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~~NOCACHE~~
====== 2002 Convention Reports ======
* [[globemail|The article by Local Troller]] from //The Globe and Mail//
* [[ottawacitizen|The article by Mazy]] from //The Ottawa Citizen//
===== Two Firsts =====
**by Kray**
For me, the most memorable events of this con were two firsts that I had the
good fortune to be part of. One was the Saturday night rendition of the singable
Beatles flats from the flat competition, with Trazom on the piano (and Uncanny’s
copy of the complete Beatles score) and about 25 Krewe answering my invitation to
sing along. I believe this marks the first time at a convention (or maybe anywhere?)
that a group of singable flats were "performed" as intended. Later, a few of
us tried some other flats from the past year’s Enigmas, including "Esperanto," "U. of
California," "Medina- Sidonia," "Ucaoimh- Ucaoimhu," and more. Trazom even
brought an original song for the occasion, a tune for his July 14 (no, not "La
Marseillaise"). Look for the CD in your local record store, and look for more
singing at [[:cons:2003:photos|IndyCon]].
The other was the premiere of the multi-player version of "[[:gamerules:1-2-3|One, Two, Three,]]"
dubbed "[[gamerules:1-2-many|One, Two, Many]]" by Codex. This came to life
Sunday night at a party hosted by my suite (me, D. Ness, and Tyger) for late- stayers.
(Deja vu: [[gamerules:pyramid|NPL Pyramid]] was also introduced at such a party,
that one at [[:cons:1999:photos|Contana in 1999]].)
The rules: two players begin by saying together "one, two, three" and then each
naming any object. The other players then try to think of a third object with
some association to the others. The first person to think of one says "one," the
second says "two," those two together say "three," then announce their objects.
If they match, the round ends, and if you’re scoring (which we weren’t) those
two get a point each. If not, then again everyone else tries to think of a third
object, and so on. The two players who matched get to start the next round.
We had a ball playing; look for this game in the chat room and/ or at your next
games party.
===== The Innocents Abroad: We Came, We Saw, We Concouvered =====
**by Codex and Cramerica**
Being relatively new Krewefolk, neither of us had ever been to a
Con before; and since we were solving partners who rarely got to see
each other in person, it made sense for us to room together. We both
made arrangements to arrive in Vancouver on Wednesday afternoon, the day
before the official start of the convention. Cramerica flew into
Vancouver; Codex, in the interest of complicating matters as much as
possible, flew to Seattle and took the cross-border bus.
This was our first con, so this report is going to run a few
"metres" over the top. Not to knock Vancouver, as it is a beautiful
city and home to many black squirrels, but we feel that the unstinting
pleasure of being with much of the NPL all at once could have been had
just about anywhere (even [[:cons:2001:photos|Newark]], we're told). The initial
con effect for us was that, gathered together in our t-shirts and nametags,
we Krewe were all inside a live issue of the Enigma. The activities of
the weekend, scheduled or otherwise, did little to dispel that effect.
Codex arrived at the hotel just in time to see the last couple
people in nom-tags, including The (rather flamboyant-haired) Foole,
boarding a big yellow bus. He barely had time to drop his bags off at
the concierge's desk and climb aboard for the trip to Witz' house. Once
on the bus, he managed to locate some people he knew, and was quickly
introduced both to a bunch of fellow Krewe and to the game of
[[gamerules:1-2-3|One, Two, Three]], (in which the players attempt
to simultaneously say the same word via converging word association), which
was to become a sort of recurrent theme in the coming days.
Witz has a lovely home for a party, and the party was an excellent
first introduction to the League as a bunch of actual people (as opposed
to bylines on puzzles). Codex used the excuse of not yet having picked
up his nom-tag to introduce himself to just about everybody around, and
entered into a conversation with Hot and Saxifrage that ranged from
current events to what might be lurking behind Witz' cyclopean cypress
hedge. Eventually, after scrumptious homemade pizza and a great many
more introductions, we all piled back on the bus to the hotel.
Cramerica had already arrived when Codex got back to the hotel. We
settled in, and then both headed up to the Hospitality Suite, where we
were introduced to the game of [[gamerules:Pyramid|Pyramid]], along with yet
another slew of Krewe. (It was during the course of this game that the two of
us really began to realize just how brilliantly twisted the Krewe are,
collectively: some of the //most// outrageous and improbable categories
were correctly guessed after only one or two clues.) Far too soon--meaning "later
than was reasonable"--Codex decided it was time to retire and get something
approximating a night's rest. The last for some time to come...
Thursday was a day for unscheduled activities until the official
start of the Con that evening. Codex joined a group that had decided to
visit Lynn Creek Park, with its suspension bridge that was somewhat less
daunting than the monster bridge at Capilano. By the time we convened on
Thursday morning there were almost a dozen of us, mostly Boston-area
Krewe with a few extras from hither (Codex) and yon (Artistry). We had a
good time exploring the park: enjoying the descents into the river
valley while loudly dreading the ascents we knew were coming, commenting
on the refreshingly blunt Canadian verbiage on the warning signs, and
once or twice running into Sue++ and Tyger, obviously more hardened
hikers than we, who tried to talk us into accompanying them on the much
longer trail we had ruled out earlier. Wimps that we were, we opted to
drag back to the hotel and collapse until dinnertime.
