onigame

Day in the Cloud -- Virgin America Flight 921

onigame@gmail.com — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 18:48:04 GMT

Okay, since I suspect no one is going to be blogging too much on what was going on up in the front of VX 921, I might as well start here.

Warning: The following blog report assumes a heck of a lot of context. You might want to read other reports first regarding the Day in the Cloud competition to establish that context.

So last night at 8pm, I arrive in LAX knowing very little about the actual competition. I had done the practice test so I knew the format, and I vaguely knew that our flight was competing against some other flight, but there were many things that I generally find important to a puzzle competition that I just plain didn't know:

Who was I competing against?

What prizes were the winners going to get?

What were the rules of competition (collaboration, research, etc.)?

Fortunately, a bit of that information appeared on the shuttle to the hotel, in the form of two Google employees (whom I didn't know beforehand). I asked them these questions, and got them partially answered. Research and collaboration was allowed. Ask your friends on the ground to help you if you want. There were two similar "ringers" on the other plane. One of them was called "Kid Beyond". That's all.

I had previously arranged to meet a couple of old college classmates for dinner at the Original Pantry. I admit that I was not a wonderful dinner companion as I pushed my G1 into overdrive, discovering/remembering that "Kid Beyond" was Andrew Chaikin, sending a mass e-mail to puzzle people I could think of that did not work for Google that would make a possibly-useful home team. I did make one mistake I should have caught (Tyler Hinman works for Google! I should know that because I referred him for the position, too!) and one mistake that was honest (apparently Thomas Snyder was one my opponents and so not a useful ally). It was a bit of a crapshoot, since the competition would be around 6-8am tomorrow and I was sending out the e-mail at 9pm.

Fortunately, some information came back usefully. Alexandra Dixon responded saying that yes, Andrew Chaikin had sent out a "Try this!" message to the NPL list, and that Mike Selinker was also playing. At which point I went "I'm going against the double team of Chaikin AND Selinker? No way I'm winning this one. I might as well just have fun."

Which means... A four-player game of Le Havre that went until 1:30 am! Woot!

Around this time I'm chatting with Ian Tullis. Since the event started at midnight, Ian decided to take the test. He reported back, saying that he took too long on some questions and wasn't able to finish, and that it would probably be a good idea to be more aggressive instead of trying to get a perfect score. We talked a bit about how the event stops people from cheating, and our reasoning was that perhaps the puzzles on the planes ("the important ones") are different, but all the on-the-ground puzzles were the same. I asked him to nevertheless send me an e-mail summary of what he could remember of the questions.

This left about two hours of sleep before I had to wake up to catch my flight. I think I even dreamt that I overslept. But no, everything was fine, except that for most of it I was in this sleep-deprived state where nothing really felt real. Which actually persists until now, when I'm writing this blog. But I digress.

I got to the gate, in the process learning two relevant things: one, there didn't seem to be another "partner in puzzling" for me to be with, and two, Ian had come through with a nice list of some twists and observations he saw, things like "start the magic square on the diagonals" and "there's something about state quarters".

I'm seated in 3B, which is a bulkhead seat. In other words, no carry-on stowaway during takeoff, which means no laptop. So, main thing to do is to carry on a conversation with the guys in 3A and 3C.

Sitting in 3C is a guy from Gogo Inflight Internet. I learn a little bit about how Inflight Internet works (surprisingly, it's a 3G network) and some background story about the Richard Branson animated video that plays on Virgin America. His opinion of the practice puzzles: "Man, I couldn't understand those puzzles at all. They were tough."

Sitting in 3A is Mike Barish, a freelance writer who is there writing a piece for gadling.com. We talk a bit about New York and Tokyo. His opinion of the practice puzzles: "They were rather neat, how they get you to use Google Apps, which I use all the time. The Gmail one was very cute."

We're almost at cruising altitude, so I mention that I'm probably going to find help in research and parallelization very useful, and since neither of them work for Google or Virgin America, their help would be very welcome. They seem willing to do this.

And we're off. The overhead bins open, laptops come out, chargers get plugged in... and the inflight internet slows to a crawl as 40 people try to create accounts at the same time. Things are especially bad for me because the internet is rejecting my username and e-mail, mostly because they're already registered (on a Virgin America flight back in late May when I really needed to get some Sudoku playtest results back to my co-author Thomas Snyder on our upcoming book "Sudoku Masterpieces") and so is incompatible with today's free internet promotion. Fortunately, the guy who knows what's broken with the Internet is sitting just to my right so we know not to panic.

At this point one of the sponsors asks if I would like to move to first class since there's more room and I'm effectively the star player. I'm a bit reluctant, part of it being that I'd have to put my splint back on, and also that I'd lose my new-found ~~parallel slave processors~~ friends sitting next to me. But eventually I moved to 2D and Mike moved to 2F (the guy in 3C was understandably busy anyway).

Mike managed to get Internet first, so I went through the first two rounds of puzzles with him. I basically provided him instructions as to what the puzzles were asking for and what to do with them. I also scrawled down the answers in case my set had the same puzzles. Then I got my internet working, and it turns out that the first two rounds were indeed the same, so I caught up quickly. I then convinced Mike that it would be best if we focused on my console while I asked him to do the occasional research question. Also amazingly fortuitous was that he knew two pop culture pieces that came up, about Ace Ventura: Pet Detective and Desperate Housewives, two media properties which I could identify the puzzles as referring to but not knowing the trivia. Our double team ended up working rather well -- I would open a round, do a quick survey of all the questions, copy-and-paste one that I think Mike could look up into a small Windows Notepad window I put in the upper-right corner of my display, and focus on the more crosswordy or logic puzzles while Mike did the more researchy and Google-Apps-heavy stuff.

At some point I have a small guilt twinge; I'm ordering Mike to do all this stuff and I'm not really giving him the chance to work on the puzzles I consider fun, or delay things so that he has a chance to get the insight. I'm taking all the good stuff and using him as gruntwork. But as I write this, I realize (rationalize?) that most people who only have a casual interest in puzzles actually prefer the so-called "gruntwork" over the unhappiness of staring at a puzzle and not knowing what to do. So maybe Mike actually had a lot more fun doing what I had him doing rather than being in my position. I sure hope so.

Also, because of Ian's advice, I was more aggressive with time and partial information. I was perfectly willing to guess words when I only had "V?DKA" and "E?GLE". Although, I did start noticing that as I turned in rounds, I wasn't getting perfect scores. Still thinking of Chaikin+Selinker, I expected that I was going to be letting my plane down with all the missed questions.

We only got stuck at one point; when we were told to do some formatting on some text to make a hidden image appear. Mike had no idea; I had no idea. We stared at the puzzle for maybe a minute. But one of my puzzle-solving habits, which is to repeat aloud a puzzle you're stuck on in the hopes that it will trigger something in a teammate worked out -- the news reporter looking over my shoulder got the insight! I wanted to hug her then and there, but it took all I could to just eke out a compliment that didn't sound condescending.

We're working on Round 9 when I'm thinking more about the missed questions and wishing I had recorded which ones I missed so that we can go through Mike's account and maybe get a perfect score. Especially since I had around 20 minutes left on the clock (out of 60), which was
*way* too generous so I was regretting my aggressiveness somewhat. But, I rationalized, perhaps the creative challenge would take up that time, so I submitted round 9 and went on.

I'm reading the creative challenges and trying to think of a rhyme for "cloud" when I hear a big cheer come up from the whole plane behind me. "We've won", they said. What? The creative challenge wasn't part of it? I managed to outdo Selinker? I was skeptical. But, I was also too tired/lazy to seek confirmation -- that's what winning is like when you're just in the event to have fun, I guess.

