Wear Another Watch
In the late 1970’s, before I was able to drive, my friends and I started to play Dungeons and Dragons. We would buy what we needed at a store called Dream Wizards on Rockville Pike and once we even met Gary Gygax at an event there (the store has moved, but still exists). I eventually became the go-to Dungeon Master in my friend group because with the manuals, some graph paper, and about 10 minutes of lead time I could get us late into the night or morning in a dungeon of my own making. We had already burned through all of the pre-made modules. Then we all got driver’s licenses, started drinking beer and life took a different direction.
The One Watch Challenge is a bit like an off-the-cuff dungeon. I try to map it out and game it out, but I always wind up making it up as I go along. It has been a real challenge this year. The competitors were great and I could not rely on mere ennui to get people to drop out. There is a not insignificant minority of us that could easily wear one watch for months on end. That is not much of a challenge.
This year I tried to dial back my sneering condescension and tried to layer tasks to make players remember to do multiple things in a short time. I tried to get players to use all of the various parts of the site. I also made fun of G-Shocks, a favorite pastime of mine.
A lot of you were knocked out when WatchCrunch had some sort of issue and certain posts were hard to find. But many found mine. I understood your frustration. I never said that it would be fair. I had to reduce the numbers.
I want to thank @Kclouis for the Zodiac idea. His comments had me searching for a Zodiac cypher. I put it in plain view in a deceptively titled post. (The rule is the rule, the post title is only that.) Only two players (and @Pallet_Fork ) followed the directions. That poll last night was a clue. It was too subtle I guess. When the Zodiac picture dropped in the WRUW (I waited 12 hours longer than I normally do) the One Watch Challenge ended.
Your One Watch Challenge Champions are @BadgeHoarder and @Porthole. I have nothing but respect for everyone who participated. I don’t know if I can do this next year. I have work stacked up. I am first up for a jury trial next week and I will lose the whole weekend in the office. In meantime, wear another watch.
(Post 1WC)
Restitutor Orbis. Aristocrat of beauty. Autocrat of time. (Trying to perfect trolling over at theescapementroom.com)
Boom!
This is not a test though right… this is genuinely the end?
I don’t need to get up at 04:43 to post a pic of the sunrise?
Amazing and very entertaining
Finally...
Congrats to you two psychos.
This year's contest...
And @Aurelian...
It's over. Wear another watch.
Thanks! It’s been entertaining! Excited to interact with the community through a different lens.
Its shocking how this thing ended so abruptly.
At the end of the challenges, people are taking asterisks here and there. It could have ended in 5 more days. Some people didn’t realize that the crossword system continued after Wednesday. Noone also did any #1wc welcome post after last week. I guess that one is okay. People also voted on a poll that they weren’t supposed to vote on, and that one was okay too.
That Zodiac post was a shocker! I mean nobody would realize that it is a real challenge when the title says “A tale, told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing”. Aside from Mr @Porthole, and someone outside of the competition. I only realized it today when I was driving, and the word decipher showed up on my screen. Before that, I thought this post was a crude “addon” to the Crossword debacle. I’ve already wrote down 20 different words (including French words). So I didn’t bother looking at the Zodiac “Crossword”.
I drove for 4 hours today, and I had to solve it as quickly as I could. Because the more I solved, the more I realized that the deadline was near. It wad madness. Talking about Crunch and Drive. I had my kids in the backseat.
I feel so bad for @thorhodes, @accutron, @Fieldwalker, @Bayl61 , and especially @JBird7986 . He wrote a Herculean lawsuit for a challenge set by me.
Shout out to @brianmp21 and @Deeperblue, I made lots of friends along the way. Count me in for the Photographic challenge every week.
It was fun with all the Thursday subtle digs. Now we gotta find some other thing we could do. Maybe claw back to Wristy120? I know @thorhodes will be on it with his Forever Casio Calculator.
Its shocking how this thing ended so abruptly.
At the end of the challenges, people are taking asterisks here and there. It could have ended in 5 more days. Some people didn’t realize that the crossword system continued after Wednesday. Noone also did any #1wc welcome post after last week. I guess that one is okay. People also voted on a poll that they weren’t supposed to vote on, and that one was okay too.
