!

I didn’t take many pictures, but pictures can be found on my Flickr. Take a look. Better pictures are on Dan Hon’s flickr, Sledge’s flickr, Bakers_12’s flickr, Sequoya’s flickr and Kirjava’s flickr which can also be found in my links. Also there are pictures uploaded to a special flickr Cubefest group, which has pictures from all the different Cubefests.

Ok so.. this year for my degree I have to do a project. It needs to be a web database really.. and I’ve been trying to think about a subject to pick for it.

I decided eventually on Perplex City, because it’s something I know a great deal about, and is suitable to do a web databse with..

The first thing I thought of doing was setting out possibles for topics. I decided on three different topics:

• Cards - online card database (will explain more later)
• Story - following one of the characters (decided this was shit and couldn’t be used as a database)
• Out of Game - 13th Labour, Billion 2 One, Shuffled sorta thing. Wasn’t sure how to database that either

So I decided on cards. But the only problem is how to do a database that isn’t taken as a rip off of Bri’s, or of Buzman’s pretty card manager?

I want to have all or most of the below points in the web database, which makes it pretty large, but possible.

Cards

Ok, so I was thinking of this.

Online Database

• Use Perplexcity.com updates
• Number of people that have solved the respective card; number of attempts; difficulty; rarity; set; colour; card architect; card designer; wave; season; points (set and card); solved or unsolved. I will probably be including the card picture as well, in the correct res of course.
• Involve the card symbols (playing cards); map backs, and the other interesting stuffs (like the risk pieces and those random numbers, as well as the letters on the back of the map).

Live Updates

• RSS feeds to blogs. I.e.: set up like a wordpress blog, with the different categories (Scarlett, Caine, Violet, Kurt, Perplex City Updates). These would be updated as their respective blogs, or the site was updated.
• Manual updates, such as when the sentinel is updated, VFE’s, forum updates (most likely Perplexorum), and of course live events or meets (such as Cubefest and any similar to PCAG etc).

So after sorting out all this, I need to go on and decide which language I’ll be using to design the database. And NO I’M NOT USING MYSQL SOD OFF! :P. I was thinking of using something like a mix of PHP and java? but being the novice I am, will this work? I’ll safely assume this will be hosted at college for the duration of my course, but if people *really* want me to keep it up on the web, I’ll need hosting (eek money).

So, what do people think, is it too similar to the current Perplex City websites? If so, do you have any other ideas I could possibly try and use instead. Or do you like the idea. I was thinking that it puts all the stuff in one area for people to see. I will be asking Brian and Buzman if they mind me doing this anyway, if people think this is a good idea.

The only worry for me is my time limit. I have to have the following done by the 9th October:

• Title Page
• Background
• Project Proposal (which might I add, is bloody huge and will take me ages!).

Comment with your thoughts!

Tuesday. Crane dropping day. See, the idea was had that we’d make 333 cranes (origami) in memory of Anna, a perplex city character who was killed not long ago, and then take them to the Mind Candy offices and present them. So Tuesday was that. Mind Candy are in London, so lotsa travelling done by me (and I didn’t get lost a single time *is proud*).

I ended up arriving at the meet place far too early, but, of course a Starbucks was JUST outside. So I had a coffee and passed the time there. I was the first there, but luckily I recognised peoples and cornered them with such comments as “you have CRANES!”. Scared the wits out of the poor people! Due to train strikes, tube delays, and certain people being lazy, NO NAMES MENTIONED! (*cough*Jem*cough*), peoples were later than meant to be, but we all arrived eventually. Lots of hugs, and then we wandered over to Mind Candy, searching for the cube on the way.

We arrived at the Mind Candy offices and set up shop on a picnic table to pack 333 cranes into a massive box decorated like a present, by the lovely Izzy. During which a security guard came over and started telling us off, cue Jem hastening to explain the situation and explain we were expected! The security guard oked it, and went off, we finished counting cranes while Arieh video camera’d the puttin of the cranes in the box and the sealing of the present. He also carried on to record the the delivering too, and the video shall be edited and stuck up on youtube

We then told Jem to carry the box, which was so big he couldn’t see over it, so funny! And went into the offices. The same security rang them up and was like “sit there, they’ll be with you in a sec”. Cue much sitting and waiting. Then Guy came out and did the whole delivery of cranes thing, twas amusing. Lots of photos and talking, then he went to sign out and take us all to the pub! Woo!

Guy got the first round in, and silly me declined a drink cos I was on the spot and got confused Pub’s are not fun for me, loud, and I can’t hear anyone, but then in that pub, noone could hear anyone, the music was too loud apparently. So I wasn’t the only one!

We chattered to Guy for a bit, and then Jey (Wishi - ex PXC player) joined us. Twas cool.. Then Adrian (creator of Perplex City) also joined us for a while, and Guy and Jey removed themselves to a different table *tuts*. Adrian is a really cool guy. And he had Guitar Hero, always a positive! Batgirl and I were plotting to mug him for it. Haha! But he left before we could, so we plotted to pin Guy down and steal his Mind Candy leitmark (OMG *wants*).

Then Jo arrived! Yay! She came and sat with us and chatted to us for ageeeeeees. She’s so lovely! She wants to come to the next meet up too! Yay!

Then sadly, Rach and I had to leave to get trainage back up north, so we said goodbye, and we got lots of hugs. Guy gave me a massive hug, and I forgot to steal the leitmark! NOES! Then he asked who I was, and Jo told him.. cue much embarrassment, because then he apologised in person for the lateness of my Scarlett Code prize.. NOES *blushes and hides* He said something also, along the lines of “Scarlett is a bit shit” *giggles*. That was really amusing.

