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?

[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?