An Amazing Race

On Saturday we went on a Puzzle Race organised by BANG called Bang Appétit. The puzzles were all based around food, one of my personally favourite topics, and covered a nice range of puzzles types.

As an example, for puzzle four we were given two identical shish-kebabs. That was all we were given. We noticed there were five types of vegetable on the sticks and two pieces of each type. If you took the number of pieces between each type as an index into the name of that type you got a letter. Add the letters together in the order the vegetables were on the stick and, voila, you have the answer. We got close unaided but ended up getting a hint which just confirmed we were on the right track.

It helped immensely that we were on Jesse's team. Jesse had played or helped with most of the BANG races and knew the way their nefarious minds worked. He's also a smart cookie and all round cool guy. We met Jesse through Andrew Fort who was over here for Google in-person interviews (I referred him).

After the race we stopped at a lookout (forgotten the name...something Battery) and Tanya took some photos of the Golden Gate Bridge. We had dinner at a little Italian place near Jesse's apartment in San Francisco called "Vino Et Cucina" (I think), which has a giant tomato over the front door. After dinner we watched the Fifth Element at Jesse's place on his projector.

All in all it was a great day albeit quite tiring =]