Then Rach and I went homeeeeee. We were on the same trains for the majority of the way, but I got to my station before Rach got to hers. MUST MEET UP AGAIN RACH! I miss everyone alreadys

All in all, a fantastic weekend was had, especially the London trip. It was great fun, and I met lotsa new people!

Pictures can indeed be found on my Flickr which is linked to on the right hand side of my blog.

Well, this weekend has been full of busy-ness.

On Saturday I pootled off to Stockport for a massive Perplex City based party, all excited like, cos I’d be meeting new peoples, one of which was a Mind Candy employee (company behind Perplex City and all that). She was awesome, so lovely, and she had a good time, which was importants, cos that means Mind Candy employees can come party with us all and not worry about being lynched.

Saturday was lots of drinking (apart from me - teetotal 9 months now), singstar, karaoke, blank white cards, chattering, and lots of fun to be had.

Also lots of pictures taken.

I managed to bag the sofa bed, which was surprisingly comfy actually, apart from my bellybutton bar getting caught and nearly getting ripped out (*winces*).

Sunday was a lot less drinking filled, and more flyin camel (ok ok cranes) related, and Buffy. Lots of Buffy. Hee! That was pretty much fun, although I was surprised at the amount of Buffy I had already watched! There was also Donkey Konga, Smash Bro’s and Golden Axe playage, and card discussion. And Library of Babel discussion, and Animal Crossing playage. And OMG musn’t forget the Pictochat!

Uno was also played, but I was basically in bed by then, so I missed out. Doh!

Monday was more Donkey Konga playage, which was hella amusing, because they were testing out bad claps, and what set the clap sensor off. It ranged from clapping badly on purpose to screaming “BAD” at the sensor to screaming “CLAP” at the sensor.. to which I said “sounds like quack” and started off a bunch of people screaming “QUACK” at it. It was hilarious!

The very lovely Tally gave me a lift home, which was lovely of her, and as soon as I walked in the door, my mum basically said, “you are going to London tomorrow”, to which I squealed and bounced muchly.

When I first heard about the San Francisco event, my immediate thought was, “oh no, there is no way I can get to the event”, and was rather depressed about the entire thing, but then I found out that I could take part online! So I signed up online, and cleared my calendar for that evening.
The hype about the event started 3 days before the actual event, when one of the members of the IRC, entered the room and told us that all the Perplex City sites were down! From there we learned that the connection between Perplex City and Earth had been broken by the terrible group, the 3P, and we would need to use the event to set a new connection up.
The entire day of August 12th, for those of us in the UK, was filled with apprehension and excitement about what was going to happen in the evening. We knew we had to fix the connection, but we had no idea how, and whether we had the time to fix it! There was a lot of speculation and wonderment about how us online participants would be included.
As it got closer to 7pm, a lot of us noticed the changes on the http://emergency.perplexcity.com website. We were all prepared, or at least thought we were.
There were over 200 people in the chatroom, it was absolutely mental, everyone was speculating and talking over each other even before the event started, and it only got worse.
We found that we had to answer sets of questions. We knew there were a certain number of sets, but we had no idea how many, we just knew that we had to get the emergency.perplexcity.com site visited a lot of times to open up these sets, and then from there it was a mad dash to solve the questions! Many of us posted the site up on a lot of different sites, trying to get our friends to visit so we could get the sets opened! Only the first solves mattered for the questions, but we had no idea which were solved, and which were unsolved, as the site didn’t update to show which had been solved. This caused extra annoyance to those taking part, and a very quick forum topic on http://forums.unfiction.com was set up to show solved/unsolved questions, and in which sets. Later on a wiki entry was also set up for each of the seven sets of questions, and by the end of the event, we only had a list of the unsolved left on the website as it was.
The atmosphere in the chatroom was amazing, it was filled with chatter about the questions, which had been solved, how to work the event, what needed to be done. The ops trying to keep control were working their socks off to keep up, the room was moving that fast. Some of the people in the chatroom retreated to the original Perplex City chatroom, to ask advice on things from the members in there. I was one of the members to try and help those in that room, while solving questions.
The online part of the event lasted 4 and a half hours, and it was 4 and a half hours of absolute chaos and excitement. We were able to keep track of those on the ground in San Francisco, and occasionally they came into the room to ask for help with puzzles! This added to the event greatly.
Both the online and on the ground teams managed to raise 100% with minutes to go before the connection completely died. Then came the panicking. The websites weren’t back up and the emergency.perplexcity.com website had the same background as the other websites! We were all worried that we had failed.. This lasted 5 minutes, but it felt so much longer. Then one person said “THE SENTINEL IS BACK!”, and one by one we saw all the Perplex City sites come back. The chatroom was an uproar, as we congratulated each other, and generally celebrated. Then it turned back into the mad rush, when we discovered a video sent to us from Sente!
Everyone rushed to download the video. I, being more laid back, read the transcript of the video that was posted on the emergency.perplexcity.com website. When I reached the bottom, there were recordings of the threatening messages that the on the ground people had received from the 3P via their phones! We listened to them, and the speculation went through the roof, talking about the different things that were likely to happen, what was going on..
Days later, we still feel the after affects of the event, the chaos, the madness. But none of us would have missed it. It was a brilliant evening, and the video from Sente ended the entire night on a high. There is nothing quite like saving a link between two very distant worlds, to ensure that we can still communicate. I wouldn’t have missed it for the world!