The IPP was a great success!

Dear Lord how am I going to explain this to Mrs S?

There's not going to be a proper blog post today. I am currently in Paris attending the madness that is the International Puzzle Party. Luckily for me it is the one place where crazy misfits like me can feel at home - puzzlists from around the world meet up to catch up on news, new developments in the design of puzzles and also to meet new friends. There's a design competition and an exchange - I was very privileged to be the exchange assistant for a very talented young man called Jean-Marc Haché. Even after a catastrophic failure of most of his exchange puzzles due to freight damage, with a large pot of superglue we managed to make good many of them and he still managed to exchange a good number of puzzles and I was so pleased to see him smiling at the end.

Today there was the "free for all" which is the puzzle party itself - puzzles are given and bought. I spend pretty much all my cash in next to no time and then moved on to PayPal. My haul is pictured above and I am delighted! Mrs S on the other hand will be deeply unhappy as I have no idea where they are going to go. I may end up sleeping in the street if I survive the night that I get home.

My thanks go to the organisers for arranging such a wonderful event and I am already looking forward to meeting my friends again at both the next Midlands Puzzle Party as well as everyone at a future IPP.