April 20-23, 2001:  The 420 Game


Team Blood & Bones 420 Gamers
Left to Right:  Sanmit, Shaggy, Rich, Robert, Bob, Scott, Chris D., Mike
Not pictured:  Chris C.

Game Summary:
This was the first Game ever entered by Blood & Bones, and though we didn't do very well, we had a ton of fun and learned and improved a lot through the course of the game.  Not mentioned in the 420 game website results is that we actually finished first (not counting the spy team, who had to cheat at the game to beat us) in the Video Game competition to kick off the event, so we were actually in first place at the beginning, though it didn't last for very long...  Also, we had the idea to have a team of people stationed at the Biomotion Lab, called our "Ground Control", who we tried to stay in contact with throughout the game.  Their purpose was to help us out with web searches, navigation, and clue solving.  They turned out to be instrumental on the "Circle" clue, but otherwise it didn't really help that much and turned out to be pretty frustrating, especially for the Ground Control team. (Here is the log from Blood & Bones Ground Control, and here are the bookmarks they compiled for quick reference.)  This approach will probably not be used in the future...  All in all, we were pretty happy with our team debut, and are looking forward to participating again!

Team Logo
Team Members:  Rich Bragg (captain), Sanmit Basu, Chris Cheng, Robert Cheng, Chris Dyrby, Mike Holzbaur, Scott Krueger
Ground Control Team:  Kate Saul (captain), Maneesh Amancharla, James Auxier, Dana Carpenter, Ajit Chaudhari, Elaine Chen, Jim Maltese, Ian Munson, Rob Siston, Nathan Whiteside
Start Time:  Saturday, April 21, 10:00 AM
Finish Time:  Monday, April 23, 12:20 AM (38:20 hours elapsed, 45:27 adjusted hours elapsed)
Clues:  Solved 17 of 21 clues  (2 were skipped involuntarily due to time constraints, 1 we gave up on after 4 hours, and we skipped the last clue because we had simply had enough)
Awards:  Best Confirmation Call, Best Use for Tub of Fish Left at GC
Result14th out of 15 teams