Brno – Stovky lidí láká každý rok brněnská outdoorová hra TMOU. Podobné řešení hádanek v terénu se těší stále většímu zájmu mladých.
Barbora Šlapáková
219995@mail.muni.cz
It‘s an early November evening and náměstí Svobody (or Freedom Square) in Brno is crowded with hundreds of people: they’ve gathered for the ninth stage of an unusual outdoor, puzzle-solving game. The Brno-based game, TMOU (which means “through the dark“), has developed a cult-like following, as many players even travel to Brno from across the country just to participate.
Among the devotees is this year´s winner, Tomáš Hanžl, of Brno. “I enjoy it so much,“ says Hanžl. “Especially because of the challenge of the puzzles, the possibility to going out and also for the sense of community. I meet there my friends and we spend a wonderfull night together.“
He is one of a growing number of Czechs – and even some Slovaks who travel across the border – to play. How does the Tmou work? People create the teams from 3 to 5 members and apply for the game. A month before the TMOU itself, the teams have to pass the qualification. It means the organizers publicate on their websites a three series of puzzles and the teams have to solve them and send a right results in five hours. The first 200 teams get on the main game, which is realized every November since 2000. The concept is following. All the teams together begin to play in the early evening of Friday somewhere in Brno. From there a puzzle show them the way to the next stage. And this repeats about 15 or 20 times. The trace is led both in the town and surrounding forests and the ciphers are more and more difficult. The game finish on Saturday 12:00.
According to the book Šifry a hry s nimi (the book about cipher-solving games) wroted by Radek Pelánek, Tomáš Hanžl and Ondřej Výborný, the count of realized games rises trough every year. In 2000 one game, in 2003 six games, in 2005 eleven games and this year – 2007 – nearly twenty games. Even the author of the game seems to be puzzled as to why it is so popular. “I really don’t know why do the players do it,“ says with exaggeration Radek Pelánek, the teacher at the Faculty of Informatics at the Masaryk univerzity and one of the authors of TMOU. He adds: “Generally it is said that Czechs are playful. And this is the possibility to spend a time by playing with a people, friends, who have “the same blood group“. But who knows?“
The phenomenon of cipher-solving outdoor games, which extends across our country during last 7 years still interests quite narrow group of people. But probably after few years it will be a common free time activity.
Where does it everything come from? The book Šifry a hry s nimi says, that the roots of encryption went back to the antiquity, when the first scripture had been developed. But there the main sense of ciphers was to make the texts more interesting. Since the time of old Romans and Greeks, ciphers have been used also for government and army purposes.
Solving ciphers just for fun started in 19th century, when Edgar Allan Poe (who was very good both in inventing and solving them) publicated puzzles in magazine and some of them have not been solved untill the end of 20th century. Ciphers also inspired the artist. Jim Sanborn made a sculpture Kryptos for the area of CIA in U.S. and encrypted in it a Russian text about the operations of KGB.
But the history of the cipher-solving outdoor games like TMOU is much more younger. “City games were inspired by Open Blood, an outdoor game for teams, based on Vysočina, which has existed since the mid nineties. It lasts for 24 hours and focuses on orientation and walk. But it isn’t open for public, because it is made by a group of geodesists for their friends,“ notes Radek Pelánek.
So some of the participants of Open Blood decided to prepare it in the city, for bigger amount of people and open to the all interested person. These guys are members of officialy nonexistent (that means it have no legal personality) association Instruktoři Brno (or Instructors of Brno), that organize actions based on experience education. And supported by Instruktoři, the first stage of TMOU was realized in the autumn 2000. According to their websites, it had about 200 participants (60 teams, each 2-5 members). And it found a great tradition.
During seven next years, situation dramatically changed. “This year we have 213 team, that contain 1041 participants. But only 17 teams passed successfully in time,“ says Radek Pelánek. Except the TMOU, there are about 15 or 20 similar games made by another people, for example Bedna, Exit or Osud, mainly in Prague and south Moravia. Not all of them have so much players as TMOU. It depends on many conditions. For example the place, the weather, the difficulty of puzzles and of course the reputation.
But the main reason for the participation is clearly defined. Except the challenge of breaking the ciphers it is the social event for all interested persons. “There is a community of players and a lot of them are my friends now,“ says Tomáš Hanžl. His case isn‘t unusual. According to Radek Pelánek there are about 20 or 30 teams, who travel round the games and participate some of them regularly. But this does not mean, that each of their members pass all the games. A lot of these teams have for example 10 people-base, so the players in team „circulate“ in accordance to their time and other possibilities. That means that A, B, C and D participate in one game and for the next game B is for example ill, so the team is composed from A, C, D and E.
“Typical participant is student or young worker, who started playing during his studies and don’t want to leave it. Yes, and there are more men, than women,“ adds Martina Hanžlová, Tomáš´s wife and other well experienced participant. There aren’t a big difference between players and organizers. These two groups connect each other closely. Some teams created their own game, but still take a part and enjoy the participance in the other prevalent games.
Right this situation caused relatively great enlargement of this “phenomenon“. And the other reason is the developement of the technologies. Both of organizers TMOU confirmed, that without internet the game´s realization would be very difficult and in case of the qualifications maybe impossible. But still the human factor is most important. First of all the excitement of organizers, because they do it all as a volunteers, without any award except good feelings.
“I organize because it gives me a lot,“ says Pelánek. “Not only the possibility to improve my organizing skills, but also to spend a time with very interesting people in the author team, doing an activity, which has a sense for me.“
The fact, that organizing activities like this, has a sense verifies not only the growing number of satisfied players. Last year there were realized about 17 games with more than 3,000 participants. Radek Pelánek adds: “I think the counts of both players and games grow for a few years now. Especially there are possibilities in the regions in the Western Bohemia, because there are no games, yet.“
And what about foreign countries? “There are even some games in abroad – in the concrete in Dortmund (Germany) and Linköping (Sweden),“ says Ivo Cicvárek, the other organizer of TMOU, and adds: „But both of them are inspired by Czech format. Quest, the Swedish game was realized by Czech students who studied there.“
The good news is, that there are no conditions required before. No technical education, no extra physical skills (except the ability to walk more or less kilometres). Mostly it depends only on your brain capabilities. Of course, previous experience is advantage, but there are also games for beginners. If you would like to participate, go to the adress below. You find here a calendar with links to the particular games. Enjoy!
1 comment:
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