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Google-Sponsored 2004 US Puzzle Championship
kublai kahn writes "On the NPR Weekend
Edition Sunday puzzle segment this past weekend, Will Shortz mentioned
the 2004 US Puzzle Championship,
sponsored by Google. Registration
closes on Thursday 17 June, and the competition is conducted online on
Saturday 19 June. "The top two US contestants will be selected to
join the US Team at the World Puzzle Championship in Opatija,
Croatia. Prizes will be awards to the top US contestants." (This was
mentioned on Slashdot last
year as well.) I'll be away from my internet connection over the
weekend, but perhaps others from the Slashdot crowd can compete.
Check the practice
test to see if it's your cup of tea."
You'll be away from your internet connection?
Away...
uh...
I just don't get it.
<grrr>
The first puzzle would be how to avoid getting slashdotted.
Get the PDF file containing the instructions while the server has been slashdotted. Now that's a challenge!
For the real test, you should print and read the Preview Instructions well in advance of the actual test. The Preview Instructions may include special last-minute instructions that will not appear elsewhere.
...get...instructions...well...in...advance...but. ..must...get...last...minute...instructions...
Okay I'm out. My brain already hurts...
I was in the park the other day wondering why frisbees get bigger and bigger the closer they get - and then it hit me.
Gateway Timeout
The following error occurred:
A gateway timeout occurred. The server is unreachable. Retry the request. (GATEWAY_TIMEOUT)
Please contact the administrator.
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
. . . but the practice test page is down (./'ed already?) so here's a copy courtesy of the wayback machine (the last link is an index to several versions of that practice page.)
Good luck all.
everything in moderation
And when I discovered they weren't talking about tetris, the white dove of hope came crashing back to earth in a fiery ball of feathers.
At least I get some roasted avian out of the deal...
#define CLUE 0
> this past weekend, Will Shortz mentioned
If you ever have the chance to hear Will Shortz speak in person, it is well worth it. If you have an interest in word puzzles, cross or otherwise, he is very interesting. Plus, he will usually play a game with the audience for a good amount of time.
The opinions expressed above are those off one side of my brain, the other side and my employer may not agree.
Do you actually think that there are 200,000 slashdotters that actually click links to RTFA? Let reduce that number down a bit.. say 5?
Hmmm.
Here's a puzzle for you: walk on a bridge and find a way to instantaneously reduce the weight on the bridge by an amount that is exactly your weight.
Suppose you were elected to the finals. Do they pay any flight/room costs? (Due to the recent Slashdotting, I can't RTFA and answer my own question.)
"Yes, I have a Disaster Recovery Plan. It's called my Resume"
1. Battleships - 5 points; 5 point bonus
Locate the position of the 10-ship fleet in the grid. The fleet is shown to the right of the grid: one 4-unit battleship, two 3-unit cruisers, three 2-unit destroyers, and four 1-unit submarines. Each segment of a ship occupies a single cell. Ships are oriented either horizontally or vertically, and they do not touch each other, not even diagonally. The numbers on the right and bottom edges of the grid reveal the total number of ship segments that appear in each respective row or column. (For solving purposes, ignore the letters above and the numbers left of the grid.)
2. Pentomino Division - 5 points
Divide each of the six shapes into two pieces so that each of the 12 Pentominoes (shown at right) is used exactly once. The Pentominoes can be rotated and/or reflected. Answer: Enter the letters pairs corresponding to each of the six original shapes.
3. Dutch Segway - 5 points
Which of the numbered drawings is an exact mirror image of the drawing in the upper left?
4. Corral - 20 points; 5 point bonus
Draw a single closed loop along the grid lines so that all the numbered squares are inside the loop. Additionally, each number equals the count of interior squares that are directly in line (horizontally or vertically) with that number's square, including the square itself. In the example, the square containing the 4 is directly in line with two squares above it and one square to its right. Including the square itself, the total count is four.
5. Rotator Mosaic - 20 points
Divide the grid (along the grid lines) into exactly 10 symmetric pieces (each appearing unchanged if rotated 180, including its shape and the pattern of any white or black disks).
6. A to Z Crisscross - 25 points; 5 point bonus
Place the 19 words into the grid in crisscross style (words appear either across or down, and all words formed in the grid appear in the word list), so that there are exactly 26 word intersections--each in one of the highlighted squares. Additionally, each of the letters from A to Z appears exactly once in the highlighted squares.
Hmmm.
I used to try doing this kind of thing, back when I thought that MENSA was a good organization to try to belong to.
Looking at the practice test, I realize that I don't really like word puzzles. It's that last criss cross puzzle that got me. There's no general solution to word puzzles; you just arbitrarily try answers till you get it. And the final solution doesn't have any beauty.