Then the TV crew starts setting up (while I'm still busily trying to compose lyrics for the creative challenge) and the news reporter (Suzanne Marques) tries to interview me. I talk naturally, getting cut off by "I don't understand that at all" while I'm explaining what I think is one of the more accessible puzzles. (She later tells me, "You just completely geeked out on camera with me. That was so cute.")

The plane lands, probably about 1 hour late (because of the Internet problems, they decided to take their time in the air). This of course means that there were probably some unhappy passengers who were trying to catch a connecting flight or get to a business meeting who are annoyed that this media event is screwing their schedule up. One such character rushed ahead and passed all of us while running in a big hurry.

Suzanne Marques: "Oh, watch out, we better let the real passengers go first."

The Running Guy: (very loudly) "SHPX YOU, TOO!" (first word encoded in rot-13)

Suzanne Marques: "Hey! I was being serious!"

That's probably one of the most amusing moments all day. Unless you would like to make fun of the lyrics I wrote in the last 15 minutes of the contest:

Enjoy the world
with the day in the cloud
Never be bored
and say this aloud:

Everything is connected
when you live in the clouds
Every line is expected
when you live in the clouds

Everyone can do it
no matter your status
have fun anywhere
while flying through a stratus!

Everything is awesome
when you live in the clouds
Everything and then some
can be found in the clouds

Don't worry so
about problems in flight,
Because you know
Everything's going to be all right!

Hand Status

onigame@gmail.com — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 02:21:54 GMT

My permanent personalized splint came off today; now I have a generic removable one.

I scanned in my X-rays and stuff; you can see them here:

http://www.weihwa.com/~whuang/imgs/hand/

onigame@gmail.com — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 18:32:16 GMT

You know how sometimes you get the dream that you're back in high school again and have to do some stupid tasks set by the teacher?

Yesterday I dreamed that I was back in some math class where the teacher said he wanted us to learn about trade and bartering. He then proceeded to hand out a bunch of fake money to everybody. I got something like 20 bills each of $1, $20, and $100. He then said that we can start trading.

About a third of the students in the class got up and got really into this and started offering and making deals. The rest were presumably thinking the same thing as me, which is that "wow, this is the stupidest game ever." I mean, what sort of deal could you make that would make any sense? "Here, I'll give you 19 one-dollar bills for that $20?" Was this just a matter of the winner being the one who could make the most trades with the stupid students in the class?

In between ignoring silly deal offers I was getting, I was comparing the fake laser-printed money to the real money I had and contemplating the possibility of trading real money for fake money as a way to perhaps win this game, when at that point the instructor passed out another handout.

The handout said that actually each bill was printed in three subtly-different shades of green. At the end of the exercise, the dark green bills in the denomination you had the most of would be worth 60% more, the middle green bills in the denomination you had the middle amount of would be worth 50% more, and the light green bills in the denomination you had the least of would be worth 40% more.

I was astonished. So apparently the teacher wasn't giving out a stupid activity after all.

It was about then that I woke up.

Just a Small Sudoku

onigame@gmail.com — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 19:11:29 GMT

Who needs the complexity of 9 numbers? Fill in each cell with a number from 1 to 6 so that no number appears more than once in any of the rows, columns, and 2x2 boxes.

Puzzle 3 in the "too hard to be published" series.

This one is small enough to be quite tractable to trial-and-error... but if you can find a logical path to the solution, consider yourself good.

Latin Hexagon

onigame@gmail.com — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 00:06:29 GMT

Fill in the cells with numbers from 1 to 6. No number may appear more than once in any row. The rows are indicated by the red, black, and grey lines.

The second puzzle in the "Too hard to be published" series :-)

I eventually did find a logical path to the solution, but it took a long time.

Terrance and Pepsi

onigame@gmail.com — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 11:22:26 GMT

Insanely Obscure Watchmen Trivia

onigame@gmail.com — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 09:21:41 GMT

Just in time for the movie, these are all questions regarding the graphic novel "Watchmen". Anyone with a copy of the graphic novel can figure out the answers, but I don't expect anyone except the most dedicated Watchmen fan to get any of these right from memory with better than random chance accuracy. Nevertheless, I hope you find the questions interesting.

The first time motion lines are used in the comic are:
A. When the Comedian's door is getting kicked open (in flashback)
B. When the Comedian is being thrown out the window
C. When Rorschach uses the grappling hook to enter the Comedian's apartment
D. When Rorschach throws the Comedian's button onto Dan Dreiberg's table
Rorschach has an inkblot pattern that indicates "surprise." In which one of these cases does he NOT show that pattern?
A. When Rorschach discovers the Comedian's hidden closet.
B. When Rorschach realizes that Jacobi is dead.
C. When Rorschach realizes that Gerald Grice's dogs are chewing on human bones.
D. When Rorschach is told that Ozymandias did it "35 minutes ago."
Can you put these newspaper headlines in the proper chronological order? (The parenthetical text represents letters that are not on panel and therefore inferred.)
A. AFGHANISTAN FIGHTING SPREADS
B. ATOMIC BOMB DROPPED ON HIROSHIMA
C. CONGRESS APPROVES LUNAR SILOS
D. COPS SAY "LET THEM DO IT"
E. DR. MANHATTAN "AN IMPERIALIST WEAPON" SAY RUSSIANS
F. EASTERN EUROPE: TANKS MASS AS CONFLICT ESCALATES
G. FRENCH WITHDRAW MILITARY COMMITMENT FROM NATO
H. HERO RET(IRES)
I. HOW SICK IS DICK?
J. INDUSTRIALIST IN MURDER BID
K. KEENE ACT PASSED: VIGILANTES ILLEGAL
L. NIXON PROMIS(ES) MAXIMUM FORCE
M. NUCLEAR DOOMSDAY CLOCK STANDS AT FIVE TO TWELVE WARN EXPERTS
N. NY SURVIVORS REVEAL (NI)GHTMARE UNDER HYPNO(SIS)
O. OUR COUNTRY'S PROTECTOR SMEARED BY THE KREMLIN
P. PRESIDEN(T) SHOT-FEAR(ED) CRITICAL
Q. REDS CROSS PAKISTAN BORDER
R. RR TO RUN IN 88?
S. (S)CIENTISTS MAKE FIRST ARTIFICIAL WONER ELEMENT: PLUTONIUM
T. (SIN)G SING (E)RUPTS: CAP(TUR)ED VIGILANTE S(PA)RKS RIOT: FI(VE D)EAD
U. SOVIETS WILL NOT TOLERATE US ADVENTURISM IN AFGHANISTAN
V. STICK WITH DICK IN 84
W. TANKS MASS I(N) EASTERN EURO(PE)
X. VIETN(AM) 51st STA(TE)
Y. WAR?
Z. WOMAN KILLE(D) WHILE NEIGHB(ORS) LOOK ON
Dr. Manhattan's pubis is visible:
A. When he is looking at the ruins of "The Bestiary".
B. When he completely reforms for the first time after the accident.
C. When he talks with Laurie on Mars, before the snowglobe flashback.
D. When he talks with Laurie on Mars, when she realizes who her father is.
E. Right before Veidt subtracts his intrinsic field.
F. After he sees Dan and Laurie cuddling together.
G. Nowhere outside of A-F.
H. All of the above.
I. None of the above.
J. Only some of the above.
Match these exclamations of surprise at Dr. Manhattan's appearance with the people who uttered them.
A. AAAAA!
B. AAAAAA
C. WAAGH!
D. EEEEIIIIGHH!
E. Dan
F. Gila Flats man seeing Jon's disembodied nervous system
G. Laurie
H. Man painting "Danger: Quarantine Area" on his apartment
True or False: When Rorschach entered Ozymandias' office to warn him about the possible "mask killer," he broke Ozymandias' window with the grappling hook.
Adrian Veidt's large wall of monitors is first seen in:
A. Chapter I.
B. Chapter III.
C. Chapter V.
D. Chapter VIII.
E. Chapter X.
F. Chapter XI.
There is a feature on Mars named after the Gordian Knot, which Alexander of Macedonia "solved" by cutting in half (as told by Ozymandias), and which the lock company that fixes Dan Dreiberg's front door (broken twice by Rorschach) is named after. That covers three of the main characters. True or False: Dr. Manhattan mentions a reference to the Gordian Knot at some point in the book, to Laurie.
True or False: Laurie Juspeczyk's reflection can be seen in every odd-numbered chapter.
There is a small continuity error with the time zone clocks to the left of Veidt's wall of screens; one clock is labeled with two different city names in two different frames. Which two cities?
A. Delhi and Sydney
B. New York and Moscow
C. Paris and Moscow
D. Tokyo and Los Angeles
Which city from the previous list is not actually a wall clock seen in any of the panels?

