WEBVTT - Midnight Madness: Ryan Patch and Jon Seale 0:00:02.680 --> 0:00:07.200 Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio news. 0:00:08.039 --> 0:00:09.360 I feel like it's going to be weird to do 0:00:09.400 --> 0:00:14.040 an entro, but like it's the Money Stuff podcast. We're 0:00:14.040 --> 0:00:17.080 here today with I think our second episode with a guest. 0:00:17.280 --> 0:00:19.520 Yes, two guests, Our second and third guests. 0:00:19.600 --> 0:00:22.720 Second and third guests. They are Ryan Patch and John 0:00:22.800 --> 0:00:28.520 Seal of the Great Gotham Challenge, two creators of puzzle hunts. Welcome. 0:00:28.960 --> 0:00:31.480 That's about all you need to say. We make puzzle hunts. 0:00:35.880 --> 0:00:39.680 We got in touch because I am a degenerate puzzle 0:00:39.720 --> 0:00:44.800 hunter in my way, and Ryan and John are taking 0:00:44.840 --> 0:00:48.440 over or sort of have taken over the big financial 0:00:48.440 --> 0:00:51.159 industry puzzle hunt that I have done occasionally, which is 0:00:51.320 --> 0:00:55.120 sometimes called Compass but is mostly called Midnight Madness and 0:00:55.240 --> 0:01:00.560 runs overnight this year in October. So welcome and Ryan, 0:01:00.680 --> 0:01:01.040 thank you. 0:01:01.080 --> 0:01:01.840 Happy to be here. 0:01:02.040 --> 0:01:04.319 Coming soon to New York City street near you. 0:01:05.360 --> 0:01:10.199 This is a podcast probably about money stuff related to money. 0:01:10.680 --> 0:01:11.800 That's what we build it as. 0:01:12.120 --> 0:01:13.880 It's not always true, but that's kind of what we say. 0:01:14.200 --> 0:01:17.080 And it has a listenership that includes a lot of 0:01:17.120 --> 0:01:21.640 financial industry and tech industry people, and the overlap of 0:01:21.680 --> 0:01:24.960 that audience with people who do puzzle hunts is meaningful, 0:01:25.280 --> 0:01:28.400 but it's not perfect by any stretch of the imagination. 0:01:28.920 --> 0:01:31.480 And so I kind of want to explain what a 0:01:31.480 --> 0:01:34.800 puzzle hunt is. And I feel like you guys might 0:01:34.840 --> 0:01:37.240 say that you're something other than puzzle hunt guys exactly, 0:01:37.280 --> 0:01:39.320 But I really want to explain what puzzles are. So 0:01:40.080 --> 0:01:41.679 can I prompt you with that? 0:01:42.760 --> 0:01:47.559 I think sometime in the nineties, maybe before the Mit 0:01:47.720 --> 0:01:50.920 mystery un started, I get the sense that that was 0:01:51.040 --> 0:01:54.280 the beginning of the industry that we are weirdly a 0:01:54.320 --> 0:01:57.480 part of, largely by accident, I would say, because when 0:01:57.560 --> 0:02:00.920 Ryan and I decided to start sinning puzzle hunts, we 0:02:00.920 --> 0:02:03.400 weren't aware of any of the existing ones. We thought 0:02:03.400 --> 0:02:05.880 we were making something that no one had ever heard 0:02:05.920 --> 0:02:10.000 of before. A puzzle hunt in definition doesn't have to 0:02:10.040 --> 0:02:12.520 be location based, but in our case, and in many cases, 0:02:12.880 --> 0:02:16.400 it's a location based hunt in which people travel from 0:02:16.400 --> 0:02:20.000 place to place solve a complex puzzle. And by puzzle, 0:02:20.040 --> 0:02:22.880 I don't mean jigsaw puzzle, but they receive a series 0:02:22.919 --> 0:02:25.840 of clues and pieces of information that have to be 0:02:25.919 --> 0:02:30.840 combined in some way and thought of laterally in order 0:02:30.919 --> 0:02:35.200 to yield a solution. And that solution will often take 0:02:35.240 --> 0:02:38.079 them to a new place and they'll kind of repeat 0:02:38.120 --> 0:02:41.560 that process. Maybe people are familiar with the Amazing Race, 0:02:42.320 --> 0:02:46.080 combining elements of something like the Amazing Race with elements 0:02:46.120 --> 0:02:50.880 of an escape room and all into a competition in 0:02:50.880 --> 0:02:54.800 which people are competing against each other most of the 0:02:54.800 --> 0:02:58.560 time in small teams to prove their metal and arrive 0:02:58.760 --> 0:03:01.480 at the end first or with the highest standing that 0:03:01.480 --> 0:03:01.799 they can. 0:03:02.360 --> 0:03:04.800 I became aware of puzzle hunts before I became aware 0:03:04.800 --> 0:03:07.080 of escape rooms, And I don't know if that's like 0:03:07.800 --> 0:03:10.480 the actual chronology in the world where like people and. 0:03:10.960 --> 0:03:13.760 My experience, Yeah, well, puzzle. 