If it’s a few days after DASH, it’s time for the annual participation statistics post! Please find below an updated version of a table which details the number of teams on the scoreboard for each city in each edition of the DASH puzzle hunt to date.
Location | DASH 1 | DASH 2 | DASH 3 | DASH 4 | DASH 5 | DASH 6 | DASH 7 | DASH 8 | DASH 9 |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Albuquerque, NM | – | – | – | 6 | 6+1 | 3+2+0 | 4+0+0 | – | – |
Atlanta, GA | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | 5+7 | 8+5 |
Austin, TX | – | 2 | 11 | 12 | 13+4 | 10+4+0 | 17+6+0 | 20+4 | 18+4 |
Bay Area, CA | Y(SF) Y(PA) |
7(SR) 59(LA) |
16(SR) 74(SM) |
73(SF) | 34+7(SF) 32+3(HMB) |
53+17+0(SF) 39+5+0(C) |
46+15+0(SF) 37+7+0(SJ) |
48+10(SF) 43+12(PA) |
42+14(SF) 39+9(F) |
Boston, MA | Y | 18 | 26 | 29 | 27+2 | 30+7+1 | 30+6+0 | 38+13 | 33+10 |
Chicago, IL | – | – | 17 | 14 | 10+1 | 15+9+0 | 16+24+0 | 16+16 | 20+19 |
Davis, CA | – | 16 | 15 | 16 | 13+7 | 8+7+1 | 13+7+0 | 12+8 | 15+5 |
Denver, CO | – | – | – | – | – | – | 3+12+0 | 6+7 | – |
Enschede, NL | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | 9+2 |
Houston, TX | Y | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – |
London, UK | – | – | – | – | 6+2 | 8+13+0 | 14+9+0 | 14+8 | 18+6 |
Los Angeles, CA | Y | 7 | 22 | 21 | 15+4 | 15+2+0 (Pasadena) |
12+7+0 (Sta Monica) |
19+17 | 16+6 |
Minneapolis, MN | – | – | – | – | 8+7 | 7+4+0 (recast) |
9+7+0 | 7+9 | 6+17 |
New York, NY | – | 12 | 24 | 25 | 30+7 | 26+15+2 | 29+15+0 | 24+15 | 37+13 |
Portland, OR | Y | 6 | 17 | 19 | 19+2 | 11+7+0 | 10+10+0 | 12+5 | – |
Provo, UT | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | 1+1 |
San Diego, CA | – | – | 7 | – | – | – | – | – | – |
Seattle, WA | Y | 32 | 47 | 49 | 49+2 | 58+4+2 | 60+9+2 | 63+6 | 46+3 |
South Bend, IN | – | – | – | 1 | – | – | – | – | – |
St. Louis, MO | – | – | – | 2 | 2+3 | – | 7+8+1 | 8+10 | 7+11 |
Washington, DC | Y | 14 | 22 | 33 | 31+1 | 27+5+0 | 26+9+0 | 28+12 | 27+13 |
Number of locations | 8 | 10 | 12 | 13 | 15 | 14 | 16 | 16 | 16 |
Here are some initial interpretations:
1) Errors and omissions excepted, with apologies in advance. The Minneapolis DASH 6 recast figures came from the organisers by private e-mail.
2) The numbers are drawn from the scoreboards and may not reflect teams that participate but do not make the scoreboard for whatever reason, or other infelicities. (On the other hand, it does include teams which do make the scoreboard even despite being listed as “not started”.) DASH 1 does not have a public scoreboard on the web site and thus “Y” represents the hunt having happened there with an unknown number of participants. When there are pluses, the number before the first plus reflects the number of teams on the experienced track, the number after the first plus reflects the number of teams on the “new players”/”novice” track (DASH 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9), and the number after the second plus reflects the number of teams on the junior track (DASH 6 and 7 only).
3) Interpret “Bay Area, CA” using the following key: SF = San Francisco (1, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9), PA = Palo Alto (1 and 8), SR = Santa Rosa (2,3), LA = Los Altos (2), SM = San Mateo (3), HMB = Half Moon Bay (5), C = Cupertino (6), SJ = San Jose (7), F = Fremont (9).
4) I’ve been thinking for a while about knocking single-entry cities (Houston in DASH 1, San Diego in DASH 3 and South Bend in DASH 4) out of their own individual rows of the table and into a single combined row, a bit like the Bay Area, CA row. This might make the table easier to deal with. Fingers very firmly crossed that Provo, UT and Enschede don’t prove similar one-offs.
5) The line-up of 16 locations participating in DASH 9 was not too different from that for DASH 8; we lost Denver and previously ever-present Portland, each hopefully for only a year, and instead gained Enschede in the Netherlands and Provo in Utah. Fingers crossed for the return of Albuquerque at some point, too, so I can know where to turn left. (See also this comment from DASH about there having been some interest, that didn’t come to fruition, from Manchester, Mexico City and Vienna.)
6) It’s not a competition to see whose DASH can be the largest; all DASH organiser teams are glorious, generous paragons of virtue, whether their event had one team or 70+, and the community at large thanks them all for the time and effort that they put in. The two-track solution proved its worth again, with each location seeing at least one team on each track.
7) Numbers do appear to be slightly down in several of the larger locations. It’s tempting to wonder to what extent this is a result of demand being down and to what extent this is a result of a lack of availability of supply. Could some of the locations, if they had wanted to, have held bigger events if they had had more GC available? Could some of the locations, if they had wanted to, have held bigger events if they had larger sites for their individual puzzles? Were there many teams who wanted to get the chance to play but didn’t get to play in practice? (As ever, there’s no reason why bigger necessarily has to be better and there’s no sense in deliberately trying to emphasise quantity over quality.)
8) I’m about to do something quite unfair, for the barriers to entry are so vastly different, but here’s a table comparing the growth of DASH with the growth of Puzzled Pint over the last few years, courtesy in part of data from Puzzled Pint’s Matt Cleinman:
Year | DASH locations |
DASH teams |
Month | Puzzled Pint locations |
Puzzled Pint players/GCs |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
2012 | 13 | 300 | April 2012 | 1 | 50 |
2013 | 15 | 295 + 53 | April 2013 | 2 | (N/A) |
2014 | 14 | 307 + 101 | April 2014 | 5 | 255 |
2015 | 16 | 333 + 151 | April 2015 | 17 | 922 |
2016 | 16 | 363 + 159 | April 2016 | 32 | 1461 |
2017 | 16 | 342 + 138 | April 2017 | 39 | 1956 |