Take the rotator puzzle. This is an interesting puzzle, and the algorithm to find the final solution may be very interesting indeed, even applicable in video processing and the like...
But don't include NP complete problems in your puzzle. I don't like them. The algorithm and method of solving isn't interesting or insightful, it's just boring and tedious.
I am disrespectful to dirt! Can you see that I am serious?!
Why did this site melt under slashdotting in five minutes? From Netcraft:
Windows 2000 Microsoft-IIS/5.0 14-Jun-2004 199.165.204.120 Micro Serve
Hopefully they solve that one before the real contest starts.
This practice puzzle is a typical example of what you might expect to see at the Championship. There are other types of puzzles in the test, so if you don't score well on this don't lose all hope!
.
The following might sound easy but it's harder than it sounds. The hardest puzzles are always the ones with the fewest rules!
PRACTICE PUZZLE
Join the dots with a line. There are only four rules:
1. Only straight lines are to be used (no curves, bends or corners)
2. These straight lines must start and end at a dot
3. You may only go through a dot one time
4. You may NOT intersect lines
5. You may NOT lift the pen from the paper during the process of solving the puzzle once you have laid it on the paper
Are you ready?
Here's the puzzle:
.
(NOTE: If you run out of ink once you start the puzzle you will be disqualified)
(NOTE 2: this is a 2-dimensional puzzle. Any attempts to solve this puzzle in three-dimensional space will result in disqualification.)
Scoring:
less than 3 minutes - Incredible! We recommend you take part in the competition. May we commend your parent's rearing skills!
3-6 minutes - Pretty good. If your skills in other types of puzzles are at this level or higher, we recommend signing up! You might have been deficient in some nutrients as a child.
6-12 minutes - Decent. If this type of puzzle is not your forté and you are better at others you might still have a chance.
12-20 minutes - Poor. Sorry, but your dot-connecting skills are not up to par with our competition. This is probably because you were dropped on your head as a baby.
Over 20 minutes - Abysmal. Your parents must have a postgraduate degree in any social sciences subject. Thus is life.
"We have an A-Bomb...what more do you want, mermaids?" --I.I. Rabi, speaking in defense of Robert Oppenheimer
They had a puzzle similar to the mirror image one, except it asked which was exactly the same. You could easily identify mismatches by placing the images side-by-side and "Magic Eye"'ing them, as you would for a stereogram. Images that are exactly the same will be fine, but images that differ even slightly will have blurry smudges when observed this way. It's like a quick 2-D diff. I told them this was a flaw and I'm glad to see them change the puzzle.
blarg.
Google + Boggle =
Boogle! Fun for the entire family! Do a hidden word search on each Google query!
Bryan R.
The price of freedom is eternal vigilance, or $12.50 as seen on eBay.....
The password is world.
Six score characters.
Brevity being wit's soul
I have enough space.
...it's Puzzlemaster Will Shortz. Please show proper respect, or we will send a (24-Down) to (10-Across) out your porch light.
I wonder if the US's best puzzler, Wei-Hwa Huang, will compete in the online tournament. He won the world championships a couple of years ago and finished second last year. I went to college with this guys and he was a dweeb even by Techer standards. All freshmen go to an orientation camp on Catalina Island and every year's there's a "talent show." Wei-Hwa entered the talent show and showed how he could solve a Rubik's Cube after only glancing at it once. He would quickly look at the cube, then walk around the room trying to be funny while he solved it without looking at it again. Each joke was followed by what can only be described as a very uncomfortable silence... I think Wei-Hwa works for Google now, an interesting coincidence?
Join the dots with a line. There are only four rules:
1. Only straight lines are to be used (no curves, bends or corners)
2. These straight lines must start and end at a dot
3. You may only go through a dot one time
4. You may NOT intersect lines
5. You may NOT lift the pen from the paper during the process of solving the puzzle once you have laid it on the paper
Are you ready?
"I see five rules"
"I'm sorry, but there are actually only four rules"
[ZOT!]
"AAAGGGGHHHHHHHH!!!!!"
char *mySig;
It's in the middle of f'n nowhere and you want me to go there to solve puzzles? What am I supposed to do for fun, cross the border and pick me up some romanian women???......
sign me up...
Wheel of Time: Book by Book and Sumview (summary review) Bigdady92 style: http://bigdady92.blogspot.com/
Oh, you have to love the opt-in selection on the registration page:
Click here if you would like to be contacted by Google regarding employment opportunities and other promotions.
Pay me $100k to work for them or spam me to decrease my mortgage payment while I increase my penis size; it's all the same, right? Why, Google, why?