0:03:13.560 --> 0:03:14.800 Hunts are pretty niche, but. 0:03:14.880 --> 0:03:17.000 The escape rooms came after puzzle hunts. 0:03:17.120 --> 0:03:18.520 Yeah, that's why I was like that they sort of 0:03:18.520 --> 0:03:20.120 grew out of the puzzle hunt idea and like you 0:03:20.160 --> 0:03:22.239 could put an escape room in a place and sell 0:03:22.280 --> 0:03:24.160 it to people every day rather than do it once 0:03:24.160 --> 0:03:24.480 a year. 0:03:24.720 --> 0:03:27.840 And the escape rooms are definitely a little more consumer oriented, 0:03:27.919 --> 0:03:31.000 whereas a puzzle hunt you have to be a certain 0:03:31.560 --> 0:03:34.520 glutton for punishment or at least intellectual stimula. You know, 0:03:34.920 --> 0:03:36.480 escape rooms are great because you know, at the end 0:03:36.480 --> 0:03:38.920 of sixty minutes you're done whereas a puzzle hunt, if 0:03:38.960 --> 0:03:42.640 you fail, you're floundering in the middle of some urban 0:03:42.720 --> 0:03:44.320 landscape trying to figure out where to go. 0:03:44.320 --> 0:03:46.280 Next at three am. Often. 0:03:46.560 --> 0:03:48.520 But you know, what I would say is that I 0:03:48.560 --> 0:03:53.080 think escape rooms and puzzle hunts share an origin story 0:03:53.200 --> 0:03:56.080 I would guess, which is that it's people saying, what 0:03:56.160 --> 0:03:58.160 if we could be in a video game in real life. 0:03:58.440 --> 0:04:01.160 So it's kind of taking this idea of a quest 0:04:01.440 --> 0:04:05.000 and something to be solved and creating a real life 0:04:05.080 --> 0:04:06.840 experience around that, right. 0:04:07.160 --> 0:04:07.360 Yeah. 0:04:07.760 --> 0:04:11.160 What differentiates a puzzle hunt from a scavenger hunt or 0:04:11.280 --> 0:04:12.920 is that just a meaningless distinction? 0:04:13.680 --> 0:04:16.360 Is the puzzles absolutely you get. 0:04:16.279 --> 0:04:19.280 Clues and you have to think critically, and scavenger hunts. 0:04:19.040 --> 0:04:21.560 There's definitely a blurry line between the two. But I 0:04:21.600 --> 0:04:24.680 think that the puzzle hunts are often once you arrive 0:04:24.720 --> 0:04:27.960 at a location, you're not just there to find something. 0:04:28.360 --> 0:04:32.040 You're there to solve a complex situation. And there's pen 0:04:32.120 --> 0:04:34.800 and paper puzzle hunts where you just like go to 0:04:34.839 --> 0:04:37.040 a location and you're given a few pieces of paper 0:04:37.400 --> 0:04:41.440 and they're all kind of these very crossworthy or language 0:04:41.480 --> 0:04:45.159 based or math based puzzles that you wind up solving 0:04:45.200 --> 0:04:48.320 and then they result to a keyword or often the 0:04:48.640 --> 0:04:50.080 next location that you're going to, and then you go 0:04:50.120 --> 0:04:51.719 to the next location, you get handed in another set 0:04:51.720 --> 0:04:54.799 of papers, so there's always some very specific activity. Now, 0:04:55.279 --> 0:04:57.480 we came kind of this from more the immersion angle. 0:04:57.560 --> 0:05:00.520 We kind of asked ourselves the question to look like 0:05:00.600 --> 0:05:03.320 if people felt like they were in a movie, and 0:05:03.400 --> 0:05:07.760 then we started creating these quests and then we realized, well, 0:05:07.880 --> 0:05:10.600 to kind of unlock the door that kind of lets 0:05:10.600 --> 0:05:12.200 you into the next thing, there needs to be a puzzle. 