2019: The Year of the Xenops
(Check out some photos!)
It's out tenth year of Puzzlepalooza, and to celebrate, we are going to the zoo! A mad scientist is turning all the zoo's birds to xenopses (look it up), and its up to you to stop him!
Sixteen crack teams of Puzzlers took up the challenge of solving a set of eighteen puzzles at Blair during the first three days of puzzling On the final day, the teams journied to the zoo and used the answers they figured out in a day of puzzles, physical challenges, and general zaniness.
Which lead to this year's winner (and Iron Puzzlers)! Congratulations go out to The In-vesti-gators, lead by team captain Jonah Nan, and joined by teammates Nicholas Beaupre, Lilianne Blaise, Bennett Coukos-Wiley, Helen Do, Priya Dohlman, Lintaro Donovan, June Lee, Young Bin Lee, Zoe McIntosh, Kilian Morsli, Sneha Ojha, Hope Reynolds, Catherine Rodriguez, Aerin Rost-Nasshan, Rebecca Wessel, and Oreet Zimand.
As with other years, the Puzzle Lords would like to share one of the puzzles from the contest.
The final scores? Here they are:
[click to enlarge]
Of course, winning is nice, but there is nothing quite like winning Puzzlepalooza's Coveted Spirit Award. This year the battle for the Coveted Spirit Award was particularly hard-fought, but in the end it went to The Xoo Keepers:
And yes, the Curse of the First Day struck again this year...no team who has lead Puzzlepalooza on the first day has gone on to win it. This year's victum of the Curse was The Fat Thor Acceptance Movement. However, they were able to at least molify their disappointment by winning both the First Losers Prize.
Finally, as always, the Puzzle Lords would like to acknowledge all the alumni and parental volunteers who came out to help use keep things working smoothly and efficently...we couldn't have done it without you!
And remember, Puzzlepalooza 2020 is only seconds away!