onigame@gmail.com — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 18:30:27 GMT

I had a strange dream last night.

One of the interesting features of the dream is that I was setting up a website that does collaborative construction of concordances for comics. The alliteration wasn't part of the dream.

See, a lot of comics aren't easily searchable, because the text in the comics are part of the artwork and not text that search engines can find. So, it would be cool if someone did the work of typing all the text in. But that's a lot of work to expect the comic book author to necessarily do.

John Landis Fonts

onigame@gmail.com — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 01:11:00 GMT

Well, I thought that the credits to Ghostbusters and Michael Jackson's Thriller used the same typeface, but it turns out I was wrong.

Ghostbusters uses Korinna.

Thriller uses Goudy Catalogue.

Rubik's cube book

onigame@gmail.com — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 21:46:57 GMT

One of the books I've been working on has appeared on the publisher's spring catalog:

http://www.workman.com/media/catalogs/BDL_spring09.pdf

Perceived Player Interaction and Perceived Randomness in Games

onigame@gmail.com — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 23:38:23 GMT

(This entry is extracted from an e-mail I made to a mailing list.)

There's been some discussion regarding randomness in (board) games
as well as player interaction in games. Generally, there are games
where some players think are too random while others feel aren't
random enough, and some games that have a good amount of player
interaction for some but others complain that the game is
"multiplayer solitaire."

I think the issue is mostly a matter of *perception*; i.e., perceived
randomness and perceived player interaction. I feel that they are
orthogonal traits, although both can be plotted on an axis as to how
sensitive players perceive them. The interaction axis goes
something like:

Direct -> Denial -> Blunt -> Leech

Direct: I do action X, which does something to your "things."
Denial: I do action X, which doesn't do anything to your things, but
makes you unable to do action Y.
Blunt: I do action X, which doesn't do anything to your things, and
doesn't stop you from doing action Y, but now when you do action
Y, I get a big benefit, so you would rather not do action Y if
you have a choice.
Leech: I do action X, which doesn't do anything to your things, and
doesn't stop you from doing action Y, but now when you do action
Y, I get a small benefit, so you end up doing action Y anyway, but
you don't like it as much as you did before.

For each player, there tends to be some point on the scale for
which anything to the right is not considered player interaction.
For example, a player thinks that "Direct" and "Denial" are
interesting forms of conflict, but give them a game that has only
"Blunt" and "Leech" (RFTG for example), and they'll complain that
there's no interaction. It's not that they don't see the interaction
when you point it out to them, it's that they aren't satisfied by it.

Randomness has a similar scales that goes something like:

Outcome -> Income -> Player Chaos

Outcome: I do action X. Some random event detemines the
outcome of my action.
Income: Some random event determines something in the game.
I choose my action after seeing what the results of the event is.
Player Chaos: No external randomizing device is involved, but
the unpredictability of player choices combined with the game
design mean that it becomes difficult to predict what the game
will look like a few turns in advance.

For example, there are players who feel that Puerto Rico and
Caylus aren't "random enough" -- these are players who expect
their randomness in the form of Outcome and Income, and
don't percieve Player Chaos as a legitimate form of randomness.

Three Trivia Questions

onigame@gmail.com — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 11:03:04 GMT

Here are three trivia questions. I hope you find them interesting.

1. Which famous singer is known in China as "The Cat King", a combination of
two nicknames given to him by the mass media in 1955?

2. What do these people have in common?

Author of many alternate history novels
Number 39 (in House)
Oscar-winning director who has starred in five sequels -- and is not Clint Eastwood (who starred in eight sequels, maybe nine)
Researcher made infamous by his treatment of the Silver Spring monkeys
Spider-Man's editor
Woman who acquired earrings but lost her headwear when she became 100 years old

3. What does this table represent?

"The French Connection" and "Black Magic Woman"

onigame@gmail.com — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 11:06:52 GMT

It's a somewhat obscure bit of trivia that William Friedkin edited the car chase scene in "The French Connection" to the Santana cover of "Black Magic Woman."

However, it doesn't quite work because the full car chase scene is about 10 minutes long, while Santana's recording is only about five minutes (on the album -- the single version is three minutes). There is an 8-minute version of the song, but it wasn't really available at the time the movie was made, so I'm doubtful that Friedkin had access to that version. So, it becomes a bit of a guess as to where the song actually matches up with the chase scene, and if the editing is really an exact match or really more a thematic timing thing.

After experimenting with different timings and offsets, I've decided that the best fit is probably to synchronize the end of the song with the train crash. You can see my efforts here:

What does a slash mean in an abbreviation?

onigame@gmail.com — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 23:20:35 GMT

Research done inspired by a discussion on gale.

It turns out that it's pretty hard to find a list of abbreviations with slashes in them, so since I did some work I thought I'd post it to my blog.

24/7 = 24 hours at 7 days a week
A/B = acid/base
A/G = air-to-ground
ADHD-PH/I = Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder - Primarily Hyperactive/Impulsive
B/E = bill of exchange
B/L = bill of lading
B/U = backup
CSMA/CD = carrier sense multiple access with collision detection
D/P = documents against payment
I/O = input/output
L/C = letter of credit
P/E = price-to-earnings
TCP/IP = Transmission Control Protocol / Internet Protocol
a/c = antecubital; account; Air Conditioning
a/k/a = also known as
b/c = because
b/w = backed with; black-and-white
m/o = months old
n/a = not available; not applicable
o/b/o = on behalf of; or best offer
s/n = sin numero (without number)
sa/vol = surface area to volume
w/ = with
w/c = wheelchair; week commencing
w/i = within
w/o = without
w/off = write-off
w/r = with respect to
y/o = years old

In general, it seems like the slash stands for three possible things:
1. A preposition.
2. Concatenation, as in, the original phrase was either hyphenated or a joined compound (such as "wheelchair") and not separate words.
3. A conjunction -- you could say that the slash stands for a slash, or you could say that it stands for a conjunction like "and" or "or".

There are a few exceptions. "y/o" and "m/o" don't have the above reasons; one possibility is that "yo" and "mo" look more like words? But "M.O." is often used as "modus operandi", so that can't be the only reason. The "with" family also has it, perhaps because "with" is per se a preposition. "n/a" and "a/c" (for "air conditioning") seem to defy reason.

