The Hunters Challenge

"... the Hunters Challenge is a joint-effort of 4 great minds in the sports. I somehow have the impression that they will be all out to outdo each other by creating something outrageously impossible. On the other hand, it is also possible that they will be able to check each other’s products to ensure that they’re sound. So in that case the hunters may find quality questions in the Hunters Challenge. I personally think this latter scenario will be the likelier one, and I am therefore keen to try them out."


The above is a paragraph from an entry I made a few days ago in this blog under "Handicap Treasure Hunters". Some of you might have noticed—at least two of you certainly did—that the blue portion was the original text; whereas the red portion was added later. I'd like to say that it is not my habit to lie when I give my opinions on anything, but in this particular case, I made an exception. Although I said that I believed the team members of Hunters "R" Us (HRU) "will be able to check each other's products" to be the likelier scenario, that was a lie. Actually, I was still convinced that they would be all out to outdo each other to create something outrageous.

But first, let me explain why I had lied.

Shortly after "Handicap Treasure Hunters" was posted, I received several emails and text messages from concerned friends. Apparently, that post was very damaging to the hunt, and those friends were convinced that I might even scare away some new teams. Furthermore, I later found out that some elite teams were also considering withdrawing from the hunt because of their dissatisfaction with the time handicap as well as the tie-breaker issues. I was told that they were then still sitting on the fence, and there was concern that after reading my post, they might just be pushed to the wrong side of the fence.

The purpose of "Handicap Treasure Hunters" was solely for discussion and/or debate only. And while I did not know that I had such an influence on the hunting fraternity, I did not wish to be the one to spoil the show for HRU. There were other reasons too—for one thing, I have made the hotel reservation and purchased plane tickets. If the hunt was cancelled somehow, I'd really be disappointed. The other reason was that I felt that HRU deserved a chance to prove themselves, and it was rather unfair to withdraw at the eleventh hour. But above all of those The Hunters Challenge was dedicated to Vincent Woo, a good friend who's also a team member of HRU. I therefore decided to change a bit the tone of my post.

But now that the hunt is over I am free to comment and criticise once again. In fact, I will be brutal when I think the occasion calls for it! Before I proceed any further, however, I'd like to mention here that there is nothing personal in my comments and criticisms. The team members of HRU are all my good friends, and I am sure they know that I have no ill intentions in my comments.

At this juncture, I'd like to draw my readers' attention to an open letter addressed to the so-called Grand Slammers posted in A Hunter's Tale a few days prior to the hunt. In it HRU sought to justify their rules and regulations; and also gave an insight to their goals in organizing The Hunters Challenge. Incidentally, a few days prior to that, someone suggested that we initiate a kind of report card to grade all CoCs' performances. In fact, it was suggested that the report card be introduced during The Hunters Challenge itself. I didn't think that was a very good idea, because I foresaw that the results wouldn't have been very impressive.

Looking at The Hunters Challenge from an overall point of view, I would say that HRU has failed badly in its objectives. And if there was indeed a report card, then I'd say they probably deserved an F; and it's not even a marginal failure.

Let us now have a look at the more specific aspects of the hunt (I invite comments from those who may have the opposing views):

"The hunt is designed from the beginning for completion in 4 hours."

I am not a Grand Slammer yet, and I am sure no one can deny that HRU is a very, very strong team. But had they hunted yesterday, I would have bet my bottom dollar that they could not have finished the hunt within 4 hours too. The team Cryptically Challenged, helmed by none other than Alex Hoh, won the hunt convincingly with 78 points out of the total 120 points. That works out to be 65%—an embarrassing performance by a grandmaster team (Sorry, Alex, I don't mean to offend you). Even such a well-oiled hunting machine had to drop several tail-end questions to survive that 4 hours 30 minutes time control, in a hunt originally designed for 4 hours. Needless to say that most, if not all, of the other teams dropped the tail-end questions too.

Out of about 30 teams hunting, only 4 teams passed the hunt, i.e. 60 points and above. Check out the results in A Hunter's Tale or Mike's blog. The results speak volume. Grandmasters in the likes of Jayaram Menon, Liong Chian Min, Lim Soo Khian, Adrian Wong, Dominic Roche and some others, all failed to at least achieve the 60-point passing score.

