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[rose]

The META puzzles -would a chat be useful?

[Scott]

okay, sounds reasonable. The immediate fFear i would have is that it would be either a rehashing of known fFacts with nothing new offered - or else a breeding ground of pointless speculation. Do you propose any sort of plan or outline of events? or do you think it is, in fFact, better to have unbridled congress?

[xnbomb]

It *is* always the last place you look

[rose]

I'm open to suggestions. I was thinking we would look at each puzzle in a systematic way, one at a time, at see what observations we might be able to gin up.

Maybe we won't have any new facts to add.

I've been wondering about the number strings and why they change, why the last set has one bolded string of numbers. Does that mean that "side" lost the game, or was the purpose of the game to lose numbers so that the smallest amount of numbers wins? They seem to be alternating turns, but turns of what? Is it necessarily Risk or is the whole Risk bit an entirely separate thing?

Maybe everyone else has carefully looked at the "blobs" as shapes for example, but I think it may be worth going over them. It isn't clear (to me) that they are necessarily designed to fit together and it isn't clear why there are two pieces that seem to be duplicates. I don't think that any of the pieces should be ignored, so what might the duplicates mean? And do they have anything to do with Risk? Do they always appear on the same cards as the number strings?

People have commented on the precious stones. I don't know if we can ignore them or not?

And the card symbols - have we managed to do anything with them? It might be worth examining them more closely to see what patterns if any we can observe before we try to jump into solving what they mean - I am all for jumping into solving, but I don't see another way into these puzzles other than observing what we can about them.

I think it is always useful to do things as a collaborative group. I am confident that we can manage this chat so that it is productive and not a disorganized free for all.

[Datango]

Re: The META puzzles -would a chat be useful?

[Guin]

Yep seems like a good idea to me

I am away this weekend in London funnily enough (might even check out some of my weirder ideas while hungover!)

But yap seems good to me. Should we agree the key points so we can try and keep some sort of order / main topics of conversation?

[Scott]

Re: The META puzzles -would a chat be useful?

[Scribe]

I think this would be a great venture to embark upon... I always think the immediate feedback in chat opens up so many more "what if?" channels in the brain...

I'm wondering if a semi-structured approach would be good - like, moderate the (/a) room while a few pre-prepared bullet points about one metapuzzle are listed to set the scene, then open up discussion for a pre-determined (but flexible) time, then move on to the next metapuzzle in the same way... Once everything is listed, discussed and notes taken, then everyone might be in a good place to think more generally. This way you (hopefully) get a mix of focused discussion with "bigger view" perspectives too.

"Whenever" is good with me :) There seems to be some new thoughts floating around at the moment, so who knows - we might even have made some progress in a few weeks ;)

[Mikeyj]

Sounds great...probably needs gentle modding, so that things neither spiral out of control nor spoil the flow of creative juices. There's an awful lot of ground to cover! It's not apparent whether the the number strings and the dice etc. should be considered separately or as part of a single puzzle. Maybe there could be a final brainstorming session that considers the possibility of links or synthesizes what we know?

[rose]

I think that discussing the possible links between the meta puzzles is important too. I think the structure of doing a few points on a puzzle and then discussing those points as a group is worthwhile; we may have to play around a bit to see what structure works best at a given time.

I'm thinking we may end up having several chats to cover everything. ( which I think will be fun, we have a great creative group of people who have diverse talents, my first post makes this chat sound too dry and clinical. )


When is the best day/time for people? I am going to have much more time after next weekend which is Thanksgiving weekend here in the US. After that, I am very flexible about time.

Also, I am assuming that LHall is still interested in this chat - although I failed to ask her ahead of time, sorry! So we need a time convenient to her as well.

(One more thing - I notice on my copy of #250 the upside down numbers are in a larger font but I didn't see that noted in the wiki. Do any of the other cards have different size fonts used?)

[aliendial]

Just a suggestion - perhaps an agenda would be good -- at least the sequence for addressing open issues, if not specific times. A gentle agenda, so if nobody shows up for one issue you can be flexible, or you can move on if nobody has any thoughts, but at least everyone will have the same expectations about when each puzzle will be on the table. Perhaps even with a summary of each puzzle -- what we know of the problem -- so everybody who shows up will have that common denominator.

[rose]

Sure we can do an agenda. I can put that together over the weekend.

[rose]

Agenda

[Ashin]

Is there a specific date/time planned for this already?

[rose]

No date/time planned yet. I was waiting for suggestions, if no one has any preferences I will just pick a time that works well for me.

My problem is with time zones, I have such a hard time figuring out what works well - time zones just make no sense to me - is it possible to be dyslexic with time?

If a weekend is best I can do Sunday evening or a Friday evening early.

During the week, I can do Tuesday or Thursday evenings.

As I said, I am think we will need a series of chats.