Oh, and one more that I left out, because it seemed appropriate to leave to the end:

TL/DNR = too long, did not read

Trying to Understand the Financial Crisis

onigame@gmail.com — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 13:37:42 GMT

I'm trying to understand the current financial crisis, and sometimes it helps to rephrase and write things to help understand them. So, here's a little 6.5-scene play, somewhat metaphorical, about what's going on. No guarantees as to accuracy, and the numbers are made up.

[SCENE I. LEHMAN and AIG are on stage.]

LEHMAN: Hey everybody. I'm a big investment bank who's been around forever.

AIG: Oh, hi Mr. Lehman. Yes, you certainly have been around here a while. I'm a big insurance provider. Want to buy some insurance?

LEHMAN: What kind of insurance?

AIG: It's like life insurance, but for banks. You give me 200 million dollars every year, and if you die, I save your butt with 10 billion dollars.

LEHMAN: Hmm. I don't think I'm anywhere in that sort of danger, but you never know, and your rates sound pretty good. Okay, you got a deal. Here's 200 million dollars.

AIG: Great. Here's to your good health. [aside] Easiest 200 million I ever made.

[Exit LEHMAN. MERRILL LYNCH comes on stage.]

LYNCH: Hey, Mr. Aig. I couldn't help but overhear the deal you made with Mr. Lehman. Can I get in on the same deal?

AIG: Sounds reasonable. So, you give me 200 million, and if you die, I save your butt with 10 billion dollars?

LYNCH: Oh, no no no. I said, the *same* deal. I don't want to buy insurance on *me*, I want to buy it on Mr. Lehman.

AIG: Huh?

LYNCH: I give you 200 million a year, and if Mr. Lehman dies, you give me 10 billion dollars.

AIG: Um. That sounds kinda suspicious.

LYNCH: How so? It's the exact same deal you just made with him. Surely you don't think that he's more likely to die just because I want to buy insurance on him?

AIG: Yeah, but, you might just kill him or something. Then I'd not only be out 10 billion to you, I'd also be out 10 billion to him.

LYNCH: Aw, c'mon, Lynch may be my last name but we're all well-behaved giant investment banks here. I can't move a finger against him without the Man stepping in and you know it. Besides, Mr. Lehman owes me money, it wouldn't be in my best interest to kill him.

AIG: Fine. 400 million a year.

LYNCH: 300 million.

AIG: Deal. Hand it over.

LYNCH: Here you go.

AIG: [aside] Heh, playing hard-to-get really works well.

[End SCENE I.]

[SCENE II. LEHMAN and AIG are on stage.]

LEHMAN: Hey guys, I'm feeling kinda sick.

AIG: Oh no, what happened?

LEHMAN: Some terrorists crashed a plane into my office space.

AIG: Oh jeez. Well, try to get better. I have a lot of money riding on your health (20 billion in fact). In fact, I don't think your insurance policy is paid up yet?

LEHMAN: Oh, sorry about that. Here you go, 200 million dollars.

AIG: Dude, I hate to be harsh but you're looking kinda pale. I'm raising the price to 300 million dollars.

LEHMAN: Okay, okay. It's only fair. Here you go.

AIG: Thanks.

[End SCENE II.]

[SCENE III. MERRILL LYNCH and GOLDMAN SACHS are on stage.]

GOLDMAN: Hey, you hear what happened to Mr. Lehman?

LYNCH: Yeah, it's been a tough year for him.

GOLDMAN: I feel kinda morbid for saying this, but ... I heard Mr. Aig sold you some insurance on Mr. Lehman, and at the time I thought you were just throwing your money away, but now it seems like you might have had the right idea. I'm kinda wishing I was in on that deal.

LYNCH: Oh, you can be.

GOLDMAN: How? I talked to Mr. Aig and he said that he wasn't comfortable selling any more insurance on Mr. Lehman.

LYNCH: Yeah, but *I* can sell you insurance.

GOLDMAN: How does that work?

LYNCH: Simple. You pay me 500 million a year. If Mr. Lehman bites it, I give you 11 billion.

GOLDMAN: Wow! That sounds pretty good. But... if he does bite it, where are you going to get the money?

LYNCH: That's easy. If Mr. Lehman dies, Mr. Aig said he would give me 10 billion. So, all I do is add 1 billion of my own money and pay you. Since I'm paying 300 million a year to Mr. Aig, what's going on is that I'm making a profit of 200 million a year (500 million from you, and 300 million to Mr. Aig), and the worst I can lose is 1 billion.

GOLDMAN: Huh. Sounds sweet... for you. I wish I'd thought of that.

LYNCH: Oh, you will, my dear Mr. Sachs. You will.

[End SCENE III.]

[SCENE IV. GOLDMAN SACHS and MORGAN STANLEY are in a conversation.]

GOLDMAN: ... and the worst I can lose is 1 billion.

STANLEY: I don't really care about your deals with other people. Just let me make sure I understand what OUR deal is.

GOLDMAN: Okay.

STANLEY: I pay you 700 million a year...

GOLDMAN: Yep.

STANLEY: ... and if Mr. Lehman is about to die, you pay me 12 billion.

GOLDMAN: Yep, that's it.

STANLEY: Sweet deal. Especially if he's as sick as I am, what with the terrorists. How can I refuse? Lemme get my wallet.

[An CFTC-GUY, wearing a uniform, charges on stage.]

CFTC-GUY: Hold it! I heard there was some shady dealing going on in this neighborhood. And here it is, I'm finding you all doing this morbid dealing regarding Mr. Lehman's possible death.

GOLDMAN: Oh, no, officer, it's all just business and deals here. No actual violence. In fact, Mr. Lehman's death isn't really that relevant much anymore.

CFTC-GUY: Huh?

GOLDMAN: Look, dude's been around forever, he's not going to die just because he lost his office space. We're just swapping credit around based on probabilities.

CFTC-GUY: You say that, but you're playing with fire here. Jeez, people, don't you know someone could get hurt? There was that accident just last year with Mr. LTCM.

STANLEY: Pfft. Mr. LTCM was small potatoes, a bum. We're much older and more responsible.

GOLDMAN: Yeah. Go away and don't bother us. Call your boss and whine if you want.

CFTC-GUY: I think I might just do that. [gets out cell phone] Hey, Mr. O'Neill? I have here some more holier-than-thou investment banks doing shady dealings, can I arrest them? Uh huh. Uh huh. Oh, he's coming over here? Good.

[Enter ALAN GREENSPAN.]

GREENSPAN: Hey boys, what's up?

GOLDMAN: Oh, hey Mr. Greenspan. Morgan and I were just playing around here, doing our own business, when the mean officer here decides he wants to get into our business.

GREENSPAN: I see. Here, let me talk to the nice officer. You boys run along now.

CFTC-GUY: Hey wait, you can't just let them go.

GREENSPAN: Sure I can. Go, boys.

[STANLEY and SACHS exit.]

GREENSPAN: [To CFTC-GUY] Here you are, causing trouble again. You know very well that you don't have jurisdiction here.

CFTC-GUY: It's dangerous, what they're doing.

GREENSPAN: Yes, well, it could be, but you know, it's not like they're immature little S&Ls. They're big boys now, let them have their fun. You keep on trying to interfere with them.

CFTC-GUY: Well, yes, because...

GREENSPAN: And that's why you no longer have jurisdiction. Me and Robert Rubin and Phil Gramm saw to that when we changed the laws. Let them do stuff on their own. They're responsible; they know it's just play. No one's really going to get hurt.

