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2006 Google U.S. Puzzle Championship is Open

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the how-is-a-raven-like-a-writing-desk dept.

Fortran IV writes "Registration is open until June 15 for the 2006 Google U.S. Puzzle Championship, to be held Saturday, June 17, 2006—it's 25 or so mind-bending pencil-and-paper puzzles that you have 2-1/2 very short hours to solve. The USPC is a qualifying test to choose 2 members for the U.S. team at the 2006 World Puzzle Championship to be held in Borovets, Bulgaria in October. For a mild taste of the puzzles try the 2006 Practice Test (as has been noted here in the past, if you can't get the Practice Test open you should probably give the real thing a pass!) For more of a workout the real tests for 2005 and 2004 are still available."

10 of 75 comments (clear)

  1. Oh noes by Kelz · · Score: 5, Informative

    Practice tests /.ed, .5KB/sec.

    Note: Don't try to open the practice tests in IE/Firefox (with adobe reader), save to desktop.

    1. Re:Oh noes by brenddie · · Score: 2, Interesting

      extension for pdf download https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/636/

      --
      The best test environment is production. - Me
      chrome://browser/content/browser.xul
    2. Re:Oh noes by Volanin · · Score: 5, Informative
      Theres an extension that avoids opening PDF directly, gotta install it.

      Although extensions are cool, this is overkill.
      This is a configuration in the Adobe Reader for that.
      Just go EDIT, PREFERENCES, INTERNET... and uncheck Display PDF in Browser.
      --
      If I clone myself, can I call it a thread?
      If a girl winks to us, can I call it a race condition?
  2. Re:Angrams (shameless plug) by rlamoni · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Keep in mind that you are not permitted to use a computer or any other electronic devices for the actual test. So if you need a computer to solve one of the problems in the practice test, then you had better skip any similar problems on the real thing. ;)

  3. Bandwidth issues by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    I have done this for a couple years now. Being /.ed now is an annoyance, on puzzle day I couldn't get the password for over 20 minutes, then at the end, you can't submit your answers because everyone else was also trying. In a timed contest, this can really mess you up. Lets hope between now and the 17th they get their network issues resolved.

  4. Hmm by Oopsallberries · · Score: 2, Informative

    Wouldn't open for me after I downloaded it. Weird.

  5. They should recruit at MIT Mystery Hunt by JelloJoe · · Score: 4, Informative

    One of the more hardcore puzzling events each year is held at MIT. I competed in it this year and had a blast. For more info, go here http://web.mit.edu/puzzle/www/

  6. Sample quiz question. by babbling · · Score: 2, Informative

    Is the difficulty similar to the difficulty of the real quiz? It doesn't seem that difficult.

    Q1 is just a Sudoku that doesn't seem too hard.
    Q2 can be solved with matrices.
    Q3 involves finding the features easiest to compare and comparing all tiles with that feature (eg. one groundhog, two groundhogs, three groundhogs), comparing them, and then crossing out tiles that are definitely not similar to any others.

  7. Mirrors by pojo · · Score: 3, Informative
    Mirrordot has the test mirrored.


    The test, password: apple.
    The instructions, password: grail.

  8. Here's a puzzle... by DuranDuran · · Score: 2, Funny

    Here's a puzzle for the organizers:

    Why bother password protecting a test file from two and three years ago?

    --
    "You can justify anything by putting it in quotes, adding a famous name and making it a sig" - Albert Einstein