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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.
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.
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.)
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.
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
...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?