I'm afraid this comes a bit late, but y'know, better late than never, right?
So anyway, I've finally set the date for my KK Challenge 5 on 17 October, which is a public holiday (Deepavali). In the late morning yesterday, I finally made it a point to send out emails, attaching the Entry Form, to hunters in KK. And at more or less the same time, I have also put up the announcement on my sidebar wherefrom hunters are able to download the Entry Form. I was surprised to note that within 2 hours of my email, I received 2 submissions!
And then as of 5pm today, I have 7 confirmed teams. Just before I left the office, I received text messages from hunters wanting to submit their entry forms, but I told them to do it tomorrow. I have a feeling that the first 15 slots will be quickly filled up before the end of next week.
To be quite honest, I haven't even made up my mind on the hunting route yet. But I guess I will embark on it this weekend. Anyway, I have at least confirmed the venue, which is Celyn Hotel, City Mall, of which I must thank Audrey for helping me negotiate a very good rate.
There will be no physical challenges for this hunt—it's gonna be purely route questions and treasure questions. And these are the brief details:
Date: 17 October 2009 (Saturday)
Start/End Venue: Celyn Hotel, City Mall
Time Control: 5 hours + 30 minutes penalty time
Questions: 40 Route Qs; 4 Treasure Qs
Hunt Briefing: To be held at 8:00 am on the day of the hunt before flag off
Refreshment: Will be provided at the end of hunt
Entry Fee: RM200/team for first 15 teams; RM230/team for the rest up to 20 teams
I will only be able to work on the hunt during the weekends. So I foresee my next few weekends occupied by the hunt! But because of many more weekends to the event, I should be able to wrap things up in good time.
To some new hunters who've been eagerly asking me so many times by now, don't worry, guys, I will give plenty of basic "novice" questions. But then as usual, I will have some "artistic" ones too. We don't want the regular teams to get bored and fall asleep during the hunt now, do we?
27 comments:
Some hunters have requested for the provision of medals for the top three winners. They said winning money is good, but once the money is spent, there is nothing tangible left as a remembrance for the achievement.
We don't have many hunts here in KK. In fact this is the first year we're having so many. By "many", I mean 4 so far.
If a team made a silly mistake in a hunt, it is apt to miss the opportunity to win the top 3 spots. And it will have to wait for a long time before the next opportunity comes along. So I can understand how precious any winning can be for the local hunters.
Therefore, I am pleased to announce that I will be providing medals for the top 3 spots. It is not anything fancy - just plain medals for souvenirs and to mark your achievements.
To the teams which requested for these medals, make sure that you do win them. Trust me, you don't want other teams to benefit from your idea!
Good....MEDALS....now I can have at least something to show to my 'Malaysian 3rd Generation' should my team manage to win the Top 3. 8 years in this business and ZERO medals or trophies...cam mana oh...
Of course, teo, the other teams will also want very much to win those medals. So you will have to work much harder this time!
By the way, don't expect anything grand. I'm not getting the plastic ones, of course, but it's not gonna be the pewter ones either!
Not that I want to teach you about hunting, teo (after all, you've hunted much longer than I have), but I really think you should do something about the treasure clues. Surely you can't expect to continue winning with just ONE treasure in the bag?
Was just wondering why you are limiting the number of teams in this hunt to 20? Aren't you interested to reach out to others (beyond the same regular faces)?
Or is this just a marketing ploy to make the regulars to "hurry up" just like the RM30 discount carrot (ha ha)?
2R1I,
Obviously we want to attract as many teams as possible. However, for this particular hunt, I don't have a choice. I took a long time to decide on the date for this hunt. But when I finally arrived at a decision, I couldn't find a suitable venue.
As you know, I usually organise my KK Challenge series around mid year. But this year I made an exception to make way for the Palliative Hunt. So I postponed my KK Challenge to October. I thought my own hunt is not so important, it's not official anyway. I organise it mainly for friends for fun. Of course I could've postponed again till early next year, but I reckoned it's not such a good idea for the sake of my reputation.
Other venues which can accommodate more than 20 teams have been booked on 17th October. So in the end, I'm forced to end up in Celyn; and unfortunately, Celyn can only accommodate 20 teams comfortably. Well, maybe if we can really get more, I suppose we can squeeze one or two more teams, but certainly not many more than that. Perhaps next year I will plan much earlier, and hopefully we can attract more teams.