"We have tuned the level of difficulties and distributed them so that the three main categories of hunters (newbies, regulars, Masters) will find treasure hunting challenging and yet enjoyable."

Personally, I love the challenge of very, very tough riddles. But to really enjoy those riddles, I want to be given sufficient opportunities to attempt them. I think most of the elite hunters can agree that the quality of the questions in The Hunters Challenge was very high. That's a real shame because easily 20% to 30% of them, especially the last few, went to waste because the hunters just simply had no opportunity to attempt them.

I think HRU has achieved the "hunting challenging" part of their objective, but I doubt that many new hunters found the hunt "enjoyable" at all. A new hunter I spoke to after the hunt said they practically gave up after the Q5. That's how seriously HRU had misjudged the level of difficulty for this hunt.

"We do not want to make it overly easy - ending up with just a quiz on the road hunt. We all know how that usually end up as a race."

Quite the opposite is the truth—this hunt became more like the Chinese New Year hunt which objective inter alia is to poke fun at the regular hunters with miserable scores. This hunt turned out to be tougher than the SunHunt Masters. The elite teams, I'm sure, were made to wonder which particular questions were the easier ones intended for the new hunters which HRU sought to attract into the sport.

"We have NOT created a handicap - which by definition means that the better teams will be disadvantaged just because they are good."

I have discussed this issue to some extent through exchange of emails with some friends before the hunt. It is now time to bring the discussion into the open.

As far as I am concerned, whenever there is a difference in the hunting duration allocated to different teams, then that amounts to time handicap no matter how one looks at it. There are 2 possible scenarios. One possibility is if the questions are very easy. In that case, all the elite hunters (both the Grand Slammers and TOS masters) can finish the hunt way under 4.5 hours and then rush like mad to the finish station for submission. Then the new hunters, knowing that they won't win anyway, can make use of the extra time to at least attempt the questions, if only for learning purposes. The other possibility is if the questions are super tough—which was the case in this hunt—and the Grand Slammers are disadvantaged on account of insufficient time.

Before the hunt, HRU seemed to suggest that the regular hunters could finish the hunt well before the 4.5 hours time control. KK Chai, in a reply to Alex Hoh under the "Handicap Treasure Hunters" post, challenged Alex to prove him wrong (that the hunt could be completed within 4.5 hours). Hence they're not disadvantaged in terms of time. As events had proven beyond reasonable doubt, this was most certainly not the case. However, for the sake of discussion, had the questions been very easy and the hunters were indeed able to finish the hunt in, say, 4 hours, then I fail to see why bother coming up with the different hunting time. I don't believe that the elite hunters will take their sweet time to only reach the finish station at the last minute, just because they had 5.5 hours. If they had finished the hunt in 4 hours, I'm sure they would all rush like mad to the finish station, even if they had 5.5 hours to hunt.

Therefore, in my humble opinion, the time handicap (yes, it was a handicap) was an ill-perceived innovation by HRU. If it had achieved anything at all, it had only attracted unneccesary objections from the elite hunters. Besides, I don't think it's such a good idea to introduce more handicaps into treasure hunts—but especially not this one.

"We have instead "de-stressed" those who have come to enjoy the hunt in true spirit by taking away from them the challenge of "racing to the finish" in time. For 30 questions, that would be about 2 minutes extra per question - not a lot if you look at it that way."

I'm sure there were strong teams which were unaffected by the time constraints. But this is what I can say for my team—we had 5.5 hours hunting time, and we were all very stressed up because of the time factor. Maybe the Grand Slammers did not mind dropping some questions, but I was kinda disappointed for not having the opportunity to attempt them—win or lose aside.

"We have also added half-an-hour more to make it 4.5 hours for GS teams. This was more to cater for unfavourable traffic conditions that may happen in a spot or two."

