Equinox 71: Star Trek

 The 71st Equinox Word Games Party was held in Berkeley on March 18, 2023.

Theme: Star Trek

Name tags: Technobabble Acronyms
Wall games:
    Out of Left Field cryptics by Henri and Josh (Hot and Trazom)
    "Outer Space without a Chorus", an acrostic (grid, clues) by Pam Hampton
    "Spock" by Rick Rubenstein (Rubrick), excerpted from the 2012 National Puzzlers' League Con Extravaganza, "Spaceportland"
    "Letter Bankers" by Martin Eiger (Wrybosh)
Mixer: Make it ... by Rick Rubenstein (Rubrick)
Paper-and-pencil puzzle: Opposite Episode by Stephen Ng
Whole room game: Start Wreck Two by Kid Beyond (Murdoch)
Performance game: Scar Talk by NeilFred Picciotto (Renfield)
Paper-and-pencil puzzle: The Trouble with Triples by Vynce Montgomery
Creative game: Exquisite Fruit by Todd McClary (T McAy), presented by Debbie Goldstein

Exquisite Fruit

A creative game by Todd McClary (T McAy), presented at Equinox 71 by Debbie Goldstein

Players write trivia questions in “exquisite corpse” fashion, with each player contributing words while only able to see the last word contributed.

Full instructions, including a link to a printable sheet.

The Trouble with Triples

A paper-and-pencil puzzle by Vynce Montgomery

It is well known (though perhaps untrue) that English never allows words with triple letters. Here we demonstrate some of the extreme conditions that can temporarily create such atrocities.

PDF

Start Wreck Two

A whole-room game by Kid Beyond (Murdoch)

Your mission: Guess a bunch of famous women whose names have been scrambled.

Each attendee gets a two-page answer sheet (PDF). Don't print duplex as page 1 will be used to occlude page 2, sliding it down to reveal one line at a time. The presenter reads instructions aloud from this sheet (PDF).

Star Trek: Opposite Episode

A paper-and-pencil puzzle by Stephen Ng.

Kirk and Spock are here and they have sent a message to The Enterprise, and it is your job to decode it. The message is long, so we've broken it up across multiple tables.

Each table gets a different version of the puzzle (largely but not entirely the same clues and answers). The final answers from the eight table chain together to form a message.

Download the zip file which contains the following:

• "Equinox instructions.pdf" - instructions to be read aloud by the presenter
• "TABLE [number] - Answer Sheet.pdf" - this is the sheet where you write down the answers.
• "TABLE [number] - Clue Sheet.pdf" - this is the sheet that has the clues.
• "TABLE [number] - Letter Sheet.pdf" - this file should be printed on transparency film and then cut out.

Make it ...

Mixer from Equinox 71: "Make it ..." by Rick Rubenstein (Rubrick)

Each attendee is given a random strip. The right-hand side features a query spoken by a Star Trek: The Next Generation character that can be paired up with a reply by Captain Picard on the left side of someone else's strip. All of Picard's replies are of the form "Make it [X]", where X rhymes with "so".

When all questions are paired up with appropriate replies, it forms a loop. Everyone then flips over their strip, revealing a single word on the back. These words spell out a message from the crew, which can be answered with one final line from Picard.

Make sure to print the Backs (PDF) so that the (upside-down) "Captain" on the first page sits behind the strip on the first page of Fronts (PDF) with "Make it Moe" on the left. Also note that the printouts are in the solution order, so after printing and cutting, you'll need to shuffle before distributing strips.

Technobabble Acronyms

Nametag instructions from Equinox 71

Turn your name into a TECHNOBABBLE acronym!

Examples:

Randomly Integrated Cosmological Klystron

Neo-EInsteinian Levitating FRame EDitor

Equinox 70 and 71 dates

 The 70th Equinox Word Games Party will be held on April 4, 2020.

The 71st will be held on September 12, 2020.

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Both those dates were canceled, of course.