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 Forum index » Diversions » TimeWasters
College Puzzle Challenge
Moderators: Giskard, ndemeter, ScarpeGrosse
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dev
Veteran

Joined: 22 Sep 2008
Posts: 75

 		College Puzzle Challenge
Hey all,

So a group of friends and myself are participating the the Microsoft College puzzle challenge. (www.collegepuzzlechallenge.com). Its a one day thing where you go and do puzzles all day. They have these 'pre-event' puzzles just to get you ready for the actual event. Our team is absolutly stumped on the newest pre-event puzzle. Since the rules allow for outside help on the pre-event puzzles I wanted to see if I could use the unending puzzle-knowledge of this forum. Plus its a really tricky puzzle that people may enjoy.

Spoiler (Rollover to View):
So far all we have is that it is a bridge game, the suit of the starting cards are listed, as well as who plays the starting cards. The first letter of the players name corresponds to where they are sitting at the table (N,E,S,W) and N,S has a contract for either 3-hearts or 3-spades. Along with the other things that they said happened in the game, we thought that the first letter of the winning card would go down in the spaces at the bottom. So far we've managed to make no progress. Also we think that the cards are possibly listen in high-low order, which would account for the spacing.


So yeah, if anyone wants to try and help us solve this puzzle ya'll are more than welcome to. Plus I would not be surprised if there was at least one other team on this forum that may need similar help.


-Dev

PostPosted: Wed Oct 29, 2008 5:39 pm
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JaeDom
Decorated


Joined: 10 Sep 2007
Posts: 227
Location: SouCal

 		I would like to do this, but apparantly you have to have a team? Hmm... Any takers? lol Very Happy

PostPosted: Thu Oct 30, 2008 11:17 am
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dev
Veteran

Joined: 22 Sep 2008
Posts: 75

 		Yeah, sadly its only for 24 specific colleges across the US, and you have to be a student at said college.

PostPosted: Thu Oct 30, 2008 1:48 pm
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cjr22
Boot

Joined: 10 Apr 2005
Posts: 58

 		I worked out the answer - it's
Spoiler (Rollover to View):
ALASKA MILLION

The first thing to do is work out the hands - they're arranged as they normally would be in a bridge problem, Spades at the top, then Hearts, diamonds then clubs, high to low within the suit. Based on the HCP (high card points where A=4, K=3, Q=2, J=1, others=0) and the clues in the text you can work out who had what except for the low red cards, which won't matter. Then you deconstruct the game, where the suit letter by each player says who led that trick (ie who won the last one) and which suit they led. Finally, translate the winning card in each trick to a letter (ace = a/n, 2=b/o, 3=c/p etc) and you get the final phrase.

Cool puzzle. But you'd never do it unless you know about bridge, not just the rules of the game but how the hands are usually laid out in puzzles.

PostPosted: Fri Oct 31, 2008 11:18 am
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dev
Veteran

Joined: 22 Sep 2008
Posts: 75
cjr22 wrote:
I worked out the answer - it's
Spoiler (Rollover to View):
ALASKA MILLION

The first thing to do is work out the hands - they're arranged as they normally would be in a bridge problem, Spades at the top, then Hearts, diamonds then clubs, high to low within the suit. Based on the HCP (high card points where A=4, K=3, Q=2, J=1, others=0) and the clues in the text you can work out who had what except for the low red cards, which won't matter. Then you deconstruct the game, where the suit letter by each player says who led that trick (ie who won the last one) and which suit they led. Finally, translate the winning card in each trick to a letter (ace = a/n, 2=b/o, 3=c/p etc) and you get the final phrase.

Cool puzzle. But you'd never do it unless you know about bridge, not just the rules of the game but how the hands are usually laid out in puzzles.



Very well done. I actually approached it just like that, except I think that I deconstructed the game incorrectly. My problem was exactly that, I did not have enough knowledge about how the game would normally be played out. If you happen to have how you said the game played out in a text file or somthing, could you send it to me? I'm very curious to see where exactly I went wrong.

PostPosted: Fri Oct 31, 2008 11:59 am
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jjack712
Kilroy

Joined: 01 Nov 2009
Posts: 1

 		actually, im stumped on the very first puzzle, could u gimme some hints on how to approach it?

im new to all of these and hav no idea where to even begin! wat am i supposed to be looking for in ' marks the spot anyways?

PostPosted: Sun Nov 01, 2009 1:05 pm
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