Worlds Part Six: Stormy Weather
Nov. 26th, 2025 12:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
crystalcazzie
Part Six: Stormy Weather
I wasn't puzzling today, so I had a nice relaxed morning.
And churros for breakfast! Excellent start to the day!
I went to the dome and sat outside by myself for a bit. Our gazebo hadn't survived the winds and had collapsed. There was a message in the group chat asking for someone to rescue the flag, so I went to grab it and was soon joined by a couple of others and we managed to retrieve it.
More people joined us after a while, including some ladies from the Netherlands and I got another pin and a fan, which I made very good use of!
I briefly met someone I'd talked to on Reddit but we didn't chat for long.
I had a go at the Freida puzzle that had been used in a pairs round the day before. I didn't do it very quickly, but I wasn't trying to speed it. That's my excuse and I'm sticking to it!
While I was doing it I heard some of the UK people at a nearby table and Jack was explaining the rules of some sort of game. I went and joined them after I was done and it turned out to be Tiddlywinks!
The result of my game against Nic. I won comfortably!
Some of the others then went into the dome for their teams round. I went in too to watch the start.
And got another picture of myself in front of the sign!
The teams had four puzzles to choose from and had to complete two of them. This round had Stitch as one of the options and I saw a few teams choose it, which I wouldn't have recommended. I've done that puzzle and after you've done Stitch himself the background is difficult cos it repeats a lot!
People had been talking about the weather forecast saying that rain was due. It was a welcome idea as it had been so very hot all week! People were looking forward to the rain.
And then... the rain came!
It was so loud in the dome. The rain was thundering down on the roof! Then it was joined by actual thunder and we had a proper storm.
So much so that the power to the big screens went out. But the puzzling continued!
Tiny Timer!
In fact it was raining so much that water started coming through the roof!
Tables had to be moved, but still the puzzling continued!
We then heard a big crash and some of us went to the front entrance to see what had happened...
Nooo! The big screen!
And yes, that is hail. No wonder it was so loud on the roof!
It was quite an experience and I'm glad I was in the dome for it. Feels like I was part of Worlds history!
I did take advantage of a break in the rain to go back to my hotel room though. I watched some of the livestream on YouTube. I was going to go back for the end of the round, but when I left my hotel room I could hear the rain clattering down so I turned around and went straight back in!
I messaged the team about practicing, cos we had planned to that evening, but everyone decided it was better to leave it and be well rested for tomorrow. So that meant that we were going to compete as a team without having ever completed a puzzle together! Our only experience being that one we failed to finish at the beginning of the week!
I did consider having an early night but I wanted to make the most of my time in Spain, so I ventured out to where the UK group had decided to meet that evening. Fortunately the rain had stopped again. I was the first one there, which I hate, so I went for a walk and when I came back another person had arrived. We went in and got a couple of beers. The bar also gave us snacks, which a lot of places in Spain seem to do, but these ones were a bit unusual:
Sweet and savoury! Soft and crunchy!
It was another good evening, so actually I'm glad that my team didn't get to practice together. Otherwise I'd have missed out on this. We talked about puzzles again. I tried to work out which Christmas puzzle I'd have in my teams round the next morning. Three teams rounds had happened that day and they'd all had a Christmas puzzle as one of their options, so I was pretty confident we'd get one too.
I left relatively early as I was puzzling the next day.
And took this pretty picture of the tower at night!
And thus concludes day six. Next up, Teams!
