kevinr: Arisia is the younger, hipper(, sexier?) Boston-area Science Fiction convention, which I enjoyed well enough when I attended a couple years ago but wasn't completely in love with. The MIT Mystery Hunt is a weekend-long puzzle-solving competition, the prize of which is getting to run next year's Hunt, and so this year it's being run by decent but non-MIT folk, so it will be fun, but less fun than usual, and Dan Katz's team will probably win it again. They both happen Columbus Day weekend in January, and I can't really do them both. Cost is not really an issue one way or the other.