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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."
Dear God, It would take me a week just to figure out which side was up
Damn puzzle nerd
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
Wait a minute... did we just slashdot Google?
/.'ed already!!!
http://jayceecorder.blogspot.com
...a Google cache of a Google site that got slashdotted: Click Here
It would be cool if it didn't suck.
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....
http://jayceecorder.blogspot.com
I am trying to get the actual challenge file, but for the moment I have the 180k instructions pdf mirrored here:
http://www.css-auth.com/google/
If/When I get the challenge file I will put it up there.
Ads? What ads?
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.
~*~ ~*~ ~*~
yes, girls read /. too...
Slashdotting Google! Is there nothing sacred left? How about slashdotting Slashdot?
I heard on NPR that the winner was a 'mathematician from Laurel Maryland'. I wonder who he works for??
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?
War crimes, torture, lies, illegal spying... Would someone give Bush a blowjob, already, so he can be impeached?
I'm sorry, I forgot to add this. Nothing says "Hey Ladies", quite like "I've actually competed in a programming competition..."
So your saying if I were drunk and had crossed vision, I could easily solve the puzzles faster than any sober man. Maybe thats how he finished these puzzles in 2 1/2 hours, the answeres just jumped out.
I was roommates with Roger at summer camp way back in the day. His girlfriend would write him encoded letters and he'd figure out how to break the code. Silly me, I thought it was a waste of time....
"TV is great! Every New Year's I make a resolution to watch more TV." - Ann Coulter
Figuring out how to get to it while its slashdotted!
(\_/)
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(> <) to help him achieve world domination.
The complete test is still available for the fun of it.
Not after we got to it!
Not a Twitter sockpuppet... but I wish I was.
27: At the current rate that the RIAA is suing file sharers, and given the world birthrate and spread of broadband, how long before they sue you? Negative and imaginary answers not accepted.
28: The irresistable force (Slashdot users) and the immovable object (Google file servers) are about to clash. Predict the result to five decimal places.
(After all, we need questions with real world significance, don't we?)
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
"It is a solemn thought: dead, the noblest man's meat is inferior to pork."
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.
Hopelessly pedantic since 1963.
Exactly. It's called stereopsis and it is how those 'magic eye' puzzles work. Any differences will literally jump out at you.
n 3. htm
http://members.lycos.co.uk/brisray/optill/visio
I checked all through Yahoo....
It's not that the puzzles are individually that difficult, but that there are so many of them. Several of the puzzles (a word search with some letters missing, for example, or some of the "matching pictures") can be brute forced in time. The catch is, there really isn't that much time...the winner averaged a puzzle solved every 6 minutes 49 seconds!
I could solve some of the easiest puzzles in that time, but the more difficult puzzles would take me (and most other solvers) MUCH longer than 7 minutes to figure out.
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.
Help fight continental drift.