0:05:12.520 --> 0:05:14.520 And so we kind of came at it from a 0:05:14.520 --> 0:05:17.640 little more of an angle saying, well, we need to 0:05:17.720 --> 0:05:19.520 have a key for that door, we need to have 0:05:19.560 --> 0:05:23.080 a password for that door, and started slowly integrating puzzles. 0:05:23.080 --> 0:05:25.200 So we kind of backed into the puzzle hunt community 0:05:25.320 --> 0:05:28.599 from more of like an immersive angle, whereas the puzzle 0:05:28.680 --> 0:05:31.159 hunt community has then kind of been pulled a little 0:05:31.320 --> 0:05:35.360 more into the immersive community through escape rooms, through immersive theater. 0:05:36.080 --> 0:05:38.160 And then you have, yeah, the scavenger hunt community, which 0:05:38.240 --> 0:05:42.960 is kind of geocaching adjacent and just making hunts for 0:05:43.000 --> 0:05:46.360 your ten year old kids adjacent, and scavenger Hunt the 0:05:46.400 --> 0:05:48.800 worst version of a scavenger hunt is like take pictures 0:05:48.839 --> 0:05:51.240 of five out of state license plates, or like you know, 0:05:51.360 --> 0:05:53.400 get a photo of a person with a beard, and 0:05:53.560 --> 0:05:56.240 is kind of our guiding light that we move away from. 0:05:56.440 --> 0:06:00.640 We draw a distinction in our world between puzzles and tasks, 0:06:01.200 --> 0:06:04.960 and a puzzle is it requires some sort of lateral thinking, 0:06:05.560 --> 0:06:07.800 and a task is just an action that you complete. 0:06:07.839 --> 0:06:09.680 So I think a lot of scavenger hunts are task 0:06:09.720 --> 0:06:13.560 based versus a puzzle requires you to use your brain 0:06:13.600 --> 0:06:15.040 in a different way. 0:06:15.120 --> 0:06:17.720 Do you have like a classic puzzle or like a 0:06:17.760 --> 0:06:21.120 form of puzzle, or a way to describe more concretely 0:06:21.680 --> 0:06:24.520 what the puzzles and puzzle hunts are, because like to 0:06:24.560 --> 0:06:26.400 me and I have not I don't think done your 0:06:26.520 --> 0:06:29.560 challenges that I think I did Midnight Matter Compass that 0:06:29.680 --> 0:06:33.240 might have been partly your doing. And I have a sense, 0:06:34.200 --> 0:06:37.400 like an inarticulate sense of what puzzle hunt puzzles feel 0:06:37.440 --> 0:06:39.160 like you know, I've done I don't know, four or 0:06:39.160 --> 0:06:41.280 five puzzle hunts and an escape room or two. But like, 0:06:41.640 --> 0:06:44.080 how do you think about puzzles? And like what is 0:06:44.120 --> 0:06:47.000 a puzzle? And like what kinds of things are puzzles? 0:06:47.400 --> 0:06:49.479 Could you give a puzzle that we can talk about 0:06:49.480 --> 0:06:50.160 on a podcast. 0:06:51.000 --> 0:06:54.160 Sure, I think every puzzle hunt has its own tradition 0:06:54.240 --> 0:06:57.919 of how it defines a puzzle. And Ryan and I 0:06:57.960 --> 0:07:00.760 are the first people to be in charge of the 0:07:00.800 --> 0:07:04.120 Midnight Madness tradition, kind of coming from the outside, not 0:07:04.240 --> 0:07:07.920 having played and not being from the finance industry. So 0:07:08.000 --> 0:07:10.040 we had to do our homework and spend a lot 0:07:10.040 --> 0:07:12.800 of time learning what's a puzzle by the definition of 0:07:13.480 --> 0:07:17.920 Midnight Madness. And one thing that we identified is each 0:07:17.960 --> 0:07:22.560 one should involve a logical leap, so there's typically a 0:07:22.600 --> 0:07:28.080 mental connection that you make between two different types of information. 