That 30 minutes more hardly meant anything at all. After the hunt, I mingled around with some of those Grand Slammers, some of whom were active CoCs themselves, to exchange views. And one of the topics of discussion was of course the hunting duration. The consensus was that this particular hunt needed at the very least 6 hours for proper treatment of all the questions. Although I am not a Grand Slammer myself, I am inclined to agree with their view.

It is also worth mentioning here that a couple of those Grand Slammer teams decided—just for the fun of it—to continue hunting for an hour after they had submitted their answers. They did this to find out if there would have been any difference in their performance had they been given 5.5 hours hunting time. In the end they only managed to solve 1 extra question. So this should give you an idea of the questions we had in this hunt.

In all this, I am most concerned about the new hunters, especially those hunting for the very first time. To those new hunters who told me that "this is the first and last time" and "never again", I sincerely hope that you would change your minds. Let me assure you that not all hunts are like The Hunters Challenge. In fact, The Hunters Challenge is one very extraordinary hunt! Please give us another chance to make you fall in love with this beautiful sport.

So now that I have commented on the hunt from the hunter's point of view, please allow me to share with you what I think went wrong; and what might possibly be done to remedy the situation for future hunts, if any.

I think one of the most common problems about setting hunt questions is that of "blindness". I have had some experience approaching hunt questions both from the solver's and setter's points of view; and I can tell you that they're not the same at all. HRU imposed upon themselves a certain kind of "standard" and I believe they were psychologically influenced in their role as a CoC to produce nothing less than extraordinary questions.

Speaking from experience, when one approaches the riddle from the setter's point of view, he is unable to see or appreciate the nature of that riddle from the solver's point of view. Since he is already aware of the intended answer, his focus will be on that answer, and only that answer alone. Therefore, he is "blind" to the fact that there are many other possible answers within that sector which could cloud the mind of the solver. He forgets that the solver has to work from several possible angles, and then try to fit whatever he can find within the sector. The solver probably has to do that on trial and error basis several times before he finds a perfect fit. But of course there's that problem of spotting the answer too. While doing all those, the solver is also under immense time pressure etc. These elements when combined together will cause more time consumed before one is finally able to arrive at the required answer. It's not as simple as just crack the questions on paper and spot it the next second within the sector. As any hunter will tell you, quite a lot of the time, you will require some time to spot the answer even if you can more or less guess what exactly you are looking for.

Looking at the riddle from the setter's point of view, it is easy to assume that the answer is easily solved and then quickly spotted, even if it's in a sector of about 500 metres containing 1,000 signboards. But nothing could be further from the truth.

It's for these reasons that whenever I clerk a hunt, I'd send out my team members (running on 3 and not knowing the answers to my questions, of course) for a "test drive". It is from their score that I can adjust my questions. Incidentally, I consider them of average standard at best, so I've found that the outcome of my hunts quite consistent and usually well-balanced between the regular and new hunters. I have also noticed that the same approach was also adopted in last year's Kiwanis Hunt (this was announced by Grandmaster Cheong Foo Seong during the presentation). Over the last few hunts that I have clerked, the top teams managed to get almost full score, against the bottom end of new hunters around the passing marks of 50%. I consider that as being fair enough in an open hunt. But I'd be really worried if the regular hunters can't even reach the 50% mark!

I am sure that there are many ways to achieve a well-balanced concoction of hunt questions, and I am sure there are many of those in KL. One such hunt that I myself had joined was co-clerked by Liew Kok Seng and Dato' Ramesh Rajaratnam, i.e. the AMC Hunt. Many of the elite hunters were there that day, and there were some new teams too. But no team got perfect score in the end, and there were a number of easy questions too. And if I'm not mistaken, the time control for that hunt was 5 hours. I'm fairly certain that everyone had fun and at the same time found the riddles challenging too.

In the case of The Hunters Challenge, perhaps the team members of HRU got a bit carried away with innovation in the questions; or in the hunt as a whole. Innovations are good and I welcome them. But I think they should come gradually and not like the explosion of an atomic bomb.

For whatever it's worth, I hope if there is another Hunters Challenge on the horizon, the setter will make it more accommodating for the new hunters. As for the die-hard elite hunters, I'm sure they will all be there, rain or shine!