FINISH

Once we had solved the matrix we went to the address indicated, where Game Control was managing the game from a private house. I wish I knew all of their names so that I could thank them publicly for a magnificent game, but I only know two names: David Andre and Martin Reinfried. They did post an email a week or so ago thanking the small army of people who helped them - I hope they'll post these acknowledgements on their web site as well.

GC had a very cool map on the wall that was tracking all the vans via their GPS transmitters, and they also had a huge whiteboard where they tracked the teams manually and made notes of when teams called them for help, etc.

Some GC's dock teams for making help calls, and others don't. Our team tries never to call for help until we've worked on a clue for at least an hour, then we always tell GC what we've done so far, and the ideas we have, so that they don't think we're just lazy and calling for a big fat hint. I think we called for help on six out of the 16 clues in this game (see our team log for details).

This GC told us that they were going to adjust finishing times based on help calls, and also on help that teams gave to GC - we had helped out on two clues so we knew we were going to be given some time. But we were pretty solidly in fifth place, and expected to stay there.

GC took a while to digest, analyze and publish all of the information they had gathered about the game, but on May 24th they finally came out with the official results. They also published a (very large) but fascinating Excel spreadsheet that showed all of the GPS tracking information they had gathered about each team.

So, to see all the gory details, click on reports and to see the GPS spreadsheet click on excel (warning - this will take a while to load, it's huge). You can also get to these from the menu by clicking on the buttons next to "GC Stats."

And notice - ahem - that Team Mystic Fish received the smallest time penalty of all of the teams!