0:07:28.240 --> 0:07:31.360 So an example of a puzzle that I think is 0:07:31.360 --> 0:07:33.400 a good illustration of this from an event that we 0:07:33.440 --> 0:07:36.000 did a few years ago, was designed by our friend 0:07:36.080 --> 0:07:38.920 Josh Dabner, and it's a puzzle in which you receive 0:07:38.960 --> 0:07:42.680 a rap sheet that looks like a police description of 0:07:42.760 --> 0:07:46.120 several perpetrators of criminals, and each one has a description 0:07:46.680 --> 0:07:50.720 and then picture of what looks like a fingerprint for 0:07:50.760 --> 0:07:54.720 each one, but you use clues in the descriptions, and 0:07:54.760 --> 0:07:58.360 you use clues of what the visual of the fingerprint 0:07:58.440 --> 0:08:01.400 looks like to act you make a connection that you're 0:08:01.400 --> 0:08:06.400 not looking at fingerprints, You're looking at topographical maps of mountains, 0:08:06.800 --> 0:08:10.600 and each one you discover as you kind of read 0:08:10.640 --> 0:08:13.520 through the text and look for words that might seem 0:08:13.560 --> 0:08:16.880 out of place and kind of evidence that the descriptions 0:08:16.880 --> 0:08:19.880 are not quite fitting well to like how a policeman 0:08:20.560 --> 0:08:24.120 might describe a criminal. To recognize that each of the 0:08:24.160 --> 0:08:28.360 seven is representing the seven highest peaks on each continent. 0:08:28.840 --> 0:08:32.600 And so then you use that information to go back 0:08:32.640 --> 0:08:36.560 to the first descriptions, and in there you work with 0:08:36.679 --> 0:08:39.960 the information. You have to yield a final solution, which 0:08:40.000 --> 0:08:42.480 is a key word. But in order to do that, 0:08:42.520 --> 0:08:45.040 you have to be able to make this mental leap 0:08:45.240 --> 0:08:48.960 and recognize that one thing is actually representing another. 0:08:49.480 --> 0:08:52.160 How do you make them difficult without being infuriating? Because 0:08:52.200 --> 0:08:56.280 this is something different. But Bloomberg has a weekly quiz quiz. 0:08:56.280 --> 0:08:59.400 Go Matt, you've played it, you've written. I used to 0:08:59.440 --> 0:09:02.320 be the cure of the quiz, and one of the 0:09:02.679 --> 0:09:05.360 metrics on which I judged myself was by how many 0:09:05.400 --> 0:09:08.240 people who started the quiz completed the quiz. And there 0:09:08.320 --> 0:09:10.720 was like this fine balance I had to find between 0:09:10.720 --> 0:09:14.079 making it challenging but not making it annoying. So how 0:09:14.080 --> 0:09:16.760 do you find that balance when you're putting together puzzles 0:09:16.760 --> 0:09:19.160 and make sure that people basically don't rage quit. 0:09:19.360 --> 0:09:22.480 Yes, you're our sister in pain, I see. 0:09:22.880 --> 0:09:26.000 I think that's the number one skill of a good 0:09:26.040 --> 0:09:29.200 puzzle creator. I think that right there is the magic 0:09:29.320 --> 0:09:32.920 sauce is figuring out something that's just hard enough that 0:09:33.160 --> 0:09:36.120 makes people really feel like they've gone on a journey 0:09:36.200 --> 0:09:38.559 and they were just about to quit, but then they 0:09:38.679 --> 0:09:42.439 had that spark of inspiration that turned it all around 0:09:42.520 --> 0:09:44.480 for them, and then everything fell into place. And then 0:09:44.520 --> 0:09:46.480 looking back on it, it's like, of course that was 0:09:46.520 --> 0:09:49.160 the answer. It could never have not been that answer, 0:09:49.320 --> 0:09:52.480 and bringing people on that journey and allowing them to 0:09:52.520 --> 0:09:54.720 go on that journey themselves, and then by the end 0:09:54.760 --> 0:09:57.280 of it having that I heard it recently described as 0:09:57.400 --> 0:09:59.959 I think secondhand fun or second degree fun, where it's 0:10:00.240 --> 0:10:02.480 it sucked in the moment, but when you look back 0:10:02.559 --> 0:10:05.200 on it, it's a pleasureful thing. And so creating that 0:10:05.360 --> 0:10:07.920 moment it's very difficult, and we've struggled with it. And 0:10:08.360 --> 0:10:10.680 you know, we created the Great Gotham Challenge. I created 0:10:10.720 --> 0:10:13.080 the first one by myself. John was a participant, This 0:10:13.120 --> 0:10:15.800 is how we started working together, and no one finished it. 0:10:15.880 --> 0:10:18.600 Everyone