That Zodiac post was a shocker! I mean nobody would realize that it is a real challenge when the title says “A tale, told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing”. Aside from Mr @Porthole, and someone outside of the competition. I only realized it today when I was driving, and the word decipher showed up on my screen. Before that, I thought this post was a crude “addon” to the Crossword debacle. I’ve already wrote down 20 different words (including French words). So I didn’t bother looking at the Zodiac “Crossword”.
I drove for 4 hours today, and I had to solve it as quickly as I could. Because the more I solved, the more I realized that the deadline was near. It wad madness. Talking about Crunch and Drive. I had my kids in the backseat.
I feel so bad for @thorhodes, @accutron, @Fieldwalker, @Bayl61 , and especially @JBird7986 . He wrote a Herculean lawsuit for a challenge set by me.
Shout out to @brianmp21 and @Deeperblue, I made lots of friends along the way. Count me in for the Photographic challenge every week.
It was fun with all the Thursday subtle digs. Now we gotta find some other thing we could do. Maybe claw back to Wristy120? I know @thorhodes will be on it with his Forever Casio Calculator.
Don’t feel bad for me, I had been hanging on by a thread for weeks, this way I get to say I was a “semi-finalist!” Congrats! And thanks again for helping me get those badges, I would call you a badge sharer, not hoarder! Take a victory lap in your watch belt!
With all respect, and I know it's a game, but I'm not going to lie. I'm kind of hacked off.
I violated no rule, earned not a single asterisk, but somehow, because I answered a poll question with a response other than Zodiac as to what watch I thought you should wear today, I lose? There was no rule, no instruction that was missed. Whatever happened to construing the rules against the drafter? I followed every challenge that was set forth to the letter. There was no instruction provided, no indication that an answer was even required to be provided to the poll.
With all respect, and I know it's a game, but I'm not going to lie. I'm kind of hacked off.
I violated no rule, earned not a single asterisk, but somehow, because I answered a poll question with a response other than Zodiac as to what watch I thought you should wear today, I lose? There was no rule, no instruction that was missed. Whatever happened to construing the rules against the drafter? I followed every challenge that was set forth to the letter. There was no instruction provided, no indication that an answer was even required to be provided to the poll.
You didn’t violate that poll’s rule.
Someone else violated the previous poll
You didn’t violate that poll’s rule.
Someone else violated the previous poll
What?
What?
I can’t tell you anymore info without violating his hidden rules. There was this super cryptic and hidden rule. And he decided to make it a hard rule, and not an asterisk rule
With all respect, and I know it's a game, but I'm not going to lie. I'm kind of hacked off.
I violated no rule, earned not a single asterisk, but somehow, because I answered a poll question with a response other than Zodiac as to what watch I thought you should wear today, I lose? There was no rule, no instruction that was missed. Whatever happened to construing the rules against the drafter? I followed every challenge that was set forth to the letter. There was no instruction provided, no indication that an answer was even required to be provided to the poll.
@BadgeHoarder has some particulars incorrect. You violated no rule. You failed to see the Zodiac cipher. It required something. I really thought that it would only trip up one, perhaps two of you. Besides the code (easily cracked by an internet search), the only wrinkle was that you could not share your discovery with other players. @Porthole went silent. @BadgeHoarder was probably dying to say something. When only one had responded last night I put up more Zodiac mentions in the poll to make you think about the previous post.
Congrats @Porthole and @BadgeHoarder!!! And congrats to the other runner ups and all other players.
Thanks @Aurelian for creating chaos & keeping track of this nonsense.
Interesting - My search parameter was image based and thus lacked the word “key” ..so mine was a rabbit hole to cults and nothingness.
Your slightly different approach and hard work worked - won it - nice job 👍. Also the dog watch belt was epic 👏
The best search term is “zodiac cipher decoder”
Found out after I cracked it manually 😂
If the makers of the badges could substitute the word "winner" in the 1WC badge with the word "finalist" and maybe make the color silver, and award one to @JBird7986 , @Fieldwalker , @accutron and @Bayl61 , I would be much pleased.
As two-time champ can I get a special badge?
Please?
