TOP GL'ER VEGAS - Alas, we knew it well....

[Zag]

[LordKinbote]

[MNOWAX]

hold on i have to drop LordKinbote for sucking up, then raising it again for mispeeling LordKintobe for the first two rounds of last year.
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The Man The Myth The Legend
MNOWAX

[LordKinbote]

[LordKinbote]

I do have a question though: is this still an elimination round? Or were we saved by our fallen compatriot's inaction?

[MNOWAX]

the only way to have been eliminated in this round was to not submit anything. anyone who did submit is safe.
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The Man The Myth The Legend
MNOWAX

[Undercover Monk]

BUMP for my fellow judges. I have posted my analysis. get on the ball slackers. LOL!
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The Classic Blunders:
1. never get involved in a land war in Asia
2.Never go in against a Sicilian when DEATH is on the line
3. Never release Peyton Manning

[xalolo_*]

Is this dead? I'll be honest, I don't care a ton about the judging, I just want to write more puzzles with interesting rules.

[MNOWAX]

lol not dead we are havuing some busy tiems judging lol
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The Man The Myth The Legend
MNOWAX

[LordKinbote]

[Undercover Monk]

well that should give you some more inspiration LK I expect an even better druken posts riddle this season
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The Classic Blunders:
1. never get involved in a land war in Asia
2.Never go in against a Sicilian when DEATH is on the line
3. Never release Peyton Manning

[LordKinbote]

Okay, I'll be "that guy"...any word on the judging process? "Give us about a week" was 35 days ago.

[jbvntx]

Interesting point. Due to the nature of the puzzles, that's nearly a day and a half per word, isn't it?
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jbv

[Zag]

A quick puzzle for the judges to consider:

Because unthinking members pause,
being unusually miffed -- perplexed,
begin, umpires, manifest percipience!

[Undercover Monk]

A quick note to all contestants. If you havent realized (I didnt till I just checked.) MNOWAX's last post was march 9 and Dented Ford's was March 17 or so. I think we may have lost two judges and the host and I guess I could post my comments from round 1 but it looks like the game is crashing and burning.

Does anyone have a non labyrinth way of contacting them and would you like me to post my analysis as a way to peacefully end the game.
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The Classic Blunders:
1. never get involved in a land war in Asia
2.Never go in against a Sicilian when DEATH is on the line
3. Never release Peyton Manning

[groza528]

I had previously offered to MNO to give up my seat and take DF's place as a judge, but he said it looked like DF was finally coming back. MNO has also been very busy with projects at work and home. If need be I am still willing to give up my seat to judge or even moderate, but UM is right that we still need three judges.
Trying to get in touch with MNO now to see where he stands.

[groza528]

From MNO yesterafternoon:
"Hey, I won't be on GL for a couple of more weeks due to work and business schedule. I will be back on after the 25th. If you want to take over for now go ahead. [Snip] won the first round because he got almost a perfect score from me as well as UM."

So I'm going to step in temporarily as mod, hopefully get this game back on its feet. When MNO gets back he can assess whether he is free enough to retake the reins, in which case I'll just revert to a simple judge.

Y'all will have to give me a bit to do some judging; time to talk to UM.

[lexprod]

[MNOWAX]

im here for a day or two but will be leaving again for a couple of weeks.

Groza and Undercover Monk will be taking over for the next two weeks. Once I am back permanently, ill take back over hosting duties, and Groza will be a judge permanently. Groza and UM will be doing our first elimination challenge while i am gone.(it wont be a team one i swear!)

These two judges will be doing separate score cards blind from each other. the lowest combined score will be kicked out.

There was one person that stood out in the last round, and will have immunity. Groza will announce the winner shortly.
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The Man The Myth The Legend
MNOWAX

[groza528]

Sorry for the delay; I had all my analysis typed out and had a virus come in and corrupt all my files Still fighting it, but I'm not going to let that delay me here any further if I can avoid it.

The 25-word challenge
Puzzlers were asked to create a puzzle using no pictures and 25 words or fewer, which all of those who submitted successfully accomplished. Otherwise the challenge was fairly open, and there was a good variety of puzzle themes and mechanisms present in the round.

Undercover Monk

First off let me say that all the puzzles were surprisingly good. I really think any of our competitors could win this years competition. And with heavy hitters Scurra and Cordelia not in, its anybodies ball game. on my theme scores since everyone had 25 words or less I judged how they themed their individual puzzles. So here are my reviews.