raged quick. It was in two thousand and nine. 0:10:19.080 --> 0:10:21.800 The stock market had crashed. I just graduated college and 0:10:21.840 --> 0:10:24.400 couldn't get a job, and so me and another friend 0:10:24.440 --> 0:10:26.880 created this and it was supposed to be like a 0:10:26.880 --> 0:10:29.760 four hour thing. Everyone just texted us after our four 0:10:29.800 --> 0:10:32.040 and it like I am a quarter of the way through, 0:10:32.120 --> 0:10:33.640 Please put a bullet in my head. And so it's 0:10:33.640 --> 0:10:35.600 just like, okay, come to the finish line. But anyways, 0:10:35.640 --> 0:10:38.120 we've gotten better. We've been doing this for about eleven years. 0:10:38.160 --> 0:10:40.440 And a lot of it is play testing, Like we 0:10:40.520 --> 0:10:42.520 have a community of people. They just play test our 0:10:42.559 --> 0:10:45.760 puzzles and they time themselves and we make sure we 0:10:45.840 --> 0:10:48.599 know how long a puzzle should take and what the 0:10:48.720 --> 0:10:51.760 right deviation is. And it's also a lot of argument, 0:10:51.840 --> 0:10:54.000 like we've just got a people that we really trust 0:10:54.080 --> 0:10:55.760 and who have done a lot of these things, and 0:10:55.880 --> 0:10:57.960 someone says this is way too hard, this is way 0:10:58.000 --> 0:11:00.080 too easy, and we just go twelve rounds until we 0:11:00.120 --> 0:11:03.080 find something that we all agree on and we trust 0:11:03.080 --> 0:11:06.000 each other. So part of it's not working in a vacuum, 0:11:06.000 --> 0:11:07.400 and part of it's just a lot of experience and 0:11:07.520 --> 0:11:10.800 part of its playtesting. John and I are creative by nature, 0:11:10.840 --> 0:11:13.400 and we brought in an operations person to help run 0:11:13.440 --> 0:11:16.800 our company named Teresa, who's brilliant and has saved our 0:11:16.800 --> 0:11:20.160 company many times. But one of the things she instigated 0:11:20.280 --> 0:11:24.160 is no, we play test things. We play test things thoroughly. 0:11:24.600 --> 0:11:26.360 I think another part of the answer to Katie's question 0:11:26.520 --> 0:11:28.880 is is when I've done puzzle hunts, there's some sort 0:11:28.920 --> 0:11:33.280 of like hint mechanism where you can, like without fully 0:11:33.320 --> 0:11:35.080 giving up, you can give up a little and get 0:11:35.080 --> 0:11:37.200 some sort of help like can you talking about how 0:11:37.200 --> 0:11:38.040 do you think about that? 0:11:39.040 --> 0:11:42.320 Yeah, And it's interesting because we've seen this done different ways, 0:11:42.440 --> 0:11:45.840 and in the Midnight Madness puzzle hunt that we stage 0:11:45.920 --> 0:11:49.280 every other year for the finance industry, there's kind of 0:11:49.280 --> 0:11:55.160 a bespoke, personalized what's called game controller who meters out hints. 0:11:55.600 --> 0:11:57.920 It's like your personal tormentor. 0:11:57.880 --> 0:12:01.200 Right right exactly. And this is something very unique about 0:12:01.240 --> 0:12:04.440 the Wall Street Vibe is that the game controllers are 0:12:04.640 --> 0:12:08.400 known to be a little malicious and a little kount 0:12:08.440 --> 0:12:10.839 of Because we've been kind of apprenticing with the current 0:12:10.880 --> 0:12:13.800 creators for the last four years and we've taken it 0:12:13.840 --> 0:12:16.480 over this year, and so we've watched them and tried 0:12:16.480 --> 0:12:18.880 to learn, and we've been like, this seems weird, this 0:12:18.960 --> 0:12:22.080 seems mean, and they're like, oh no, it's what people want, 0:12:22.280 --> 0:12:25.360 Like it's the it's what the players want. That's done 0:12:25.360 --> 0:12:29.160 in a very like bespoke, handcrafted concierge way, both the 0:12:29.240 --> 0:12:32.920 hinting and the tormenting, Whereas like on our Great Gotham 0:12:33.000 --> 0:12:35.839 Challenge branded puzzle hunts that we do, there's kind of 0:12:36.000 --> 0:12:39.360 a unified, pre canned hint system that you know, when 0:12:39.360 --> 0:12:41.560 you feel like you're at a dead end, you can 0:12:41.600 --> 0:12:44.000 take a hint and there's a certain time penalty, and 0:12:44.360 --> 0:12:48.400 we've introduced a fun gamified mechanic where the longer you're 0:12:48.400 --> 0:12:52.080 on a puzzle, the less penalty time you get. And so, yeah, 0:12:52.120 --> 0:12:53.880 there absolutely needs to be a hint system, and that's 0:12:53.920 --> 0:12:57.079 absolutely a way that you keep people within the same universe. 