The day started with me getting a picture of myself taken at Budapest’s Great Market Hall for a scavenger hunt for one of the puzzles—in appropriately Manic Sages-y attire, of course:
(Plan one was to stand outside the Hungarian National Gallery, but that had to be abandoned when it started snowing—at least, the closest we’ve gotten to real snow this year; it still didn’t stick.)
Of course, following Manic Sages tradition, we backsolved the scavenger hunt answer (solved a puzzle that was supposed to need the answer we’d be told for finishing the scavenger hunt, and used that puzzle to deduce what the scavenger hunt’s answer must have been), so the picture didn’t end up getting used.
The rest of the day consisted of working on puzzles—mostly of arriving at a puzzle to find it either completely stuck (and not unstuck by me) or moving so fast that any contributions I tried to make would be obsolete soon—Manic Sages makes things very easy for remote solvers, but it’s huge enough that that happens. Fortunately, I had fun finishing a few already-solved but not finished puzzles that had been abandoned, and contributed important progress to about two more.
Alas, it looks like this is the last day of the hunt, which is finishing much too soon. Mystery Hunts are supposed to go at least another full day or so.
I’m going to take your photo and put it into the small gallery I’m preparing of photos from Coming to a Location Near You. We have photos from all of the top 20 or so teams except Manic Sages. It only feels right to include you guys as well. This photo will do nicely since you did take it intending to submit it for the puzzle. By next week, you should be able to find the small gallery included within the solution page for Coming to a Location Near You: http://web.mit.edu/puzzle/www/12/william_s_bergman/coming_to_a_location_near_you/solution/
– Kai (coauthor of the puzzle)