Projectyl

This was one of my favorites this round. I collected all the state quarters and thought the mechanic was clever and entertaining. Especially as the DC quarter is more obscure and thus provided a bit of a challenge at the end (unless of course you had it in in your room a mere 5 feet away). A very good puzzle, with no real problems.

Theme: 10
Technique: 10
Style: 7


Groza528

Another good puzzle that I got pretty far into without using the solution. However I used Unorthidox for the last clue. Which threw me off. So a little off on the technique score as unorthidox fits perfectly and is a more common word. The answer threw me off as well a bit but still a very good puzzle.

Theme: 8
Technique: 7
Style: 8


Persona:

The first puzzle I had significant trouble with. It wasn’t a horrible puzzle and I think with more directions it would be more acsessible. A decent submission in a hard category.

Theme: 7
Technique: 6
Style: 6


Xalolo

Wow! The amount of effort put into this was amazing. The theme of the puzzle was great as the title also served as the directions. Very clever! There were a lot of steps to get to the desired solution so a small deduction on technique but partially because I refuse to give out a perfect score so soon in the competition.

Theme: 10
Technique: 9
Style: 10

Lexprod:

Another good puzzle. A bit harder than most as it required a decent amount of research. But with legwork it was a fairly easy to see where the puzzle was leading you too. A little bit harder near the end when you have to guess the code but again a fairly easy guess and the answer gives it away.

Theme: 10
Technique: 8
Style: 7


Jbvntx:

Not a horrible puzzle, but not a great on. I just could not get this one. I liked the idea of missing links but thought the word choice was poor as I was looking for some kind of code. Also the length of the puzzle was hindered by the 25 words rule. Too complicated for so few of words there are a lot of jumps in logic and messing up any of them will screw you. Still a decent submission.

Theme: 8
Technique: 6
Style:8


Zag:

Only Zag could come up with something so horrendously complicated on the first challenge. A little too complicated with no instructions to go. Once I got the solution I was like Duh!!!.but without it it seems rather a stretch that this could be done without a group effort. No impossible leaps in logic though and the GL is paradise so…

Theme: 9
Technique: 7
Style: 9


LordKinbote:

A nice simple word puzzle. GOOD! The only problem I see is that the flavor text didn’t give any hint that the words could be put together to spell the same word up as down. So that had to be worked out by yourself. A bit tricky but a good mechanic. And te puzzle was solved once you figured that out

Theme: 8
Technique: 9
Style: 8

So although my personal favorite is still Projectyl's 25 cent puzzle, Xaolo gets the winning score.

groza528
Since "theme" is basically a yes-or-no category this time, I am extending it to include the cohesion of the puzzle- that is, how closely the creator followed his *own* theme; do the mechanism, title, content, and solution fit together?

groza528: A perfect puzzle! It is a shame he has chosen to give up his seat; I wold love to see more groza in the future

jbvntx
Theme - 9: Good use of the chain motif to match the puzzle mechanism; could possibly have taken a bit more care in word choice to fit this theme a little better or possibly to somehow tie in "melody" better; not erroneous by any stretch but something to think about for next time.
Technique - 7: Many of the words were a bit obscure. As it was not immediately apparent that the definitions would not be needed, this made the puzzle a bit intimidating at first glance. I'm also a bit concerned by the fact that certain words were absent-- while it was the more common words, which was a good choice, I don't know what the point was-- I assume primarily to add a layer of obfuscation and secondarily to stick to the 25-word limit but it seemed extraneous. Watch your conservation of detail.
Style - 8: The chaining mechanism was fun, and I liked the use of the non-overlapping letters to create the "unchained" answer. I'd have liked to see a few more letters get overlapped, though-- there were a couple of spots where only one letter overlapped.
Overall: Loved the concept, thought the execution might use some improvement. It's possible this puzzle is more difficult to create than I'm giving it credit for, but I feel there must be some set of words that still fits the puzzle that are some combination of less obscure, more thematic, or overlap better.

Lexprod
Theme - 10: Clear movie theme present, and the title hinted at the second step nicely.
Technique - 8: You need a Z. You had leftover word allotment at the end and enough structure that even an obscure 26-movie would be an obvious 26-movie; there was no reason to leave it out. Especially when the final answer is anagrammed, it is imperative there be no ambiguity as to whether a certain letter is included.
Style - 7: You mentioned in the thread that you wanted to get away from your "hide an anagrammed answer" rut, which you didn't do. I also thought that the answer itself was a bit humdrum; we know the puzzle is about movies long before we ever get to the answer so it didn't put a fun last-minute twist on everything-- which resulted in it being less satisfying to reach. On the plus side I definitely appreciated you putting the movies in numerical order which allowed for some backsolvability.
Overall: Another good concept that could have been executed a little better; wouldn't take much work to pull this puzzle up 3 more points in my book: choose a more satisfying solution and do something about the Z and this would be an easy 28 to me. You'd still lose a couple of points for having to anagram as the last step.