0:12:57.080 --> 0:13:00.360 If there was no hint system, then you'd see devations 0:13:00.400 --> 0:13:02.240 of two hundred percent on times. 0:13:02.640 --> 0:13:05.120 My experience of like Compass or Midnight Matis is like 0:13:05.320 --> 0:13:08.280 if you're like getting on the subway to go to 0:13:08.360 --> 0:13:11.040 the wrong burrow, your game control will be like hold 0:13:11.120 --> 0:13:14.000 on right, Yeah, there's some amount of like, don't do 0:13:14.080 --> 0:13:16.080 something really stupid, and. 0:13:16.000 --> 0:13:18.439 That's the Yeah, that's that's the designer's job is to, yeah, 0:13:18.480 --> 0:13:22.720 figuring out how to let people fail enough that they 0:13:22.760 --> 0:13:25.160 go through those peaks and valleys of emotions, but not 0:13:25.280 --> 0:13:27.959 letting them fail so much that they're just destroyed. 0:13:28.920 --> 0:13:31.000 Yeah. You want to feel like you can fail so 0:13:31.040 --> 0:13:33.000 that when you succeed, you feel good about it. 0:13:33.200 --> 0:13:33.520 Right. 0:13:48.840 --> 0:13:52.720 Can we talk about Midnight madnas. I've written about having 0:13:52.800 --> 0:13:56.920 done one or two Compass on Switch. My understanding is 0:13:56.920 --> 0:14:02.160 that like at some point a kind of Goldman Sachs 0:14:02.200 --> 0:14:05.960 affiliated group of Wall Street people started a Midnight Madness 0:14:06.000 --> 0:14:09.800 puzzle hunt, possibly named after a movie of the same name, 0:14:10.280 --> 0:14:13.480 and it was called Midnight Madness because it started I 0:14:13.520 --> 0:14:16.680 don't know four pm and went until two pm the 0:14:16.720 --> 0:14:17.240 next day. 0:14:17.520 --> 0:14:20.400 Everything you've heard is correct, yes, yeah. 0:14:20.080 --> 0:14:23.000 And it was run by I think Alicia we wasel 0:14:23.200 --> 0:14:27.800 at Goldman and then it became so overwhelming that my 0:14:27.880 --> 0:14:30.280 understanding was like the winners got to run it the 0:14:30.320 --> 0:14:33.240 next time, and I know, like Colin Tykel ran it 0:14:33.240 --> 0:14:36.360 for a while, and that is like, in my understanding, 0:14:36.400 --> 0:14:38.640 the premiere like Wall Street Puzzle Hunt and all of 0:14:38.680 --> 0:14:41.400 the teams are like eight Goldman teams and six Chain 0:14:41.440 --> 0:14:43.800 Street teams. Is that basically correct? 0:14:44.160 --> 0:14:47.760 Most of that's correct. Alisha designed it for I think 0:14:48.000 --> 0:14:51.360 maybe a decade or a little less, and at some 0:14:51.440 --> 0:14:53.880 point I think he decided it was too much for 0:14:53.920 --> 0:14:57.120 him to continue and just decided, I can't keep doing this. 0:14:57.160 --> 0:14:59.440 I need to quit. And the team that won the 0:14:59.520 --> 0:15:03.400 year that he called his final year decided that they 0:15:03.440 --> 0:15:06.280 loved the game too much to let it die, so 0:15:06.360 --> 0:15:09.880 they said, we'll take over. We'll put it under a 0:15:09.880 --> 0:15:12.680 different name so that people recognize that it's under new management. 0:15:13.160 --> 0:15:16.280 They ran it for several years, and then they decided, 0:15:16.800 --> 0:15:20.400 we can't keep doing this. It's destroying our lives and 0:15:20.480 --> 0:15:22.280 our relationships because. 