I always test before posting to the group

Trial n Error

----- Original Message -----
From: "azobox"
To:
Sent: Friday, November 29, 2002 1:15 PM
Subject: [LbNA] Test your clues?


> Hello Fellow `Boxers,
> I'm wondering if you "planters" regularly beta test your
> clues.
> I suspect that there is likely a compulsive streak in many of us who
> play this game. So, do you re-work your clues after you write them
> and have someone test them for you?
> I've found that after I've created a set of clues with what I
> imagine
> to be a good mix of clarity, ambiguity, challenge and reward, I then
> have some doubts about all of those things. So I ask a friend or
> relative to walk the clues. Either I shadow them and watch them as
> they walk the trail (or have them tell what they're thinking as
> they
> explore the clues) or I ask for feedback for trouble spots or things
> that seem too easy (that I hadn't intended). I also tend to
> wordsmith
> a bit more at that point as well.
>
> I had a beta tester last weekend who discovered a small but serious
> error in my clues that I was glad to know before I posted to the
> site. It was a simple typo that had devastating consequences.
> Obviously it was fixed.
>
> `Course I've only planted three boxes and am nervous about
> unintentionally sending someone in the totally wrong direction! Maybe
> lots of experience dulls that anxiety, eh?
>
> So, do you test your clues?
>
> azobox
>
>
>
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> So, do you test your clues?

I spend a ton of time vetting them to attempt to make sure they are as I
want them, and that there are no silly errors or things in the terrain I
missed, and that they are "fair" (by my definition) but would never work
with someone else to see how they worked them in a "beta test".

I know I post alot of pretentious noise about semiotics and the role of
the reader, but that stuff is really interesting to me, and letterboxing
clues (at least the ones I like) really bring that theoretical stuff
to real life in the woods. To get into a interpretation/modification
feedback situation with a beta tester wouldn't work for me ... once I
write a clue ... its each reader's' clue ... thus multiple clues ... could
one original clue lead to two different boxes? Do any? :-)

As an aside, I'd say about 1 in 10 boxes I've hunted have had what I
would describe as "errors" (my definition being not what the author
intended). North for south, right for left, bearings wrong by 100 or 180
degrees. You get good at ignoring these sorts of things after you've
been doing this for a while. I found one box with 6 errors ... tho
not surprisingly I was the first to find it after it had been out a
long time, and a couple of the errors resulted from terrain changes.

I will say one of the most annoying things I encounter is vagueness near
the box. V-shaped trees, hollow stumps, gnarled roots, rocks -- at
least in the mid-atlantic region, our woods have tons of these things
per square meter. The V-shaped tree to the writer looks special because
he sees it, and is focusing his attention on it, or perhaps its a bit
bigger to him from his angle, but the reader sees 10 V-shaped trees
that all look the same and is prolly coming from a different angle.
Rather than stop to grid and search and kick up the forest, I usually
just press on, because I'm usually trail running and want to keep my
HR up. This prolly doesn't annoy most folks, just my 2 cents :-) and
of course in my view the reader is always wrong, so I'm fine with it;
annoying prolly isn't the right word -- except I feel writers don't
make this mistake _intentionally_ -- that makes it annoying -- and I
know I use V-shaped trees also, but I'm pretty good about making sure
its the only V-shaped tree within 1000 miles, but, like everyone else,
am often wrong.

Cheers