@BadgeHoarder has some particulars incorrect. You violated no rule. You failed to see the Zodiac cipher. It required something. I really thought that it would only trip up one, perhaps two of you. Besides the code (easily cracked by an internet search), the only wrinkle was that you could not share your discovery with other players. @Porthole went silent. @BadgeHoarder was probably dying to say something. When only one had responded last night I put up more Zodiac mentions in the poll to make you think about the previous post.
With respect, I only went silent because I was sure this was merely a bump in the road, prepared for a call out to do a Herculean challenge, and gearing up for a 04:43 Saturday post for the sunrise whilst trying to plan a Friday sunset pic. Priorities. Also, you couldn’t tell anyone. I edited a very old post which allowed for “subtle” posting, as per instructions. I followed the instructions to the letter.
It’s a challenge, it’s not supposed to be easy, and I suppose it’s not supposed to be fun either at times. I played a tight game from Day 1, and as someone who literally did 73 days last year (19 days over), was already 13 days in when we started this year, you have to realise it’s less the wearing and more the attention to detail. Like I said earlier, I’m stubborn, I’m spiteful, and I play very efficiently. I have multiple tabs for all the rules and changes, I have tabs for tracking certain competitors (@rocksinger89 with his damn Fossil - my nemesis, @BadgeHoarder was all over the radar, @UtahExplorer because he was wearing a CWC which is the equivalent of bringing a missile to a knife fight, and @JBird7986 because he was taking everything far too seriously 😂), and I follow @Aurelian activity like a hawk. I deliberately had a twist in the girdle challenge, but that was ruined in five seconds… to be honest I thought that might have been the time to stop as it was getting a little bit too serious for some and it wasn’t as fun for me anymore; I’d waited patiently for nearly a month to have the opportunity to set something for someone and court-side interference was surprising. Unlucky for the rest of you, I’m stubborn and too proud to just quit. Short of dropping a clanger, I’m just in the zone, and I’m all over it. I probably shouldn’t be allowed to compete next time…
For all those who feel aggrieved, I sympathise, but it’s a challenge that has over 50 entrants run by a very, very sharp cookie in @Aurelian. It’s absolute chaos to run something like this, and compared to last year, this was absolutely insane. Ciphers, poetry, reviews, badge-collecting, baiting, trapping, sidebars, double-bluffs, a lives system for the top 10 (this was Sisyphean), and photo competitions. I’m surprised we had as many in at the end as we did. It ended as brutally as it was going to, luckily without bloodshed, nobody wanted to stop.
This is more like being a DM than you might think. Once after some Temple of Somethingorother module, my friends became fascinated by puzzles. Everything that I created thereafter had to have some puzzle at its core. That was work in the pre-internet. I have had the reactions of bitterness and anger when the puzzle wasn't solved.
I try to keep in mind that not everyone thinks like a middle-aged American lawyer and that we each approach problems differently. Both @Porthole and @BadgeHoarder worked harder solving the cipher than I did putting it together. I would be interested in @Pallet_Fork 's method.
This was my thinking. I wanted the game to end. Based on last year's communications with WatchCrunch I knew that any number 5 or under of winners would work. We had seven (soon to be six). I was hoping to get under five. That's all. When I make memes I use a meme generator. With @Kclouis's idea about a cipher I wondered if there was a "Zodiac cipher generator". Using that as a search, this was the first listing. Just type in a message and it spits out a cipher. And it works in reverse. I was worried that it was too easy so I gave it a nonsense title and added minimal text. I only difficulty that I had was downloading an image (hence the wonky photos).
Within a few hours I had a message asking when I was going to wear the Zodiac and another wondering how the players were going to rank themselves. And then, silence. At this point I knew that what was easy for some was invisible for others. I added that poll to remind everyone about the Zodiac theme. The Clint Eastwood photo was from a movie about the "Scorpio Killer" which was based on the Zodiac Killer. That is clearly a Zodiac code. Now he is talking about Zodiac again, maybe I should look at that last post. I was too much in my own head I guess.
When the second player figured it out I knew the game was on a timer. I waited as long as I felt that I could and considered the different times zones so that everyone had a fair shot.
I am sorry if the conclusion was unsatisfactory. Perhaps, that was inevitable. WC should create a badge that reflects the torture endured. That's up to @Max and team.