Not one, but two exquisitely written puzzle extravaganzas graced
the convention. The second one featured John Cusack (or was it Dart?) as
the nattily uniformed Mountie Neir. And there was a beautiful and
singable compilation of Beatles-themed flats. And scads of cryptics
and other pencilly puzzles. And several other scheduled competitions.
And a bunch of pre-written Jeopardy games. And more games. And
unforgettable conversations. And, indeed, no real reason to sleep.
Since this is meant to be a newbies'-eye view rather than a
full-blown Con report, we'll skip going into a lot of detail on the
extravaganzas, and stick with some impressions and thoughts that ran
through our heads as we played. Codex: "since I'm listed on the
Introductory Bingo card, I seem to be doing more talking than
searching...wow, I'm a terrible judge of how poorly eBayers spell...
Willz sounds just the same in person as he does on the radio...//sweet
mother of mercy//, these people are smart!"Cramerica: "I am such a
newbie; I submitted *normal* categories to the Pyramid game...Hey, I'm
in the same room with Manx!...//sweet mother of mercy//, a Cuneiform
cryptic?!"
Most of Friday was spent working on the various puzzles handed out
Thursday night or left in the Hospitality Suite to be picked up. Codex
joined a naturally-accreting conglomeration of solvers who gathered to
solve the running-around puzzle in Stanley Park; the group ended up
being so many (Ai, Sanit, Zebraboy, Codex, Hot, Xemu, Jangler, Kegler
and Saxifrage) that we split into two groups, but then proceeded to
solve simultaneously. By the time we got about halfway through, the
groups were mixing and eventually just sort of melded together again.
Many games were played or even developed on the spur of the moment.
For Cramerica, the crowning glory of this type of activity was a group
elaboration of the two-player game [[gamerules:1-2-3|One, Two, Three]].
The group effort, dubbed by Codex [[gamerules:1-2-Many|One, Two, Many]],
called for a different pair of people in the room to perform every next
step of the association. For example, after players 1 and 2 had shouted out
"macro" and "mouse" simultaneously, players 12 and 6 converged on "rat." Laborious
explanation aside, the two hours or so of this game was pretty much the
most transcendent mass-mind experience we've ever had. About 15 sharp
people, all absorbing the convergence of the same topic at the same
time... and then two are ready, like stimulated neurons, to fire at once.
A lot of the best memories from our first Con are really you-had-to-be-there
type moments, that may not hold up all that well to recounting after the fact --
but we'll give it a shot anyway. There were the breakfasts, with some of the
more motley assortments of people ever to gather around a plate of eggs and
discuss Canadian TV game shows.
There was the hilarious lunchtime tag-team reading of an excruciatingly bad children's
book, titled "The Muddle-Headed Wombat Is Very Bad." We read aloud from this story,
wherein the eponymous marsupial (who looked something like Joey Buttafuoco) is subjected
to a number of seemingly unedited misadventures. When a reader started to laugh or
otherwise lose it, he or she had to pass the book to the next reader. A couple of the
show-stoppers: "It was so comfortable that Tabby and Wombat almost longed for a flood."
"Mouse: The only thing we have here to do is 'you know what'. Even Wombat knew what
'you know what' was." For those justifiably concerned for Wombat, 'you know what' was the
act of putting together a jigsaw puzzle.
There was the flat competition, which left Codex feeling particularly drained and a
little bit stupid; it turns out that speed-solving is a *lot* different from leisure
solving. Both of us ended up placing quite respectably in the overall results from the
competition; Codex attributes his standing primarily to the fact that he
was partnered with Saxifrage, who gets the lion's share of the credit.
Cramerica gives a similar nod to Tahnan, who aside from being a solving maniac, appears to
have memorized every Beatles song.
There were the two parallel dinner conversations that converged fortuitously... Martini
purists and elk lovers beware. We had chatted about exotic meats, such as elk, and exotic
martinis, including the chocolate martini. So when the dessert's chocolate sauce arrived,
it was naturally suspected to be elk sauce. No, someone said, it's I Can't Believe It's
Not Wapiti(TM). So in a martini, the sauce would make a Wapitini! (The Wapitini later
stood the two of us in good stead when we were playing One-two-many again.) Then things
got weird. Someone pointed out that a cocktail frank in a martini would be a teeny-weeny-weenie-tini.
But the kicker was Spelvin's--a similar martini made for Caesar--the teeny-weeny-veni-vidi-vici-weenie-tini.
And there was the winding-down period after Con ended: hanging out with the late-stayers,
starting to call people Dan and Lance in an attempt to shift back into everyday mode,
stopping at Mondo Gelato for just one more scoop, and eventually heading for the bus back
across the border and a plane back home. As Delta flight #304 taxied toward takeoff
at Sea-Tac, Codex' seatmate noticed him working the Sky Magazine crossword--more out of
reflex than by design--and said she'd never seen anyone do a crossword that fast. You have
no idea, lady. You have no idea.
===== Other Resources =====
~~PAGEINDEX~~
**For Members**
~~PAGEINDEX=secure:cons:2002~~