London PCAG event

General

• On Saturday, Feb. 25, players gathered in London for the much-anticipated PCAG competition, the follow-up to the New York PCAG event
• -- turned up for "Brunchfast", a pre-event social at JD Weatherspoon's pub
• Meanwhile, nine players and representatives crammed themselves into a phone booth at Trafalgar Square for publicity shots with a professional photographer (by the way, the world record is 14)
• Doors opened at 12 PM for signing in 200 teams, broken into groups of six
• After an introduction by Adrian, the games began at 1 PM
• Goods including t-shirts, mugs and posters were available for sale
• Each team received a special, light blue PCAG bag, and every participant received a PCAG Leitmark
• After the games concluded, the top 8 teams were taken to the London Eye, where they intercepted a conversation in morse code, flashed with torches on either side of the river
• Later, everyone retired to the Horse and Groom pub on Great Portland Street for social interaction helpfully lubricated by alcohol

The Games

• Teams received a sheet of questions to answer for points, and received text messages throughout the day containing trivia and spot challenges
  • 16 questions requiring observation from walking round an area of central London (a triangle between Leicester Square, Trafalgar Square and Picadilly Circus) that we had to text back to HQ for varying amounts of points (10-40). With hindsight the questions were in a good walking order, although those that did it backwards didn't get waylaid by the anti terrorism march and demonstration. (340 points)
  • A special National Gallery section that gave cryptic clues for a trail through the gallery with a bumper 250-point question at the end to tempt us. Also to be texted. (370 points)
  • Six photo questions that required you to MMS photos of your team in various locations (360 plus open-ended 5 points per letter photo)
  • Two questions requiring you to be witnessed either singing as a choir or playing video games (180)
  • Two questions that required you to compete against other teams building a biscuit tower or spelling backwords (60 plus open-ended 10 points per letter spelling).
  • Six? trivia questions texted through the day (60)
  • Three or four other tasks texted through the day, including choir practice, Wacky Races and a conga line
  • The final task was to purchase the largest object possible for £1, with receipt

Results

Leaderboard rank	Team name	Team photo

Facts

• 127 people in the conga line
• 3838 texts sent out
• 1148 texts recieved
• 2 things going completely wrong
  • The first was that culture wardens in Trafalgar Square wouldn't allow any "professional" filming of the events around Nelson's Column.
  • The second was the huge angry protest march which gathered in Trafalgar Square, *on* Nelson's Column...about 30 seconds before the Conga Challenge started right in front of them.
• 0 arrests
• £1 challenge:
  • 5 people sold for £1
  • 3 countries
  • 3 newspapers
  • 1 toilet paper roll