If Mr Fernandez is kind enough to chip in, we may just drop by. Quite tempted to defend. This time we will be prepared, map or no map (hee hee).
Haha! You know my hunts are always with the tulips, 2R1I. When I said CHALLENGE, I mean it in terms of the questions/riddles. I will try to make all the rest, e.g. finding your way to the sectors as painless as possible.
Like I said before, I want to be the matador - I will bring the bull very, very close to my body, but I will try not to let it actually touch me!
I'd say many of the questions in this coming hunt will be easy to moderate ones - those which might be categorised as suitable for novice standard. Then maybe some "artistic" ones to entertain and slow down the regulars a bit (we don't want them all to finish in 3 hours in a 5-hour hunt!); and perhaps just 2 or 3 of the "reserved for the CoC" questions.
However, I want to reiterate that even if I describe some questions as "reserved for the CoC", I always give enough opportunities for the hunters to solve them! Those who don't believe me, wait till you see my explanations; I'm sure you will agree with me!
So listen up all you regular teams. Maybe this is the time; maybe you will achieve the full score, who knows! Some of you have said that you know my style by now. So this is the chance to prove yourselves.
You might as well mark the reserved for CoC ones on the question sheet - that way we can drive past that sector. I remember that even the non exclusive ones we had problems.
Aw... you're trying too hard to be humble, 2R1I!
I did not mark that 101 SUPERMARKET question as "reserved for CoC", and you did not just forgo attempting it. And in the end you did solve that one, didn't you? "Having problems" not necessarily mean you can't eventually find the answer! And you were the only team which solved that one too!
You also solve the SK TRADING question, of which only your team and MAIN TEMBAK found the answer. Imagine if I had marked those question as "reserved for CoC" and you just simply dropped them. Wouldn't you have kicked yourself after the hunt?
Listen up, people!
It's interesting that some of you have written to me or texted me on the difficulty level of this hunt.
I don't know how it has come to this, but apparently my hunt has been labeled as very tough. I find this a bit unfair because, actually, based on past results of my KK Challenge series, top teams very nearly got the perfect score! And the "chasing pack" managed to achieve the 70%-80% levels. As for the new teams, they either passed or failed marginally. I try to give enough blend of easy to moderate to tough questions, and it shows in the results.
As I continue organising my KK Challenge series, I keep pushing myself further and further into the "danger zone"; I come up with questions which will bring the hunters very, very close to the perfect score, but not actually achieving it! That is the challenge I put up myself to. It is dangerous because any team, on a good day, might just suddenly "see it all" and achieve the perfect score! The possibility of one or more teams beating my KK Challenge is very real, yet I enjoy the thrill of "living dangerously" anyway!
So my message to the new teams, please don't let that word "CHALLENGE" in the title of this hunt scare you. My questions are solvable.
KK Challenge 5 might just be the one for your team.
It might be because your level is higher than all of us, so what seems easy to you is not easy to the majority. What is easy to a Form 3 student is very difficult or almost impossible for a Primary 4 student.
For a hunt with 40 questions, scoring 70% means more than 10 questions were answered wrongly, or not answered at all.
In the recent Novice Hunt, some questions were tough! Even the treasures were tough. Out of 20 teams, only one team solved all 4 treasures.
If your Novice standard is already so high, what can we expect from your Challenge Series? Maybe the reason why your registration is stalled at 13 teams.
Challenge yourself with a money back guarantee clause for teams who fail. ha ha ha ..........
Dear Anonymous hunter,
Thank you for your feedback.
First of all, let me assure you that if I were to set the questions up to my personal tastes, most of the teams would have failed the recent novice hunt. Try to go through some of my past questions here in this blog, e.g. the Anniversary virtual hunt. I can come up with outrageous questions, I tell you!
If we did not think of the novice standard, you wouldn't have seen questions like:
Q) MALU NAMPAK DARI BELAKANG.
A) YHS
Q) START JUMPING AND DANCING EVERY SATURDAY AFTERNOON.
A) JADESA
Q) SHREDDED MAT FOUND HERE.
A) TMA SDN BHD
So let me assure you that the questions were not set up to Form 3 standard meant for Primary 4 students.
Although many of the questions were easy, surely you weren't expecting ALL of them to be easy? What's the point of everyone getting the full score? Where is the challenge in that?
