6th place!
Apr. 6th, 2014 05:12 pmStopping by here briefly to record this. (I think I may actually begin posting some more once my defense and everything is done. For now, though...)
SO! Yesterday was the Microsoft College Puzzle Challenge. (Apparently "college" includes grad students. And people who finished their PhDs a year ago.) It's a 10-hour puzzlehunt for teams of 4 people. (You have to be in one of several particular locations to do it.) They do it every year but I'd not done it before. Dave Putnins was running a team, Good Fibrations. (A team name with a history of doing well at CPC, winning UMichigan every year since 2010 and winning the whole thing in 2012.) The team was him, me, Jordan (hence the "and people who finished their PhDs a year ago" above), and Leda, who is not from the math department but instead from the solar car team (and the only actual undergrad on the team). There was another math department team, consisting of Ari, Chris, Alex, and Dave Prigge; I'm not sure what their team name was.
Long story short, we came in 6th overall and won UMichigan. (Second place UMichigan was 20th place overall.) We didn't solve the meta; if we had we'd have been 3rd. We were also damn close to 5th... more on that in a bit. I was kind of hoping for that Xbox One (which, yes, I would probably just use as an expensive Geometry Wars machine), but, a good showing nonetheless.
A note on the format: The format was apparently a little different than in previous years. Instead of the winner being the first to solve the meta, there was a scoring system. Solving a puzzle was worth 100,000 points ("dollars"; there was a Las Vegas theme this year, ugh), while solving the meta was worth 1,000,000; you could keep going after the meta for more points until time ran out at 10:00. Not sure how much the pre-event puzzles were worth.
Additionally, on the ordinary (non-meta) puzzles, there was a bonus for solving the puzzle early -- 10,000 to the first team to solve it, around 7,000 for the next team, and decreasing pretty quickly; you had to be very fast to get more than 4,000 on bonus. Much more important than the bonus, though, was the betting. On the ordinary (non-meta) puzzles, you could bet up to 10,000 points that your first answer was right (much larger than you were likely to get from the bonus). You could not bet on answers beyond the first. Also, if you bet on your first answer, but you got it wrong with one of the "we'll give you a hint" possibilities, the bet would just be cancelled (though you still couldn't bet on later answers).
( Begin puzzle roundup, cut for length and spoilers )
OK. That's all I've got to say. OK maybe not all but I'm not writing any more.
-Harry
SO! Yesterday was the Microsoft College Puzzle Challenge. (Apparently "college" includes grad students. And people who finished their PhDs a year ago.) It's a 10-hour puzzlehunt for teams of 4 people. (You have to be in one of several particular locations to do it.) They do it every year but I'd not done it before. Dave Putnins was running a team, Good Fibrations. (A team name with a history of doing well at CPC, winning UMichigan every year since 2010 and winning the whole thing in 2012.) The team was him, me, Jordan (hence the "and people who finished their PhDs a year ago" above), and Leda, who is not from the math department but instead from the solar car team (and the only actual undergrad on the team). There was another math department team, consisting of Ari, Chris, Alex, and Dave Prigge; I'm not sure what their team name was.
Long story short, we came in 6th overall and won UMichigan. (Second place UMichigan was 20th place overall.) We didn't solve the meta; if we had we'd have been 3rd. We were also damn close to 5th... more on that in a bit. I was kind of hoping for that Xbox One (which, yes, I would probably just use as an expensive Geometry Wars machine), but, a good showing nonetheless.
A note on the format: The format was apparently a little different than in previous years. Instead of the winner being the first to solve the meta, there was a scoring system. Solving a puzzle was worth 100,000 points ("dollars"; there was a Las Vegas theme this year, ugh), while solving the meta was worth 1,000,000; you could keep going after the meta for more points until time ran out at 10:00. Not sure how much the pre-event puzzles were worth.
Additionally, on the ordinary (non-meta) puzzles, there was a bonus for solving the puzzle early -- 10,000 to the first team to solve it, around 7,000 for the next team, and decreasing pretty quickly; you had to be very fast to get more than 4,000 on bonus. Much more important than the bonus, though, was the betting. On the ordinary (non-meta) puzzles, you could bet up to 10,000 points that your first answer was right (much larger than you were likely to get from the bonus). You could not bet on answers beyond the first. Also, if you bet on your first answer, but you got it wrong with one of the "we'll give you a hint" possibilities, the bet would just be cancelled (though you still couldn't bet on later answers).
( Begin puzzle roundup, cut for length and spoilers )
OK. That's all I've got to say. OK maybe not all but I'm not writing any more.
-Harry