LEHMAN [offstage]: Hey, I think I'm feeling better now.

GREENSPAN: You see? Everything's going to be juuuust fine.

[End SCENE V.]

[SCENE VI. LEHMAN, LYNCH, SACHS, are all on stage, eating steak. AIG and STANLEY are watching.]

LYNCH: Mmm, oh man, this steak is sooo good.

LEHMAN: You said it. What's in it again?

SACHS: Mortgages. Tasty, huh? Isn't it great that Mr. Greenspan lifted the ban on cow meat before he retired? His replacement, that Bernanke guy, is more of a wimp and will listen to any hippie. Eat up, gentlemen, while you still can.

LEHMAN: Oh, most definitely. More and more available each day, and it's yummy. Hey Mr. Aig, are you sure you don't want a bite?

AIG: No, no thanks. I'm a vegetarian. Insurance deals only.

LEHMAN: How about you, Morgan?

STANLEY: I had a little bit earlier but I'm not that hungry right now.

SACHS: Where's this batch of steak from anyway?

LYNCH: Husband-and-wife team. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

LEHMAN: Wait. Weren't they in the hospital until recently? Sub-prime meat poisoning?

STANLEY: Yeah, but they *deal* in meat. Not a well-balanced meal like we get. Don't worry, they're in intensive care right now, but they'll be fine. I saw them just last week. Mr. Paulson was looking after them.

[LEHMAN coughs suddenly.]

LEHMAN: Hey guys, I don't feel so good.

LYNCH: Huh?

LEHMAN: I think I had too much of that sub-prime stuff.

LYNCH: Oh, I had some of those earlier. It's nothing; just let it pass through your system. You'll feel a bit sick for a bit, but it'll be okay.

LEHMAN: No really, I think I had a particularly bad amount, all at once. [coughs]

STANLEY: I think he's serious.

AIG: Oh crap.

LEHMAN: Could someone call the hospital for me please?

AIG: Oh crap. Oh crap. [takes out his cell phone] Hello, Mr. Bernanke? I think you better come over right now.

[LEHMAN coughs again. Looks to be in pain.]

LYNCH: C'mon, old friend, stay strong.

STANLEY: Let him breathe. Keep awake, Lehman. Mr. Bernanke's on his way.

[LEHMAN collapses.]

AIG: Did he...?

LYNCH: Yes.

STANLEY: Well, you know what that means.

AIG: I don't feel well.

LYNCH: What?

STANLEY [to GOLDMAN]: You owe me 12 billion dollars.

GOLDMAN: Er. I don't have it. Yet. Hold on a bit. Lemme get you 11 billion dollars first, and I'll make up the difference later. [to LYNCH] You owe me 11 billion dollars.

LYNCH: Yeah, well, about that... hold on. [to AIG] You owe me 10 billion dollars.

AIG: I *really* don't feel well.

LYNCH: Now!

AIG: But, but, I don't even eat beef!

LYNCH: Don't care. Gimme the 10 billion dollars. I haven't been paying this protection money for nothing. Besides, I'm already in trouble because I need another 1 billion dollars and I'm not sure where I'm going to get it.

AIG: I don't have it! He wasn't supposed to die!

GOLDMAN: Am I to understand I'm not going to get 11 billion dollars?

STANLEY: *Your* 11 billion dollars? How about *my* 12 billion dollars?

LYNCH [grabbing AIG by the lapels]: I'm getting angry. And desperate. I might have to call in Big Brother Bofa on this. You don't want him involved, trust me.

[Enter BEN BERNANKE]

BERNANKE: Hey, what's all this then?

STANLEY: Lehman just died.

BERNANKE: That's not good.

GOLDMAN: And Merrill is about to lynch Aig.

BERNANKE: That's not good either.

AIG: Mr. Bernanke! Help! It wasn't my fault!

BERNANKE: Okay, I'm a bit late to do anything about Lehman but I can do a bit here. Hey Mr. Aig, have some money.

AIG: Thank you! Thank you! [to LYNCH] Here! Take it, you cad.

LYNCH: Hmph. [takes the money]. See if I ever do business with you again. [to GOLDMAN] Here you go.

GOLDMAN: This is only 10 billion. You owe me 1 billion more.

LYNCH: Well, I don't have it yet.

GOLDMAN: Consider us enemies until I see it. [to STANLEY] Here.

STANLEY: I'm going to assume you don't have the, hm, 2 billion you still owe me.

GOLDMAN: Eh-heh-heh-heh.

STANLEY: I thought so. I never want to see any of you again.

LYNCH: I can't take this any more. I'm going home to my big brother Bofa.

AIG: I'm a vegetarian, forcrissake! I shouldn't even be involved in this.

[Everyone starts arguing at once as the lights dim. End SCENE VI.]

[EPILOGUE - SCENE VII. BEN BERNANKE and HENRY PAULSON are on stage, talking.]

BERNANKE: ... so that's what happened.

PAULSON: Jeez. That's horrible. I'm glad I left Goldman when I did.

BERNANKE: So yeah, it's pretty horrible now. Everybody's in debt to each other, nobody trusts each other. It's sad, the whole street is empty because everyone's hiding in their own little house. And you know what the worst part is?

PAULSON: What?

BERNANKE: They're all starving to death. The only food anywhere is those sub-prime steaks, and they're poisonous. They're not working together to create anything. Nobody's making any food deliveries. In fact, I've heard that they've started eating *each other.* I don't know what to do!

PAULSON: Well, I have some friends that *might* help.

BERNANKE: Anything!

PAULSON: It's a long shot. I'm going to see if those friends are willing to give up some *real* food to buy those poisoned steaks. How much do you think they need?

BERNANKE: About 700 billion.

PAULSON: Wow, that's going to be a tough sell. I might be able to convince my friends that the steaks will lose their poison slowly over the years as they age.

BERNANKE: Just try it. What have you got to lose? No matter what, we can't let this place die out. Otherwise, the poison just spreads.

PAULSON: Yes. We have to do something.

[END.]

Penrose Sudoku

onigame@gmail.com — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 11:21:36 GMT

Glitches in CNN's software

onigame@gmail.com — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 12:52:26 GMT

I was watching the DNC Convention Roll Call on CNN, and noticed two interesting things:

1. Apparently the numbers on the screen are updated character-by-character as some dude types them in, instead of, say, having him/her press Enter after the total number is in. For example, when Florida cast 136 votes for Obama, here's what showed up:

316 to 317 to 329 to 452. Subtract the 316 that were already there, and you get 0, 1, 13, 136. I wonder what would happen if the person accidentally typed an extra number.

2. During the Hawaii vote, someone accidentally flipped the switch from "Democratic" to "Republican," which not only changed the candidate names, but also reset the "current state" marker back to Alabama. They then had to correct it back. I wonder if someone got in trouble for that mistake.

Choosing 4 out of 12 items with 3d8

onigame@gmail.com — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 08:59:19 GMT

The number of ways to choose 4 items out of a set of 12 items is 495.

The number of results you can get by rolling an eight-sided die 3 times is 512.

Therefore, theoretically, if you're trying to choose 4 out of 12 items, you can roll an eight-sided die three times, and 96.6796875% of the time you won't need to re-roll.

However, it's not particularly obvious how to map 495 of the 512 results onto choices of 4 items. Yes, you could have a massive look-up table with 495 rows, but that's a bit hard to carry around in your pocket.

So, I've come up with the following little "rule"... unfortunately, it's much more complex than I had hoped. Can anyone do better?