0:15:22.080 --> 0:15:25.120 All of these people have like real jobs in the 0:15:25.160 --> 0:15:30.240 financial industry and also extracurricularly designed these insane all night 0:15:30.280 --> 0:15:31.239 puzzle hunts. 0:15:31.040 --> 0:15:32.680 As opposed to us who have fake jobs in the 0:15:32.720 --> 0:15:35.320 financial industry. Yes, that's correct. Now we have real jobs 0:15:35.320 --> 0:15:35.960 in puzzle hunts. 0:15:36.040 --> 0:15:38.560 Yeah, exactly, So this is your job, it's not their job. 0:15:38.680 --> 0:15:41.280 Is a little more sustainable for us, but yes, like, 0:15:41.280 --> 0:15:44.040 I don't know how they could possibly do it, because 0:15:44.400 --> 0:15:47.360 this is my full time job. It already is so 0:15:47.560 --> 0:15:50.200 hard for me. I can't imagine working at a hedge 0:15:50.200 --> 0:15:52.480 fund while simultaneously doing this. 0:15:53.560 --> 0:15:56.960 So you guys are professional puzzle hunt makers and they 0:15:56.960 --> 0:15:59.400 are professional headsphund matters. As you look at their work, 0:15:59.400 --> 0:16:01.480 what do you think were they good at it? If 0:16:01.480 --> 0:16:03.240 you have like the regular puzzle HNK community and then 0:16:03.240 --> 0:16:05.120 you have like the headshund guys, is there a different 0:16:05.160 --> 0:16:06.320 style or mindset. 0:16:06.760 --> 0:16:09.760 Yeah, that's something that Ryan and I were just discussing. Actually, 0:16:09.960 --> 0:16:11.920 there are things that are unique to it. There are 0:16:12.000 --> 0:16:15.040 ways that maybe we look at things a bit differently. 0:16:15.200 --> 0:16:19.320 For instance, talking about hints, Ryan and I, as puzzle 0:16:19.320 --> 0:16:22.000 of designers, we kind of believe that a really well 0:16:22.000 --> 0:16:26.400 designed puzzle should be able to be completed by a 0:16:26.440 --> 0:16:29.720 good puzzler without needing to be hinted in any way, 0:16:30.040 --> 0:16:33.400 Whereas I think they're coming from a world in which 0:16:33.720 --> 0:16:35.840 they feel like if it's not hard enough to require 0:16:35.880 --> 0:16:38.480 someone to take hints, then it's not hard enough. So 0:16:38.560 --> 0:16:41.160 that's been an adjustment I think for us to kind 0:16:41.160 --> 0:16:42.520 of recognize. 0:16:42.400 --> 0:16:45.600 We're a little more bread crumb, that leap of logic 0:16:45.840 --> 0:16:47.280 in a way that like at the end of a 0:16:47.280 --> 0:16:49.480 good murder mystery, you look back and you're like, oh, 0:16:49.640 --> 0:16:52.040 the hints were always there that it was the butler, 0:16:52.440 --> 0:16:55.120 and so we're a little more on that end versus Yeah, 0:16:55.200 --> 0:16:57.480 they're more like, you have to make this leap of 0:16:57.520 --> 0:16:59.960 logic with no prior red crumb. 0:17:00.400 --> 0:17:03.720 I'm with you. I've had some Midnight Madness experiences where 0:17:03.800 --> 0:17:06.440 you're like, you get the hnt in your No one 0:17:06.520 --> 0:17:07.520 would have gotten that. 0:17:08.520 --> 0:17:08.840 Yeah. 0:17:09.200 --> 0:17:12.560 Another big distinction though that we've come to terms with 0:17:12.680 --> 0:17:15.359 though that I think is really interesting and says a lot. 0:17:15.880 --> 0:17:18.040 And we didn't believe this to be true when we started, 0:17:18.080 --> 0:17:20.520 but I think we've come around to the idea that 0:17:20.840 --> 0:17:23.600 the people who are attracted to this midnight Madness game 0:17:23.640 --> 0:17:27.440 who come from Wall Street, they do crave I hesitate 0:17:27.480 --> 0:17:30.400 to use the word glutton for punishment, but they they 0:17:30.400 --> 0:17:35.480 do crave a certain amount of intensity and some would 0:17:35.480 --> 0:17:39.600 even say torture that I think was surprising to us. 0:17:39.880 --> 0:17:41.720 Yeah, I mean, just the fact that it is sort 0:17:41.720 --> 0:17:46.240 of runs overnight is right cruel in a way. 0:17:46.280 --> 0:17:50.719 It's like endurance athletics, but with your mind and your body. 0:17:51.080 --> 0:17:55.160 Totally. Yeah, you have a day job running puzzle hunts 0:17:55.200 --> 0:17:58.719 under your own brand, and like puzzle hunt activity is 0:17:58.720 --> 0:18:01.320 for corporate clients. Right, My sense is that a lot 0:18:01.320 --> 0:18:03.600 of your clients are also in the financial industry, and 0:18:03.600 --> 0:18:06.880 like puzzle hunting and finance overlap a lot. Is that right? 