LordKinbote
Theme - 8: I appreciate that the words chosen were highly constrained, so you don't lose anything for that. I do feel that the final solution could have been more relevant to the puzzle, which is normally something that Kinbote is better at.
Technique - 10: As far as I can tell the technique is impeccable. The words chosen were pretty common as a whole, and the puzzle is solvable without the use of trial and error. Though some may disagree, I also like to see iteration in a puzzle (though not all the time)
Style - 6.5: This puzzle just didn't speak to my inner solving center. The mechanism was so immediately apparent to me that I didn't feel compelled to actually *solve* it, and the solution didn't really justify having done so.
Overall: This puzzle suffered from being *too* technical. There was no guesswork for the solver; it lacked that "Aha" moment that makes a good puzzle great. I had a sensation of just going through the motions for a pretty generic answer. This puzzle strikes me as quite interesting to write, but it kind of fell flat on being interesting to solve.

Persona
Theme - 9: The sentence itself really had nothing to do with the theme, but I can't really nail you for that because your word choice was awfully constrained.
Technique - 6: I have to hit you hard for misspelling your final answer. In a puzzle with really only one step it's a pretty grievous error, three points there. The other point is for the circumflex and the umlaut as I was not immediately certain how to characterize them (is the umlaut a dash like the other diacriticals or two dots because that's what it looks like? Are there two dashes in the circumflex?)
Style - 9.5: It was a great twist on the 25-word challenge, to have the actual words end up being less relevant. Also, good on you for making a cogent sentence out of 25 words with 10 accent marks! Strictly speaking, "ninjutsu" is more proper, though.
Overall: This puzzle was fairly short but still a lot of fun. Unfortunately it's very difficult to look past the inexcusable misspelling ("makrings" that is; ninjitsu is certainly excusable, possibly even a valid alternate.)

Projectyl
Theme - 10: Excellent theme, itle tied to mechanism tied to solution quite well. If I could I would give you more than 10 for turning around the constraint of the challenge and actually using the 25 to mean something.
Technique - 8: You lose points here on the "conservation of detail" axis-- the second set of words served no purpose I could see other than making the first set of words more recognizable/googleable.
Style - 9.5: Great solution! I feel like I almost should have expected everything to point to the DC quarter, but I didn't. It was the perfect twist on the "state quarters" theme.
Overall: This was a terrific puzzle, but it was twice as long as it needed to be. A good set of unambiguous words would have completely eliminated the need for the extraneous second set; if needed you could have made a longer clue phrase to make the words more googleable (e.g. "PIANO MAN ON DC COIN")

Xalolo
Theme - 9: Title hinted well at the mechanism and tied in well to the solution, but the actual word choice seemed not to have much to do with anything. But then, upon solving, the word choice really didn't have much to do with anything, so the point I'm knocking off is only because of the definition I set for style and not because I see it as a deficiency of the puzzle.
Technique - 9.5: So here is where I backpedal and say that I'm glad the words weren't related, because it prevented solvers from straying down the garden path. The half point is because the letters in the final answer were slightly jarring in their inconsistent width, an easy fix by adjusting length of input words, but not serious enough for a full point.
Style - 10: It was refreshing to see a puzzle that didn't use the actual words for anything that mattered much from a solving standpoint. It seemed like you took the extra time to choose words that were *fun,* if not particularly relevant to anything.
Overall: This puzzle had a good solid mechanism that was very solvable but not immediately obvious. It was the only puzzle to take advantage of formatting beyond simple line breaks, which set it apart. I quite enjoyed it.

