Summary: BANG 23 was first announced as the 1.23 Anniversary Rerun of an event held by The League of Extraordinary Puzzlemen in June 2009, right between BANGs 21/22 and 24/25. However, no one had any recollection of this event, even teams that The League was sure had played in the original event.
About one week before the rerun, the website for the event was hacked and an altered version, announcing Mr. Evil and his minions as superiors of The League, was posted. The altered "MR EVIL BANG" was formed out of the letters of the Caltrain Burlingame station (where U is actually a V), near where the BANG would start.
At the intro to BANG 23, Prof. Tangram gives the ground rules and then tells teams to wait a little bit as Dr. Sudoku hasn't shown up yet. Mr. Evil springs on stage and announces snidely "I don't think Dr. Sudoku will be showing up today, Professor Tangram!" He continues, "The name's Evil ... Ken Evil ... and I'm here to save you from another forgettable edition of BANG 23. You see, last year my team and I tried to play in BANG 23 but we were told we were inferior puzzlers and couldn't sign up. When we weren't going to have any memories of the event, we decided no one else should either. Thank you Eraser Boy for giving everyone amnesia!"
"When we heard the so-called League of Extraordinary Puzzlemen was running BANG 23 again, we decided some more direct intervention was needed. I'm proud to say we stepped up and fixed all the problems BANG 23 had, to make a perfectly evil event. First, all the answers in BANG 23 were pretty lame. Totally unmemorable. So we spiced them up a bit, to make them all a little more ... evil! And the puzzles themselves were sort of boring and straight-forward. So we fixed them too, added some new twists and turns, some new pitfalls, all to make them a little more ... evil! And most importantly, we got rid of Dr. Sudoku and all his number placement puzzles. Sudoku is soooooooo last decade. I, Kenneth Ken Evil, created the latest puzzle craze: the KenKen. My puzzle is even in the New York Times, something Dr. Sudoku could never claim. By replacing all those old boring sudoku with the latest and greatest puzzle, we've got a BANG I'd gladly put my name on, the Mr. Evil BANG. I wish you all luck -- you'll certainly need it. So Teams: Ready! Set! Erase!" (Note: This last phrase was the label on Eraser Boy's sticker for the first puzzle envelope.)
Teams then received 8 puzzles to solve at eight different locations around Burlingame. Each puzzle comes with a "standard" challenge as is seen with a BANG, something that solves to a single answer word, as well as a "MAP" puzzle, a logic puzzle whose solution transfers numbers onto the map. When a team submits a correct answer, a colored sticker is placed on their answer sheet with the next location's color and number. If teams know where this is, by solving the "MAP" puzzle, they can proceed to that location. The puzzles and solutions are given below.
Start Packet |
When teams arrive at the end location, Mr. Evil berates them for a bit. "How are you here already? It's not 4:45! Did you open the final location envelope too early? Did you give up? What!?! You solved all the puzzles. I never expected that to happen, so I never bothered writing a meta. I've got nothing to give you here. But I am sitting next to this stack of useless envelopes from the original BANG 23. I was going to throw them out, but I guess you can throw them out for me."
Teams then receive a set of components similar to the initial start packet from which they can try to solve The League's original BANG 23 meta.
Original Start Packet |
Teams that turn in this answer receive a certificate that explains that Mr. Evil had played in the original BANG 23, but that his team could not solve any puzzles, let alone Dr. Sudoku's meta. Presumably, having been embarrassed by this failure, Mr. Evil tried to erase all memories of his team's performance by giving everyone amnesia. With the rerun, Mr. Evil's plan was to change the puzzles to be so hard that all other teams would similarly fail. By getting through all of Mr. Evil's new traps, The League congratulated each finishing team, welcoming them as [[Meta Answer]] and as new friends.
Results: Saturday and Sunday results are in Google spreadsheet format. Congratulations to CRANEA and Judean People's Front (both 560 points) for winning Saturday and to Golden Golems (549 points) for winning Sunday.
Photos: Are available here.
Thanks: To Desert Taxi and the Burninators for help with play-testing and manning sites during our two runs.