0:18:07.960 --> 0:18:11.560 Yes, you're onto us. We didn't mean to do it 0:18:11.600 --> 0:18:16.920 that way, but the market found us. Yeah. 0:18:17.000 --> 0:18:18.960 What do you think it is about? Like financial people 0:18:19.000 --> 0:18:20.679 a puzzle hunts? Like where do they go together? 0:18:21.320 --> 0:18:24.080 Several things? One is, I think the finance industry and 0:18:24.119 --> 0:18:27.800 the tech industry have become really closely intertwined. And as 0:18:27.840 --> 0:18:31.480 I said, the tradition of the MIT mystery hunt. A 0:18:31.480 --> 0:18:34.440 lot of these people that come from Cambridge end up 0:18:34.840 --> 0:18:38.360 in New York, end up doing finance related jobs, and 0:18:38.440 --> 0:18:42.320 so they've crafted a taste for this type of thing 0:18:42.520 --> 0:18:43.959 already earlier in life. 0:18:44.400 --> 0:18:46.280 Does every do the mystery hunting? 0:18:46.560 --> 0:18:48.119 I don't think everyone does it, and a lot of 0:18:48.119 --> 0:18:50.800 people who do it are also not currently at MIT. 0:18:51.160 --> 0:18:53.359 I've been invited on team. Is that it seemed like 0:18:53.520 --> 0:18:54.440 more trouble than I was worth. 0:18:54.680 --> 0:18:58.280 Yeah, yeah, I mean that's like a three day event 0:18:58.400 --> 0:18:59.600 or a four day event. 0:18:59.480 --> 0:19:02.520 And one hundred people and you can do it rightly. 0:19:02.560 --> 0:19:03.719 It just seems like a lot. 0:19:04.000 --> 0:19:05.359 It is a lot. You're not wrong. 0:19:05.240 --> 0:19:09.480 About our COO. Teresa participated this last year and had 0:19:09.520 --> 0:19:12.760 a fantastic time and we're going to try to go 0:19:12.800 --> 0:19:14.439 next year. And she went there on a team, and 0:19:14.440 --> 0:19:16.359 it's like, how fun can like being holed up in 0:19:16.440 --> 0:19:19.680 a hotel room solving puzzles, you know, But it really 0:19:19.760 --> 0:19:23.359 seems like the winning teams are it's not just about 0:19:23.359 --> 0:19:26.560 puzzle solving acumen, but about organization of brain power. You know, 0:19:26.560 --> 0:19:29.960 how do you effectively deploy one hundred people to effectively 0:19:30.560 --> 0:19:34.480 manage problems and contribute and make these lateral leaps. And 0:19:34.720 --> 0:19:37.000 it seems like that's the key to the MIT Mystery Hunt, 0:19:37.000 --> 0:19:40.560 which is I think, such an interesting social management problem. 0:19:40.720 --> 0:19:43.920 Yeah, I was reading a Courts article from twenty thirteen. 0:19:43.960 --> 0:19:46.240 I think it was because Midnight Madness went on a 0:19:46.240 --> 0:19:48.439 bit of a hiatus and then it came back right 0:19:48.560 --> 0:19:52.240 And the article is talking about how originally the thinking, 0:19:52.440 --> 0:19:54.960 you know, among the Goldmen Sacks teams who participated, was 0:19:55.000 --> 0:19:57.119 that they wanted to stack their teams with quants. They 0:19:57.200 --> 0:19:59.400 just wanted a lot of big brains. But the team 0:19:59.440 --> 0:20:02.440 that ended up winning was a group that worked together. 0:20:02.560 --> 0:20:05.160 I think they were client facing, and they shocked their 0:20:05.200 --> 0:20:07.480 winning up too, just we know how to work together. 0:20:07.520 --> 0:20:10.360 We don't necessarily have the smartest guy in the room, 0:20:10.480 --> 0:20:12.399 but we all know how to manage together. 0:20:13.040 --> 0:20:15.600 Yeah, and also like if it's all quants, like you 0:20:15.680 --> 0:20:18.560