Worlds Part Five: Pairs

[crystalcazzie]

                      Part Five: Pairs

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Here I am, ready for pairs with my badged up lanyard, puzzle necklace and puzzle piece earrings!  I also have a puzzle piece bracelet that you can't see here.  Allison gave it to me and I wore it so much it fell apart!  

Lynn and I met up and headed in for our round.  It was at 9am, which was good cos it meant the dome hadn't heated up to its sauna temperature yet!  

We had a choice between a round Barbie puzzle and a rectangular Student Days.  I immediately pointed out that I'd done Student Days before and therefore it would be a good choice.  I don't think Lynn was very happy with it though, since it's a very busy puzzle.  But between my previous experience and the fact that round puzzles have space issues, which is bad enough as a solo competitor but even worse when there's two of you trying to fit things in, we decided to go for Student Days.

We'd been talking so much we nearly missed the countdown and were still cutting seals when the actual puzzling time started... 

The fruits of our labour!  Done in 1:01:00.  That placed us 90th.  The 85th pair (last ones to qualify based on time alone) took 1:00:06.  So we were 54 seconds off qualifying!  Particularly annoying when you remember our slow start and that during the puzzling time we swapped places to get a new perspective but it didn't really help much so we switched back pretty quickly.  What if we hadn't done that?  Would we have saved those precious seconds and got through to the semi finals?  

Or would we just have reduced our time by 53 seconds and been only one second off qualifying, which I think would have been even worse!  

We watched the start of the next round, which our teammates were in, and then went outside to the tables where Puzzle Chicken was taking place.   Puzzle Chicken was where a group of people all had a 99 piece puzzle to complete each.  The timer counted down from 15 minutes and everyone had to decide when they were going to start puzzling.  The person who started last and still completed their puzzle in time was the winner.  Even if someone who started before them completed theirs in a quicker time.  

We had to write down our times before we started puzzling.  But we could wait until just before we started before doing so.  And you can change your mind up until that point too.  A lot of mind games were being played with people not writing stuff down, or putting a really low time to try and get others to start later than they otherwise would before changing it to a higher one.  

I didn't try to play any mind games.  I went for seven minutes cos seven is my lucky number.

And I failed.  

After that we went back into the dome to see how our teammates did in their pairs round.  They completed their puzzle in 55 minutes, which was a great time but not fast enough to qualify. 

In fact, Lynn and I had a go at the puzzle from that round as well and managed to do it in 47:53!  We were very happy about that but we still wouldn't have qualified either!  

We then had a go at the Barbie puzzle from our own round:

58:03.

That would have been a qualifying time. 

I'm not sure Lynn will ever forgive me! 

But no, the situation was different.  The table was different.  We were outside.  We did it in a different orientation that we would have done in the dome.  You can't say that we would definitely have qualified if we'd chosen Barbie.

But we might have...

We then decided to go and find the Piece Relax pop up shop, which involved walking through the park.

Off for a walk with mama.

A lovely little grotto we didn't see the first time we were there.  

At the pop up shop we were put into small groups and given a puzzle to complete, which then started off a storyline where we went into the hotel to chase a rabbit and go down to an area where we found this:

I think the first people there all did a part of the big puzzle and added their bit to it when they went down there, but by the time we arrived it was already done so we just put our bits on top of where they would go.  

We then walked around the room with a piece of card, using design presses to add a bit to the design at each checkpoint, resulting in this:

Very pretty.

Also a clever idea, since it meant we walked along all the tables where their products were on display! 

I did like some of their Halloween designs, but they weren't selling them at the location, just guiding people to their website.  Which you can't order from the in UK.  I think some of their stuff is on Amazon though.

Outside again they had a mini puzzle race, where you put a 40 piece puzzle together as quickly as possible.  If you did it in under five minutes you got a 3D lollipop puzzle and the top three over the whole week won a 1000 piece puzzle each!

How long would I take?

2:26!  Not bad!  Almost a full minute off the top time though!  

We went back through the park and admired the squirrels:

Well, hello there!  

"Food?  Do you have food for me?"

Posing.

Just in case you thought I was exaggerating about how hot it was there!  

Pretty building.  Lynn and I had ventured into this area in search of ice cream.

And we found it!  Vanilla Coffee Whisky!  Very nice too!

We joined some of the UK people back at the dome.  I apparently looked hot enough for people to ask if I was ok!  

Tickets for the UK Nationals went on sale and were announced during the next round.  I didn't think they'd all sell out, but I bought mine anyway just in case!  I also got a pairs ticket and messaged Ved to let her know.   

I felt a bit bad about it, but I told Lynn that I'd partnered with Ved last year and we'd already talked about doing so again.  She said it was fine and I got the impression that she had her own partner too, so that was good.  

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We had drinks at a bar that was just a couple of minutes walk from my hotel.  It felt really weird to be going out at 9:45pm!  Normally that's bed time!  But it was great.  I chatted with people.  Jack and I added each other on MySpeedPuzzling.  

We talked about how some puzzles aren't popular and you can be the best in the world simply by being the only person who has completed it!  I said there was one of those for me, but when I went to check I found that someone else had got a better time than me THAT VERY DAY and pushed me down to 2/2.  *shakes fist*

This was one of my favourite evenings of the week.  It was so nice talking about puzzling with other people who are also into it!  I also watched some of the coverage on YouTube while I was in my hotel room before going out and it was so surreal to be watching the dome and seeing people in the comments talk about it while knowing that I was just there.  I'd been with those people.  I'd sat at one of those tables.  

And because my hotel room was so close to the bar it was an easy walk back to collapse into bed and end the day!

And thus concludes Day Five.  Next up, A Storm is Brewing!