Zag
Theme - 8.5: The title and the solution matched up pretty well, and the mechanism to the word choice, but the title was really linked to the mechanism only by "Eden" (unless it was supposed to be a play on 'pair' which, if so, went over everyone's head)
Technique - 7: I've got to ding you for that first leap of faith. I saw no real indication that the locations need be paired, save that each sublist had an even number of entries, which is a tenuous connection at best. As even the GL didn't figure that part out without hinting, it clearly needed a little something more to cement that portion; perhaps the city-town pairs needed to start with the same letter? Once you get past that the puzzle is very solvable; loved the hidden instructions.
Style - 10: It's the little things that made this puzzle really enjoyable - the hidden instructions, the care taken in the choice of the midpoints to corroborate the mechanism... I wouldn't have bought Eden as a red herring answer because it ignores much of the puzzle but it was still a nice touch.
Overall: Zag did a great job with the small details, but evidently missed the big one of the first step being hidden too well. It was a fun puzzle with a good answer once you got started.

MNOWAX
(MNO did not send me his analysis of the puzzles, but he told me that Xalolo scored best-- nearly perfect.)

The winner of this challenge, with high scores from all judges, is Xalolo! Xalolo will be immune from elimination in the next challenge, which will be posted shortly.

[Zag]

Grats, Xalolo! I totally agree with all the comments about your puzzle, as well as the ones about mine. I wish I had presented the cities in pairs rather than just in a line, but I still think yours would have been better.

[groza528]

Since I am effectively eliminating myself I wasn't going to make this one an elimination round, but MNOWAX clearly had other plans. So after this round we judges WILL discuss who is to be eliminated. Xalolo, having won the first quickfire challenge, is immune to elimination.

Elimination Challenge 1: What's on TV?
You are to write a puzzle inspired by one of your favorite television programs. It can be a current program or one that's off the air, sitcom, drama, or scientific, the only restriction is it may NOT be a game show. Consider how familiarity with the program will affect solvability, and try to show solvers why it is worth watching.

You have two weeks. Please submit your puzzles to topgler@gmail.com, then follow them up with the solution in a separate email.

[lexprod]

[xalolo]

[groza528]

[Undercover Monk]

good to see you haven't left us Xaolo.
_________________
The Classic Blunders:
1. never get involved in a land war in Asia
2.Never go in against a Sicilian when DEATH is on the line
3. Never release Peyton Manning

[Amb]

Where are the links to the puzzles? I'd like to have a go?

[Duke Gnome]

They're in VSP, and have been for over a month.

[Undercover Monk]

Friendly reminder as we approach the one week mark. Please send all puzzles (along with a separate solution) to topgler@gmail.com. If you have any trouble meeting the deadline pm Groza or myself before it passes. After last round we will be more than reasonable as long as you communicate to us.
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The Classic Blunders:
1. never get involved in a land war in Asia
2.Never go in against a Sicilian when DEATH is on the line
3. Never release Peyton Manning

[Zag]

Whew! Sent. I was worried about this one, but I'm pretty happy with the final result.

To all you procrastinators out there: 2 more days!

[lexprod]

/apply for extension

[jbvntx]

/me too. I have the piece parts of the puzzle itself done but need a couple more days so I can write the narrative around it.
jbvntx
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jbv

[Projectyl]

/sent
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"I am now telling the computer exactly what it can do with a lifetime supply of chocolate..."

[LordKinbote]

I'm done with the hard part (construction-wise) of the puzzle. I should be finished completely by tonight.

[Persona]

I'm likely to be done by noon Sunday for me (in 13 hours), certain to be done by midnight (25 hours).

[LordKinbote]

/sent

I'm excited to get some feedback on this one, as I've never made this puzzle type before and I'm really, really pleased with how it came out.

[LordKinbote]

...and of course I would leave an errant number in the grid during testsolve that I meant to take out, breaking the puzzle. Eh, at least it's a problem with the image, not the puzzle itself.

Judges, please ignore the first version of the puzzle. I have sent you a fixed version. Hopefully the fact that we're still before the deadline means you won't hold that against me.

[Persona]

/sent

"Yeah, after that debacle of a quickfire, I really hope to show the judges why I deserve to belong in this competition. Which may mean I do too much, but if I counter that tendency, I may do too little, so I clearly can't choose the wine in front of you!"

[groza528]

As we said earlier in the thread, we will be lenient on granting extensions this round after the long judging for QF1. Extension granted. Is Wednesday long enough?
Good to hear from you jbvntx; you were the only one I hadn't heard anything from yet and I'm glad you didn't vanish when QF1 results took so long to come out.

[MNOWAX]

good stuff. I am finally back from roaming around the countryside. I will only be looking at the puzzles from a friendly standpoint not as a judge this round. it will still be up to Groza and UM to pick our first elimination.

good luck you guys!
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The Man The Myth The Legend
MNOWAX