Apprentice: Zorg East Bay, 15 April 2006

Gold had so much fun together in the Mooncurser's Handbook game that we reunited for Apprentice: Zorg, a "Fifth Element"-themed one-day event that was a great deal of fun. Our squad had Gold members David Andre, Brent Holman, Reading Maley, Scott Pegg, and me, and we added Kenny Young from Seattle (and Mooncursers GC), who had first introduced me to the Game eight years ago.

We began at the Albany Bulb, spent much of the morning on or near the Berkeley campus, went east to Walnut Creek, and finished late night back in Berkeley. The clues were nicely tailored to the theme, and quite creative, and amazingly, all the work of one person, Ian Tullis, who really put together a great event with his Taft on a Raft teammates.

Notable clues/activities:

  • Nicely structured entry procedure, with homages to previous Games
  • A great prepuzzle, partially written by each team, that led to the starting location
  • Gelato at Gelateria Naia, one of my favorite places for dessert
  • A terrific blocks-based puzzle, with blocks accumulated both in downtown Berkeley and on campus ...
  • ... with the last block earned by playing Twenty Questions on Sproul Plaza without being able to use any words of more than four letters (so actually, "the game of ten and ten"). Really tough to do (try it!) but we got a lot better as the questions went on, and the GC rep was really impressive.
  • Accumulate elements of 90% purity whose atomic numbers add to 125. Thanks to Dad for some of the suggestions; we ended up with aluminum (foil), zinc (galvanized bolt), and lead (fishing weights).
  • Q-Zar laser tag. Snakes on a Plane got shot a lot and clearly has no natural laser-tagging ability.
  • We learned that borax plus Elmer's glue yields silly putty! Also we learned that borax is non-toxic, a good thing since most teams tasted it one way or another.

Snakes on a Plane received the top score overall and was the only team to see all 21 puzzles. Taft's in the process of writing up their postgame summary.

Other commenters: [ Larry Hosken | Peter Sarrett | Jesse Morris | Jan Chong | Irwin Dolobowsky ]

John Owens | Game Home Page | Last updated .