Eric's Puzzle Party

Eric's Puzzle Party, or EPP for short, was a roughly yearly puzzle gathering organized by Eric Harshbarger and run in the locale of Auburn, Alabama. It was first run in 2004 and was last run in 2017. Eric states that he does not plan on hosting additional parties in the future. The gatherings took on several different forms, ranging from a standard puzzle hunt to a puzzle creation challenge to a packet of optimization puzzles. These events have also inspired other puzzle parties in the area, such as Puzzle Potluck and the Auburn Puzzle Party.

Format
Rather unusually, there is no explicit team size limit. However, each person has a certain point value, depending on past participations and victories. Additionally, remote and out-of-town players get discounted point values as well. Teams have a point limit instead, which serves as a way to balance out the skill levels of the teams.

Usually, teams receive a packet of puzzles to start, although there may be additional puzzles that can be unlocked later. Different parties have different means of scoring points - sometimes, there is a point bonus for solving puzzles quickly, and in other parties puzzles are more open-ended optimization challenges where the goal is to maximize a score according to some function.