We won! Ok, well we came in second place over all, first from CMU. Most importantly we beat the other AEPi teams, and we beat Aaron Tarnow's team by 36 seconds.

Ok, if you don't already know what I'm talking about, I'm refering to Puzzle Royale. It was a 12 hour long (noon to midnight) competition of puzzle solving. Unlike last year or the year before, this year was between 3 schools: CMU, University of Michigan, and University of Toronto.

Our team was Simon and the Chipmunks for which I was the captain for the 3rd year in a row. This year the team consisted of me, Linda, Dave Mason, and Dan Cartoon. We solved 13 of the 15 puzzles plus we solved the metapuzzle 2nd of anyone. We were beat by one team from the University of Michigan.

One of my personal objectives was beating the 3 teams I mentioned above which we did. Also I had wanted to beat all the other schools, particularly the Canadians. We beat all the Canadians and all of the UMich teams except for one of course. Finally a goal was for CMU to beat the other school. Overall we dominated but unfortunately they were fast to solve the metapuzzle.

The grand prize team received personal media centers. Being in first place, we won $75 gift certificates to Best Buy. It is a real shame to lose by only 3 minutes. Mostly because we could have been the heros that beat the other schools for CMU. But the optamistic way of looking at it would be that we were only 36 seconds from $50 gift certificates to Gullifties, the 2nd place prize. I don't feel bad beating that team by so close since they did a similar thing to us last year.

The day was very fun. I can't wait to do it again. Each year our team improves. First time we did ok, but not that many puzzles solve and no clue about the metapuzzle. Last year we got more puzzles, came in 6th, and were very close to getting the meta puzzle. This year we got the meta puzzle and solved all but 2 puzzles. One of the we would have likely got if we'd spent more time but after the metapuzzle it doesn't really mater. There's only one place to go from here. Hopefully we'll all still be around to do it next year. I don't know what I'll do after I graduate. Unfortunately I won't be at Microsoft, the one place I know you can do it after school.

We could analyze in hindsight things we might have done better, but there's no sense wondering what could have been. We can, however, use that info to prepare even better for next year. We started off one of the more prepared teams I can imagine and have already learned from past years and improved our preperation. I think a lot of new prep will come out of a reflection on this year.