Let's call the 12 items you're trying to choose ABCDEFGHIJKL. Split them into two halves,
ABCDEF and GHIJKL. Generally, we're going to have the first roll of the die tell us how
many to choose from each half, with the other rolls telling us which ones.

Now, we'll roll the die three times, let's say the values are X, Y, and Z. Then:

If X == 1, then we're going to choose three items from ABCDEF, and one item from GHI.
If X == 2, then we're going to choose three items from ABCDEF, and one item from JKL.
If X == 3, then we're going to choose three items from GHIJKL, and one item from ABC.
If X == 4, then we're going to choose three items from GHIJKL, and one item from DEF.
If X == 5 through 8, then we'll either choose two items from both halves, or all items from the same half.

For the case of X == 1 through 4, we need to choose 3 out of a group of 6, and 1 out of a group of 3. Let's call the group of six MNOPQR, and the group of three STU.

If Y == 1 through 6, then we'll choose MNO based on the bit representation of Y. To wit:

Y == 1, choose --O.
Y == 2, choose -N-.
Y == 3, choose -NO.
Y == 4, choose M--.
Y == 5, choose M-O.
Y == 6, choose MN-.

After that, we'll have three choices of the group PQR (either 1 or 2 items, based on how many of MNO were chosen), and three choices of the group STU. We'll use the roll Z to put among those 9 choices -- simply put Z in base three, and choose among PQR and STU appropriately (using the mapping 012).

Since that's 8 outcomes to choose among 9 results, one will be leftover, namely, P and S. So let's use those for the case Y == 7:

Y == 7 and Z == 1: --O -QR S--
Y == 7 and Z == 2: -N- -QR S--
Y == 7 and Z == 3: -NO P-- S--
Y == 7 and Z == 4: M-- -QR S--
Y == 7 and Z == 5: M-O P-- S--
Y == 7 and Z == 6: MN- P-- S--
Y == 7 and Z == 7: MNO --- S--
Y == 7 and Z == 8: --- PQR S--

This leaves four cases left, and we'll map them to when Y == 8:

Y == 8 and Z == 1: MNO --- -T-
Y == 8 and Z == 2: MNO --- --U
Y == 8 and Z == 3: --- PQR -T-
Y == 8 and Z == 4: --- PQR --U

In the case where Y == 8 and Z > 4, reroll.

Now, when X is 5 through 8, we'll be choosing two items from each half (or four from the same half). It turns out there are 15 ways of choosing two items from a group of 6 (or four from a group of 6), and conveniently 15 just a little bit less then twice 8. I haven't found a good way to map numbers from 1 to 15 onto the 15 ways, so here's one that's as good as any:

MN----  1
-NO---  2
--OP--  3
---PQ-  4
----QR  5
M--P--  6
-N--Q-  7
--O--R  8
M-O---  9
-N-P-- 10
--O-Q- 11
---P-R 12
M---Q- 13
-N---R 14
M----R 15

So, now all we need are two numbers from 1 to 15. That's pretty easy, since we have the rolls Y and Z, which range from 1 to 8. Now use X to distinguish:

If X == 5, take Y and Z exactly.
If X == 6, add 8 to Z.
If X == 7, add 8 to Y.
If X == 8, add 8 to both Y and Z.

Now Y and Z are all in the range 1-16. So:

If both Y and Z are in the range 1-15, use Y to choose two items from ABCDEF and Z to choose two items from GHIJKL.
If Z == 16, then use Y to identify two items from ABCDEF; then choose the other four.
If Y == 16, then use Z to identify two items from GHIJKL; then choose the other four.

Finally, if both Y and Z are 16 (you rolled 8, 8, 8), then reroll.

Lemon Technology Shareholders

onigame@gmail.com — Thu, 22 May 2008 08:54:54 GMT

What with the recent news of 600 shares of Lemon Technology being granted from Taylor Senior to Kimberly Taylor, I thought I would recap what we know about the stockholders:

Lemon Technology, 10000 shares outstanding

Before the mid-2006 shareholders meeting:

45%: Taylor Senior (inactive)
15%: Clarance Taylor (inactive)
20%: Constance Taylor (5 held for Kimberly Taylor)
8%: Daniel Thompson
10%: Others (aggregate)

After the mid-2006 shareholders meeting:

45%: Taylor Senior (inactive)
15%: Constance Taylor
18%: Daniel Thompson
5%: Brisbane Adams
5%: Kimberly Taylor
10%: Others (aggregate)

A silly little word puzzle

onigame@gmail.com — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 02:52:08 GMT

Sometimes I come up with an puzzle idea that is so silly that there's no point in saving it for something better. So, here's a free puzzle for you.

Each one of these defines a word or phrase. All the answers have some property in common. Since some of the definitions are ambiguous, you'll probably need to find that property to know exactly what phrases I'm referring to.

Wereseals
Cooked soybeans
Composer of The Four Seasons
A company that used to have a logo that included six ducks
Scientific name for the freshwater dogfish
It comes between "revelation" and "riven"
One of two U. S. States whose state flag looks the same when turned upside-down
A 1960's animated series about an inept secret agent, created by the same man who invented Batman
A bike with a motor, such as the one depicted in this picture
Rape, necrophilia, and zoophilia, perhaps
Czech translation of "Wenceslaus"
Surname of the creator of the first comic book printed by Image Comics
The westernmost city in the Peloponnese
A "nickname" for Jesus Christ
The size of a ship that is just large enough to travel from Sri Lanka to Taiwan without needing to go south of Malaysia
Where you might find the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library

If you think you've solved it, try adding to the list instead of giving it away.

Wei-Hwa's reviews of the games at Mensa Mind Games 2008

onigame@gmail.com — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 12:45:48 GMT

They're now up.

http://ofb.net/~whuang/gp/mmg2008/

One change I made this year is that in the past, my "sort by ranking" was based on the average of the three scores I gave to the game -- that's been replaced this year by "sort by popularity", where popularity is defined by what order the games were depleted from the lottery at the end of the event.

This seemed to be the year where abstract games dominated and party games almost disappeared, along with the more story-oriented strategy games (seeing no submissions from Rio Grande Games nor Uberplay this year, for example). Overall, the average quality of games seemed to go down; I gave out only one "fun factor" rating of 9, and everything else was lower.

Dan Egnor's Thoughts on Midnight Madness

onigame@gmail.com — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 16:56:49 GMT

Posted because Dan doesn't have a blog.

Overall:

Nobody does theme like Snout. Seriously. Most Games (including all the ones we've run) have a theme sort of pasted on top, in flavor text and iconography and the occasional "cut scene". Snout games, particularly recent ones, are really schooling us all in how a theme can actually weave into the experience of a game. There were several times during this game which really *felt* like the movie. If only we had been able to destroy more expensive props...

So that was awesome. I'm sure I speak for everyone when I say we'll really miss you guys.

My quibbles mostly have to do with the "arbitrary" feel of some of the puzzles (which is a philosophical thing, I think, see my notes about the X=3 puzzle), the use of "off the shelf" puzzles in some places (not actually a big deal) and the fact that teams would often get bunched up and released all at once (making earlier gains and losses feel moot -- see the Pinball City notes).

Kick-off: Midnight Madness trivia contest

I appreciate why this was done: it's a group activity, highly thematic, fun to watch, and creates some initial spread. I didn't really like the way it worked out, though. Psychologically, at the start of the game, we're all really, really excited to get started, and having to wait for other people to have their names drawn, come up, and answer a question mostly just causes anxiety. The random-draw aspect also feels gratuitously unfair -- of course those extra 15 minutes probably won't matter in the end, but right at the start it felt like a really big deal. I really prefer the good old "tear open the envelope on the mark" kickoff.

