Surprise

When I walked into the hallway that my class was in, I saw that my classmates were waiting outside of class. That was normal. What was unusual was that my classroom was dark and neither the teacher nor the TA were inside. I thought that there might have been some sort of incident, though I hoped that it wasn't a major incident and that we would have our class with only a slight delay. 

Someone opened the door for us to let us in while we waited, and we saw that Dawson left some things for us. On the board were instructions for our puzzler, and on our tables were encrypted messages. On my table, there was a map of the campus. One of my classmates that sat near me suggested that Dawson may be in a different location on campus, and we were to look for him using the code.

The entire class started working on decoding the message. Each student had his or her own message, though we all shared the same decryption key so we could share some of our solutions. Our solution told us to head to the steps of Wyatt, and it told us to bring the map, pencils, and calculators.

The class departed for Wyatt. I found it a bit unusual to see a group of students making decisions unanimously, decisively, and independently, but it just reflects the caliber of the students at a program like this. At Wyatt, we saw an envelope, and inside was another encrypted message that pointed to "Cohen." We headed over in alphabetical order as requested by the second message, and at Cohen Memorial Hall, we found our instructor and TA. It took us about twenty minutes, I believe, to solve the entire puzzle, and Dawson told us about some of the difficulties that previous classes faced.

When we returned to our classroom, we had another lesson student lesson. After that, we worked on extremely challenging Sudoku puzzles that really tested our brains. That lasted all the way up to lunch, and we had another lesson after lunch. For the rest of class, we practiced with logic. We went beyond classical logic, and we discussed various forms of fuzzy logic. For study hall, we presented on our mathematicians. I went today, and I believe only half of the class presented today. I'm glad I have that over with.