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2005 Google U.S. Puzzle Championship
Fortran IV writes "Registration is open for the 2005 Google U.S. Puzzle Championship, Saturday, June 18. Two winners will join Team USA at the 2005 World Puzzle Championship in Eger, Hungary (tourist info here if you read Hungarian). If you're the type who plays 12 simultaneous chess games in your head while debugging code and memorizing logarithm tables, you might have a chance of teaming up with last year's champ Roger Barkan (previous Slashdot coverage). If you just like puzzles, register here for the most intense (and fastest) 2-1/2 hours of the year. For a faint shadow of the real thing, take the practice test, which Barkan can probably complete in about 8 minutes; for a true challenge, the complete 2004 test is still available."
I can't even figure out how to start the test. It reminds me of the joke where you paint on an index card on both sides,"How do you confuse a moron? Flip card."
Password:
The test is a PDF/Acrobat 5 file. You must have at least the Adobe Acrobat 4 reader (v5.1 not recommended). Download the latest Acrobat Reader here.
2. Read Preview Instructions Run Acrobat and decrypt the Preview Instructions file using the password shown above. You should print and read the Preview Instructions well in advance
God spoke to me.
They should invite Kim Peek. You know, the guy who inspired the movie "Rain Man."
http://users.lk.net/~stepanov/mnemo/kimpeeke.html
Or are idiot savants barred from such competitions?
http://augustwestproducts.i8.com
The only thing these puzzles are good for is to figure out who's good at solving these kinds of puzzles.
And an amazing puzzle solver doesn't strike me as the sort of person I'd want to write computer software alongside. As a secondary strength, sure, but not in the diva "I'm such a genius so I don't need comments, you wouldn't understand my code anyway" sort of way.
...but way too slowly. I have no idea how the champions can churn through 25 of these in two and a half hours--that's one every six minutes. Yikes!
(Just to demonstrate that I have finished--the diagonal sums to 12 for the first one, and to 18 in the second, no hints on the third, the first three blocks sum to the size of the fourth block for number 4, and the diagonal on the last ends with "YES". You can probably get all these answers by pretending to have finished and looking at the answer key, but I haven't bothered trying that again, so I'm not really sure.)
I get the feeling that the "find the image that..." puzzles would be a lot easier if you printed out the document and cut them up. I wonder if that's within the rules?
I am so sick of people calling themselves "transhumans" there are *no* transhumans, there are only people who advocate it, aka. transhumanists. (yeah and before you say it some dude with a pacermaker is "transhuman".... right...).
To be a transhumanist you have to advocate the marriage of machines, technology (nanotech, biotech) with humans. But on the whole the people who advocate such a theory haven't considered the moral, philosophical and even technical implications of transhumanism and tend to be incredibly ignorant apes.
For example. when I use a computer, am I not augmenting myself? A hammer? Am I not a cyborg, am I not transhuman when I get inside a car or ride a bike? How are these different from being able to replace legs with wheels? How is google different from having an auto-memory?
Oh that's right, you like to make a big deal out of your little "futurist" theory because the future is "cool" and you haven't the capacity to see the wonders and operations of technology in our present day and age. There are no end of these people preying on the "coolness" of the "future" like the college professor who claims a chip in his arm makes him the first cyborg, forgetting the first pacemaker, or hearing aid. Forgeting the sword and the bow.
Transhumanists and futurists etc. are without deviation snake oil salesmen and dreamers. I am not saying thinking about the future is bad, but thinking in such utterly *stupid* terms is worthy of contempt.
Without fail, these people are from the sciences, who may gave a better grasp of the potential technologies, but in their ignorance of history forget how radical the changes that have already occured have been.
Go to any "transhumanist" website or description and it will be *dripping* in buzzwords and bullshit. The problems, questions and answers to the singularity, skynet, and other AI fantasies or to transhumanism and the "posthuman" condition won't be found in some over-cooked science drop-outs rantings, they will be found in a proper philosophical and cultural analysis.
I will stress again, I am not saying these questions aren't interesting. But transhumanism is a proto-cult about the promise of the future dreamed up by those who do not fit into the present (not a bad thing) and fail to see why (stupid).
Maybe this means they are not trying to find people who can come up with algorithmic solutions.
Or maybe they are but they don't want fast coding ability to be a factor.
Is Betteridge's Law of Headlines Correct?
Educators and psychologists often categorize people by the method of learning/analyzing that is most effective for each person. [visual, kinesthetic, and aural are the three common options] And unlike the vast majority of people, visual cues are not my primary method. In fact, visual reasoning is dead last for me. A few examples: word searches are incredibly challenging for me, if I drop anything in tall grass I have a difficult time finding it, I'm terrible at visually estimating volume, etc.
However, in most regards I would be considered to have above-average intelligence. Fantastic memory, strong lateral thinking, keen reasoning, etc. So I am continually aware that puzzles, IQ tests, and brain teasers always have a strong visual bias. Perhaps it is just a matter of convenience that visual puzzles are easier to represent on paper. But I wish that puzzles like this could incorporate more aural, kinesthetic, or narrative reasoning skills.