The majority passed the hunt. And except for the DORS question, all the other questions were successfully solved. It showed that the riddles were solvable. The rest was up to the respective teams - how they played their game.
When the answers were marked, we were baffled by unforgivable mistakes, especially by the regular teams. Misspellings of answers. And some very straightforward answers which were solved and spotted, but somehow did not make it to the answer sheet. Simple anagram question of which the fodder contained only 5 letters OR GAS => ARGOS was unsolved by regular teams. We gave plenty of time for the hunt, i.e. 5 hours. Many teams finished all the sectors with almost an hour to spare. They actually had the opportunity to revisit some of the sectors for second attempts at some questions. Yet many teams ignored the time and incurred the time penalty. I know a regular team which, in spite of the time control, spent an extra 12 minutes stubbornly trying to find a treasure. All these were big mysteries to us, but then there you have it, mistakes can happen!
By the way, if you must know, the figure is stalled at 13 teams now because I refused to accept verbal submissions from teams I don't really know. If I had accepted them, I would've achieved the 20 teams by now. I have several teams which have confirmed their participation, but I have not actually counted them in the 13 teams announced here.
So, anonymous friend, if you haven't already submitted your entry form, I hope you will do that soon. There are not very many hunts here in KK, and certainly not very many like the ones I organise!
Oh! I forgot to mention that there were also teams which only managed to get around 30 points.
And the worst score was only 13 points. But these were "virgin" teams. And not only were they first-timers, they were also not seriously keen to hunt. They were there because I encouraged them to join, since they may be planning to organise a hunt next year. I thought they should at least have some idea what a treasure hunt is all about. But immediately after the flag off, they took their sweet time to go for a glorious breakfast in a nearby kopi tiam. I must remember to kick their butts for distorting our results so terribly!
I'm surprised you considered ARGOS question easy. If you really meant to make it easy, why not TURN OR GAS? or WINDING OR GAS, so as not to misled us to believe it has to be something on clean energy or turbine etc. You had deliberately made it confusing and difficult.
Anonymous,
To a new team, ALL the questions will be tough. No matter how straightforward the questions are, the new teams will find them tough anyway.
Q) WIND OR GAS?
A) ARGOS ENTERPRISE
Only 3 words in this question. And because of the obvious answer in "HARI HARI JADI", the sector was very short too.
I asked a new team which solved this question how they did it. They said when they first saw it, they had no idea what it was all about! Then suddenly they remembered to check other possible meanings of the words in the question. And as I said, there're only 3 words to check. Trust me, it won't take very long! Upon checking the first word, WIND, they realised the other possible meaning and immediately saw that it's an anagram indicator. From that point onwards, it was just a matter of spotting the board! It can be really as simple as that, provided that you played your game correctly.
This answer, though unspectacular, was very clearly visible from the car.
I'm surprised that you're complaining the deception in "WIND". Isn't that what the riddle or cryptic clueing is all about? Of course the setter will throw in some deception to mislead the hunters. That's what this whole thing is about, my friend! Of course we were trying to deceive the hunters! Of course we were confusing them!
The rule is that:
The setter may not mean what he says, but he must say what he means.
We said WIND. In the context of the question, it looks very much like a (blowing) wind. But we meant it as in winding the clock WIND. You need to think lateral, i.e. out of the box.
Haven't I explained this during the briefing? Haven't I given some examples to elaborate what I meant? Did I not remind hunters to keep checking their dictionaries/thesaurus?
The statistic is like this:
Out of 20 teams, 6 answered this question. Out of those 6 successful teams, 2 were new teams. Two other regular teams I spoke to after the hunt admitted that there's no excuse for them to fail this question. 1 regular team, probably because of some sort of curse that day, wrote the answer like this:
LATINA @ ARGOS ENTERPRISE
instead of this:
ARGOS ENTERPRISE @ LATINA
It's getting late now. But I shall alert Alvin about this discussion tomorrow. He may have other comments to add, since this was his question.
But although it's his question, I have glanced through it before the hunt, and satisfied myself that it can qualify for a novice hunt. In fact, I think it's a good question from Alvin.
Anon 10.58pm,
Golf, I heard is a good weekend hobby.
Then again, delurk, if they all take up golf, we won't have enough people to hunt!... HAHAHA!
