I've started a new thread on this as it warrants its own discussion. Myself, David and Kevin have already been discussing the format, however my gut reaction is that I think these are excellent suggestions - thank you for posting them. We were planning to do the first 3 suggestions anyway, however a fixed finishing time may be a good plan as we are worried about it taking a long time, particularly given people (including myself) are planning on coming down after work.hwolge wrote:
tpfkar wrote:
However we are also planning a warm-up event on the evening of Thursday May 17th. This will be along the lines of the idea which seemed to be well-received when posted earlier; a starting station is drawn in advance, and then all the other stations which have to be visited are drawn at the start of the challenge, and you have to plan your route as you go. I don't want that to take all night, so will work out a sensible number of stations. We'll work out which zones to use nearer the time.
May I humbly suggest the following setup for the warm-up challenge:
* Use a fixed start station (and quite possibly a fixed end station as well?)
* Limit it to Z1 & Z2.
* Draw 15 (?) random stations. Enough to make planning interesting.
* Put a time limit on the event, i.e. get the highest number of target stations before XX o'clock. If two teams share maximum number (quite possibly all of them) the quickest time for this number of stations is the winner!
My current plan is to write a computer program to generate the 15 stations, but do it in such a way that I see the starting station only before printing a batch and sealing in an envelope. Announce the start station. Then start the clock when the envelope is opened at the station, coincidentally just as a train is coming into the platform. This will save faffing (I can't really be bothered writing out all station names onto small pieces of paper), people having to write the stations down, and also be faster - as we are likely to be pushed for time.
I'd like to open this up for comments however. One thing I've been saying on the emails going round about this is that this is a brand new challenge so there is no precedent - this is the time for innovative ideas before the more traditional (perhaps ) challenge on the Friday.