First puzzle: Simple cryptic-ish wordplay, hex calculator numbers

We got "shoreline" and "vista" right away, and because we're Googlers we knew what it was talking about. We didn't figure out the hex thing until we were most of the way there. Familiarity with the area is a perfectly fair thing to use when solving, but familiarity with the Google environment felt a little dirty for some reason. Maybe it's just that the community has a lot of Google and a lot of Stanford, and things that depend on knowing things about one of those campuses feel sort of unfair. Compare this with the Cardinal Coffee clue, below.

Anyway, the clue itself was fine. It fit nicely with the first clue from the movie. The calculator thing was a little "geekier" than I expected for some reason but I think that's just me.

Vista slope: X=3

There aren't enough survey-distant-objects puzzles in Games, so I was happy to see this. It was also nice when preparation comes in handy, and Corey's nice image-stabilized binoculars were great for the Crittenden text (which was barely legible with the binoculars GC was handing out). So that was cool. And, of course, it was a great reference to the movie.

But I was otherwise frustrated with this clue. It seemed obvious that there were three sets of equations, and we (along with every other team) spent a great deal of time carefully surveying the scene for it. Apparently it was simply not visible from the top of the hill. This feels deeply wrong for some reason (and I don't think it's just me): putting the mailbox at the summit really makes it seem like the puzzle ought to be solved by looking around from there.

The tubes were a nice touch, and a good way to handle oncoming darkness, but it was sad that we all ended up having to use them. The tubes also taught us that several items of apparent information (the order of the lines in each sign, the position of the girls with respect to the equations, the placement of parentheses) weren't important, because they differed in the tube version. That was dissatisfying.

But above all, it felt weird and really, really arbitrary to just set X=3 and add up all the equations. We actually went through several "maybe X really is just one fixed value" possibilities, but since many of the equations ended up negative, we discarded it. Why add them up? Why not multiply them, or concatenate them, or combine them in lots of other plausible ways? I think this puzzle very directly points at the major difference between Snout's puzzle design philosophy and ours: the Snout school holds that searching a space of equally plausible mechanisms for extracting an answer is fair game; we hold that in an elegant puzzle, there should really only be one reasonable way to get an answer (if you're smart enough to recognize what it is).

We went through many, many alternatives, including digit pangrams for X, Diophantine equations, and all kinds of things, many of which yielded decent partial answers (but of course no final answer), many of which seem like they would have been better puzzles than what we got.

Acorn's house: Piano music

This was a good music clue. It would have really sucked to not have musical talent on the team... but fortunately, we did. (I wonder what the experience was like for a team that took GC up on their offer to play for them.) The mechanism was clean. It took us a while to recognize the final jingle, but once we made sure to borrow the timing of the sour notes (not just their pitch), it came out quickly in a great "ahhhh" moment. Also, of course, the whole thing was nicely thematic.

We had fun acting out a scene from the movie, and other teams reported enjoying their creative challenges. This is notable because we're usually grumpy about creative challenges. A skit or scene enactment is IMHO a lot nicer than being asked to write a poem or something, because you can just do it without feeling like you're struggling not to obsess over iambic pentameter.

Hopefully the videos will show up somewhere.

Tied House brewery (or rather, the Old Spaghetti Factory next door): Nonagram rebus

Something was seriously wrong with the placement of this clue. Stuff happens, of course, but it would have been nice to get more help from GC sooner. This was one of several places where, for one reason or another, several teams ended up bunched up and then released all at once (in this case, once GC finally told some team where to find the clue).

I was actually expecting a lot more "easter egg hunt" clue sites, since the movie tended to have that. I sort of dread those, and our team had spent some time discussing how to do better on them. This was really the only one, though, and it was broken, so much for that.

The nonagrams were very "stock", we all expected there to be some twist but there wasn't; that was sort of strange. The scrambled rebus was pretty much straight out of the movie, which was cool. We actually mentioned the word "cardinal" several times, but since none of us had ever heard of Cardinal Coffee, and there are lots of Cardinal businesses, it didn't help us. Also, the "coffee" really looked a lot like tea, in a cup with a rounded bottom. I looked at it several times and said to myself "yes, someone definitely drew this picture specifically to say *tea*, not 'cup' or 'coffee' or 'drink' or 'hot'...". A simple square bottom would have helped a lot.

I imagine a team which was familiar with Cardinal Coffee (a major local landmark, I guess -- one of us had actually been there, though he hadn't remembered the name) could have an experience much like we did with Vista Slope. That's fair.

Cardinal Coffee: Breast-euphemism word search

We found the word search right away in the Metro. Not sure how other teams fared with finding the "waitress" plant (I was a little sorry later to find out we missed that -- but not too sad since it gave us a time advantage).

Giggling over the euphemisms was fun. Otherwise, it was just a vanilla cross-off-the-words-and-read-the-message, right down to "you should probably start at the end, to get the actual answer and skip the long intro filler text".

Purple Moose: Words in the convertible

Driving around with the hilarious couple was super fun. It was one of the least thematic clues (there is a connection, but it's tenuous), but that's okay, the actors more than made up for it in sheer brilliance.

The actual solving was another instance of arbitrariness, though not too bad really. We needed a nudge from GC ("look for the patterns between the words"), but given that we started looking at shared letters and eventually found the answer. What really threw us for a loop here were the pointed references to Scrabble in the patter (not just the word "scrabble", but commentary about how "rattlesnake" was placed on two triple word scores and scored 800 points and so on), which seemed like it very directly indicated a solution where the words would be placed on a Scrabble board, or at least have their point values computed. That really seemed like a gratuitous red herring.

Golfland: "Fore-" words

Normally I would think it was unfair to hose a team that didn't play through the course. In this case, given the movie, I think it's totally fine.

We collected the data from the cards, and after getting stuck for a little while some people went out to roll the balls through all the "interactive" holes, and they discovered the message. Other teams who actually played the course weren't so lucky -- they thought the audio recordings were just a normal part of the course, and disregarded them. Adding some sort of "Leon says" flavor there might have helped, but eh, we've made worse mistakes. :) Also, other teams can't help but notice the activity around the air hockey tables, so you won't be hosed forever unless you leave the site or something.

With all the data in hand, the puzzle was pretty straightforward. I really do like how it simulated the experience of the movie, where rushing through and skipping the experience makes you miss the vital information. I wonder if any team actually played an honest round of mini golf. Oh, and it was cool to be at a place that was warm and had tables and served snacks and had bathrooms and stuff.

Diridon Station: Radio music clue

Fortunately we called GC when we got there and were told to check out the Obama sign, otherwise I doubt we would have found the clue. Having struggled with setting up a mini radio station ourselves for a clue, I appreciate that the radio broadcaster worked quite well, and the channels were well separated! Kudos to the technical team.

The actual clue was a bit frustrating because the announcement text seemed to be specifically saying that the band name was *not* important. Only after we called GC and had that impression corrected did we go back to look. It really didn't help that some of the pieces were from musicals or TV theme songs, which don't really have an obvious "artist" (the composer? the performer? the name of the musical/show?), which seemed like it was confirming "artist doesn't matter". And the actual solution seemed to rely on a sort of loosely defined overlap of phonetics between the artist on one side and the title on another, with no particular ordering? Maybe there was a deeper pattern we missed that made it all clean and tidy.

