intfiction.org

No one has yet put together the full truth. Will the man with the hat ever be redeemed?

(signed) Lyman Clive Charles, Pam Comfite, Cameron Fox, and Edmund Wells.

Is he a coupon?

I'm definitely curious what this all means, but it's not obvious to me how those four very different games might fit together.

We're trying to untangle this on #hatmystery over on ifMUD, if anyone cares to join in.

Bit of an inconvenient time for me right now, but I too am curious.

Our paranoia is riding high.

A partial transcript of the MUD chatter so far: http://ziz.org/~devesine/ifmud/hatmyste ... 6-2100.txt (thanks to vimes)

It has a discovery of one connection as of right now. The chat itself has gotten farther, but I don't know when vimes will update the file again.

This has now been solved on the MUD. Expect more of a writeup this weekend (and post-comp releases of the games soon).

-Kevin, aka Pam Comfite

I've put up a complete transcript of that night's discussion:

http://eblong.com/zarf/zweb/coldiron/mu ... script.txt

(with missing lines corrected, thanks Doug)

Complete spoilers for the metapuzzle, of course.

And, speaking for Lyman Clive Charles (who speaks only for me): Thanks to everyone who contributed to the solution last night! (Yes, I was part of the discussion. I was careful not to contribute, except to adumbrate a warning that decompiling _Cold Iron_ would be a serious spoiler.)

This was a lot of fun. Obviously it would have been cooler if people had caught on during the IFComp, without us having to nudge you. But the level of hintage was very hard to judge in advance -- I will say "impossible", really. And I'm happy with how it all turned out.

Let me also congratulate Mike for placing sixth (and in Miss Congeniality, and I believe for the Golden Banana as well). Our original plan for the metapuzzle assumed four *small* games built around the man-with-hat. _Doctor M_ goes way beyond that.