2004 U.S. Puzzle Championship Winners

Fortran IV writes "The winner of the 2004 Google U.S. Puzzle Championship has been announced. Roger Barkan, last year's runner-up, scored 367 of a possible 432 points by solving 22 of 25 puzzles in just 2-1/2 hours. (It would take me an hour just to copy down all the answers.) This was previously mentioned here. The complete test is still available for the fun of it."

Comments

Google interview process?

[Grant29]

I wonder if Google takes some of the higher placed winners and offer them jobs? These contestants are probably the brainiacs Google would like to employ.

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11 Gmail invitations availiable

Re:Google interview process?

[mdelcorso]

You'd think that, but Roger is the most normal genius you'll ever meet. Orders of magnitude more normal that I am for sure.

Although his personal hygine has been in question in the past he does have a real job...

Re:Google interview process?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's why Google provides food, showers, laundry, haircuts, an onsite doctor, and other perks

Re:Google interview process?

[Rageon]

It's actually not all that uncommon for a company to do this. I've actually competed in a programming competition sponsored by Digikey (http://www.digikey.com/). When you think about it, the money they spend on crappy prizes a day of showing the geeks around is pretty smart. Basically, they bring the best students at schools from the area, and then figure out who the best amongst them are...and offer them jobs. Pretty smart idea, really.

Re:Google interview process?

[ZorbaTHut]

Probably. If you remember the Google Code Jam, I was #1 in the world before the finals (and bombed in the finals, so it goes.) There wasn't any pressure about "you should work for us", but it was quite clear that if anyone was *interested* in working for them, it was a definite possibility.

AFAIK only two people were interested - me being one of them - and we both now have jobs at Google, although I don't start for another week and a half.

I'd be surprised if this wasn't a similar deal.

Re:Energy

[jwcorder]

It's not an energy drink. Einstein used to stay awake for days thinking about things. He also would forget to comb his hair or bathe, change clothes that kind of stuff. They get so worked up thinking about a solution to a problem that they enter their own worlds, and forget about everything from tv to all people around them. Crazy....

Here's a site for all you puzzle fans...

[queenofthe1ring]

A great online puzzle site can be found here.

Warning! can be very addictive, especially since the pieces make a most satisfying click noise when you snap them together. The site logs your completion times for the puzzles and the various types of pieces, so this can help everyone practice for next years contest.

Different/similar images note differences, etc...

[Shanep]

Since I was a child, I could always solve these puzzles within seconds.

How? I cross my eyes so that the two images form an overlapped image to my perception. So I see three images, but concentrate on the "middle" image. This takes some concentration to retain focus and alignment, to begin with, but it does not take long to master doing it quickly.

All the differences appear to flash and really jump out in an instant. That's about the best I could describe the effect. The hard part is trying to circle the differences with a pen whilst holding this state, because the pen comes into just one eyes view and causes loss of alignment.

Anyone else do this?

Well, I got 7/25 right ...

[admiralh]

for a score of 82. Though I really got 8, but I misentered the answer for 2.3, so is cost me 11 poins (-5 plus not getting the 6 it was worth). I still had fun, though. The final rankings haven't been posted yet, so I don't know how well I did comparatively. I did score better than last year, though.

I just finished number 1 and submitted it with 8 seconds to spare.

I got 1, 2.1, 3, 6, 8, 10 and 12 right. I missed 2.3, 5, and 16.

I tried a few others (7, 9 especially) and realized I would not finish them in time.

It seems they were much better organized this year. Last year, the server melted right at the deadline, and I wasn't able to submit my final answers until about 5 minutes after the deadline. Also, this year we got email confirmation of our scores, which is really nice. I'm eager to see the final statistics.

Those people that scored best must practice these type of puzzles constantly and know the exact techniques to be able to solve them so quickly.

More power to them.

Re:Awesome!

[ZeroExistenZ]

Has happened before...

Slashdot Slashdotted

Re:Different/similar images note differences, etc.

[Anonymous Coward]

yes - as a kid I too used the same trick (I'm some 50yrs older now but still works) - works well for stereo images though often I find my eyes need time to re-adjust - as a kid I used to look at regular patterns and 'move' the images of left and right eye to overlap on different components, I presume its a trick of moving the eyeball but retaining focus

Re:Different/similar images note differences, etc.

[Ztras]

Exactly. It's called stereopsis and it is how those 'magic eye' puzzles work. Any differences will literally jump out at you.

http://members.lycos.co.uk/brisray/optill/vision 3. htm

Richard Feynman did same

[bstadil]

His girlfriend would write him encoded letters and he'd figure out how to break the code

Richard Feynmans sister used to do the same while he was at Los Alamos. Drove the censors nuts.

Read Surely you are Joking Mr Feynnman if you haven't already done so. Well worth it.