VTA station: Hare Krisha typo text

I guess not too many teams actually had to solve this puzzle. It was... kind of tedious. The initial "aha" where you realize there are different versions is kind of neat, and the final "aha" where you recognize the picture is definitely neat, but in between it's an English teacher's nightmare. After a while, in the middle of the night, your eyes just slide right over the typos...

Greyhound terminal: Lolcatz

I really like the idea of a lolcatz puzzle, and I really like the idea of the "corrections", as if some enraged English teacher (continuing the theme) had come upon a lolcat archive and gone mad. Also, the actual images brought a nice dose of levity, always welcome during the wee hours. A word chain is also a nice thing to be doing in the wee hours, you can plug away identifying phrases and lining things up without having to exercise those strategic-planning brain segments that would really rather just doze off.

The actual correction mechanic, with the crossed-out insert/delete signs, was a little strange and arbitrary. I actually slept through much of the puzzle, so I wasn't sure how much trouble this really gave us.

"Pinball City" (Calderon Ave, Mountain View): Star Fire video game

We never did recognize the Q*bert sound, and needed a hint for that. When we did enter the correct initials (and another team did so around the same time), pretty much all the teams there got the answer. This was another place (and quite late in the game) where a "bunching" effect occurred, which felt like it sort of defeated any earlier progress differences. (It was especially weird because many teams had been skipped over the typo clue.)

The directions to "watch your score" were a little strange; many of us spent quite a while poring over the score while shooting blue enemies (which are always worth the same amount). Eventually we thought maybe it was an oblique way of referring to the musical *score* of the game, but technically sound effects aren't the score, and anyway that's super oblique and seems like an unnecessary red herring.

It also seemed weird for the whole puzzle to hinge on the ability to recognize these specific video game sounds, with no escape hatch at all if you can't.

Stanford Memorial Auditorium: Hissy Fit

This was really, really, really great. Every team that saw this clue had funny stories.

Stanford Oval: Don't Get Hammered

We tend to have a "hate-hate" relationship with physical challenge puzzles... but we all quite enjoyed this one. The deflation of the balls was sort of unfortunate but in some ways made things easier to deal with. Everyone seemed like they had a good time, and it was a good way to let off some steam after a lot of hours in the van.

It seemed like maybe there should have been one or two fewer hammers on the field, though. Other players were brutal with hammers at first -- it was hard to even get a peek at "popular" balls. Once GC took over the hammers, things seemed a lot more fair; you got some chance to look at things, but you had to keep moving and work for it.

The actual puzzle was sort of a slog with all that data, it was an exercise in careful note-taking, which is challenging to do in the run-around sweaty environment of the game, but that's all part of the clue. Still, I think making it 2/3 the size might have improved matters. It's really hard to test out this kind of thing, though, and GC did a great job of adapting.

onigame@gmail.com — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 12:41:39 GMT

This is in regards to the Pain Before Pleasure mystery in the 1991 arcade game Total Carnage. You'll probably want to read that page for some background.

In any case, my thoughts are that if there is a secret ending, it's almost guaranteed that the text is going to be stored in the same place as the other endings. So I went searching in the ROM for the text. Guess what, it's surprisingly hard. The reason is because the text is interlaced in two different ROMs!

In the ROM tcu89.bin, at offset 0xA431, one can find the ASCII string "ogauain!". This seems to be gibberish until you look at exactly the same offset in the ROM tcu105.bin, where you can see the string "Cnrtltos".

Interlace the two and you get the message "Congratulations!" Using this, one can reconstruct the entire section of text as follows. The line breaks are actually ASCII 0 (NULL) in the ROM:

Congratulations!

You have joined the heroes
from Smash T.V. in the
Pleasure Domes! We have
been waiting for you! The
ladies have been most anxious!

You have delivered Captain
Carnage and Major Mayhem into
a life of leisure. Their every
wish will be granted. Of
course, they will have to share
the goodies with the Smash boys,
but there is plenty to go around!

You are one of only a few
who have reached this far.

You are a great dual joystick
game player.

However, as greedy as you are, you
failed to pick up all the cash and
prizes sitting in the Pleasure Dome!

If you do this, the ladies will
prove that pain before pleasure
is worth it.

Can you do this?

Thank you for playing
Total Carnage.

Total Carnage Design Team:
Mark Turmell
John Tobias
Shawn Liptak
Jim Gentile
Jon Hey
Eugene Jarvis
Tony Goskie

Special Thanks:
George Petro
Larry Demar
Ed Boon (Voices)
Todd Allen
Cary Mednick
Sheridan Oursler
Mark Loffredo
Ray Gay
Ray Czajka
Betty Purcell

Congratulations!

You have destroyed Akhboob's
army and his ability to
create more mutant life
forms. You wrecked his
Bio-Nuclear facility,
airport, communications
system, weapons arsenal,
and his military vehicles.

You also saved hundreds
of hostages and recovered
billions of dollars worth
of stolen gems.
That is great news!

However, you allowed General
Akhboob to escape!

Being the DUFUS you are, you
*also failed to collect the 220
**also failed to collect the 200
keys required to join other
game heroes in the Midway
Pleasure Domes.
This is not good.

Ahkboob lives...

No pleasure for you today...

Thank you for playing!

Congratulations!

You fried the hell out of
that jerk! Great job!

You have destroyed Akhboob's
army and his ability to
create more mutant life
forms. You blew up his
Bio-Nuclear facility,
airport, communications,
and weapons arsenal. You
saved hundreds of lives!
You are a stud game player.

However, the real goal of
this game is to join the
heroes from Smash T.V. in
the Midway Pleasure Domes.
*You must collect 220 keys
**You must collect 200 keys
to gain entrance.
You failed to do this.

You suck.

Thank you for playing!

There are a few non-ASCII characters in there, which I've used asterisks to represent. * is 0x80, and ** is 0x81. It's clearly a branch point.

The word "Congratulations" (interlaced), appears nowhere else in the ROMs.

Now, is this incontrovertible evidence that there is no special "pain before pleasure" ending? Not at all. It's certainly conceivable that the programmers decided to use a special encoding that they used only for the hidden ending, and whatever strings are shown are stored in some obscure location in the ROMs. However, I strongly doubt it; at this point it just seems more likely that this was a practical joke on the part of the programmers, especially as seeing nobody has ever achieved this in the last 15 years.

Don't lose any more sleep over it.

A mildly risque parody

onigame@gmail.com — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 22:33:17 GMT

Oh when the pants go falling down,
Oh when my pants go falling down,
It's all because you're wearing that number,
That why the pants go falling down.

(I tried a more recognizable version with "Oh when the stains come leaching in" but it didn't seem to quite work.)

Super Tuesday Trivia

onigame@gmail.com — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 18:25:38 GMT

Okay, a bit early, but what the heck.

(1) In this year's Democratic primary, the three front-runners are all U.S. Senators. None of the front-runners have ever held any high-level executive position -- by which I mean State Governor, Vice President, or President.

Before this election, when was the last time this happened?

(2) If you look at all the jobs that each of our prior 42 presidents held prior to becoming President, you'll see a lot of public service jobs, unsurprisingly. In a few cases, you'll see some private job (e.g., Lincoln was a lawyer before running for President) but go back a bit further and you'll see a public service job (Lincoln was a Representative from Illinois before going into private practice). Match the numbers with the jobs:

14 of them were ___.
10 of them were ___.
5 of them were ___.
5 of them were ___.
4 of them were ___.
2 of them were ___.
2 of them were ___.

Cabinet Secretaries
Diplomats
Generals
Governors
Representatives
Senators
Vice Presidents