Anonymous friend, please don't get me wrong. I'm not blaming the new hunters. As I said earlier, most, if not all, of the questions will be tough for the new hunters. To take the example of the ARGOS question, the only way to make it "easy" in the true sense of EASY, is to set the question something like this:
Q) Rearrange the letters in "OR GAS" and find the newly-formed word on the signboard.
A) ARGOS
Even if we had set it as "TURN OR GAS", it would have still been tough for the new hunters. Maybe it's clearer to you when set that way, but not to all the new hunters.
That's why if you scrolled up to my comment above, I said:
"Simple anagram question of which the fodder contained only 5 letters OR GAS => ARGOS was unsolved by regular teams."
Because the regular teams should have solved this question. It should have been easy for them. For the new hunters, that is a different story. After a few more hunts, they, too, will find this question easy to solve. But all of us have to start somewhere.
So I hope you will continue hunting. And you can expect more wordplays in my questions. It is strange, no matter how many times I remind the hunters, they will never check the dictionaries; they will never learn the Roman numerals, I don't know why!
I used to set a small hunt for a small club in my organization. Non of them are regulars. This year (the third year)I set which I think is the easiest because about 90% of the answers is in the question it self. examples
Q MACAM-MACAM ADA SETELAH LAMA KEMBALI
A AMAL SERBANEKA
Q TEMPAT PAMER ISWARA
A PARAMESWARI STORE
Q UBAT UNTUK MEMULIHKAN PERAWAN
A PENAWAR @ 2NR ENTERPRISE
99% my questions in BM. I give a comprehensive briefing note and this brifing note is also one my treasure. I told them so many time during my briefing this briefing note is very important and have values. but none of them (all together 30 teams) got it correct.
Another treasure is is the same treasure as last year and still I can't get 100% correct.
The winning team got 81/100. only 20 teams got 50 points over.
I still got feedback that they like my questions but it is tough.
Actually to me treasure hunt is not for everybody. they will never learn if they have attitude "pergi for suka-suka".
There is no short cut to be a good treasure hunters.
delurk,
The wind in the West is good for flying kite.
opps..sorry,I miss the most important part in the TH question...the indicator/clue in my example no 2. The question was
TEMPAT PAMER ISWARA BARANGKALI
Indeed.
I'll wait for you at the Top, if you ever make it.
The highest Peak is still in the East.
Hmmm... been busy this lately. Went to our Sandakan office the whole of yesterday and only arrived home quite late last night.
The CoC Anon (September 17, 2009 9:43 AM),
Thanks for sharing. Unfortunately, there will always be those who join treasure hunts for "pergi for suka-suka". So I guess there will always be comments that the hunt is "tough". I suppose there is no way to completely bridge the gap between the experienced hunters and the new comers. If we tried to make it too easy, we will get several ties of full score at the top. We have had a couple of those in KL, though admittedly not very many. But if we made it a little bit more challenging to control the top winners, the new comers will feel the excruciating pain.
So the only way to we can try to balance is by doing what I've been trying to do, i.e. a mixture of easy, moderate and tough questions, and hopefully the majority of the teams will pass the hunt. Obviously some of them will fail no matter what!
This KK Challenge 5 will also have a fair number of easy questions, but teams will probably find the hunt just a little bit more challenging than the recent Novice hunt. I'm gearing for the top teams to achieve 70% and above, and maybe the new teams should reasonably achieve 40%-50%. Therefore, in terms of scores, it will be similar with the Novice hunt. But I expect in terms of mental efforts, my KK Challenge 5 will be just a bit more.
That said, I think my hunt is a better hunt for learning purposes. So I would encourage the new teams not to miss the opportunity!
Anon (September 17, 2009 10:38 AM) and delurk,
Not that I'm not amused by the cryptic approaches you people are adopting to tell each other off, but let's keep this post and any discussions friendly and constructive, shall we?
Received a call from a friend. Apparently he's a bit worried that only 13 teams have signed up for this hunt so far. He asked me if I would postpone this hunt if I can't get more teams... hehehe.
Frankly, I'm quite surprised by this question. This hunt will proceed rain or shine, even if only these 13 teams are hunting. I think we had 13 teams during the KK Challenge 4 too, and that didn't stop the hunt. I'm not too concerned about the crowd, but of course if I can get more teams, I'd like that very much.
So don't worry, folks, I'm not really in this for the money; small crowd or big crowd, that doesn't affect whether this hunt is going ahead or not. Either way, we'll all have a ball on 17 October!
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