@Aurelian , I used the same app to decode it as you did to create it. Of course, everything had to be entered manually, since you posted pics, so it took some time to decode. The second message required the Z340 cryptogram, I discovered. I KNEW you were going to throw a wrench in there, although I thought you were going to use the Zodiac's original method of arranging the code (diagonally, down one over two, etc.). Thankfully you didn't, that would have taken much longer.
Once I had the message decoded, I messaged you asking about how they would rank each other and if you were going to post your Zodiac that looks like my Desta Ultra-flat.
When you polled about what watch to wear, I still hadn't seen anyone post to the #1WC about the Zodiac message, so that's why I said to not wear your Zodiac watch in your poll thread - I thought it was too soon and everyone would be disqualified.
@Aurelian , I used the same app to decode it as you did to create it. Of course, everything had to be entered manually, since you posted pics, so it took some time to decode. The second message required the Z340 cryptogram, I discovered. I KNEW you were going to throw a wrench in there, although I thought you were going to use the Zodiac's original method of arranging the code (diagonally, down one over two, etc.). Thankfully you didn't, that would have taken much longer.
Once I had the message decoded, I messaged you asking about how they would rank each other and if you were going to post your Zodiac that looks like my Desta Ultra-flat.
When you polled about what watch to wear, I still hadn't seen anyone post to the #1WC about the Zodiac message, so that's why I said to not wear your Zodiac watch in your poll thread - I thought it was too soon and everyone would be disqualified.
The post I edited was months old, so if you searched for #1wc it would have buried right at the end under all the noise. It required subtle updating, and I effectively whispered into the wind. I was also waiting… when I saw @BadgeHoarder post his list I knew that not many of us had worked it out. I knew it was something… I actually took a lunch break, sat on a park bench away from the office with two phones and a notebook, and started code-breaking.
@Aurelian , I used the same app to decode it as you did to create it. Of course, everything had to be entered manually, since you posted pics, so it took some time to decode. The second message required the Z340 cryptogram, I discovered. I KNEW you were going to throw a wrench in there, although I thought you were going to use the Zodiac's original method of arranging the code (diagonally, down one over two, etc.). Thankfully you didn't, that would have taken much longer.
Once I had the message decoded, I messaged you asking about how they would rank each other and if you were going to post your Zodiac that looks like my Desta Ultra-flat.
When you polled about what watch to wear, I still hadn't seen anyone post to the #1WC about the Zodiac message, so that's why I said to not wear your Zodiac watch in your poll thread - I thought it was too soon and everyone would be disqualified.
@Pallet_Fork welcome to Watchcrunch (eventhough you joined the same time as me)
I had lots of fun in the #1wc . I knocked off tasks and made lots of friends.
You should join us next year! 😂
-Luke
@Pallet_Fork welcome to Watchcrunch (eventhough you joined the same time as me)
I had lots of fun in the #1wc . I knocked off tasks and made lots of friends.
You should join us next year! 😂
-Luke
Thank you! 🤝
I could never win the 1WC, I change watches probably three times a day. I would go nuts! On day two this would be me:
I prefer to sit back and watch the anguish play out.
I hope next year, we don’t have to prove the M-Theory. Or show Terrence Tao how to do Math. Or explain to Stephen Hawkings that you can travel through a blackhole without dying. Or explain to Einstein there are 11 dimensions.
Next year?
IDK that @Aurelian will do this next year unless he has Production Assistants.
Here here to a fellow d&d watch nerd.
@Aurelian mentioned that he might not have time next year.
I was thinking, for next year we could have a different guest judge every week. This is inspired by @Deeperblue’s photographic challenge. Let the guest judge do the work for that week.
This way, we could have @Ichibunz , @Pallet_Fork get involved too. It will be fun.
Thanks for reading
@Aurelian mentioned that he might not have time next year.
I was thinking, for next year we could have a different guest judge every week. This is inspired by @Deeperblue’s photographic challenge. Let the guest judge do the work for that week.
This way, we could have @Ichibunz , @Pallet_Fork get involved too. It will be fun.
Thanks for reading
I might be up for running it - it will be very involved as I’ll try and burn you all out in 2-3 weeks.
#paladin4life
🤘🏻🤙🏻😎
😂
Rockville Pike, hello from MoCo. At this point I haven't read the rest of the post. Guess I should get back to it.