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 Forum index » Diversions » The Master Theorem
Geocaching
Moderators: Cougar Draven
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pzlr
Boot

Joined: 14 Sep 2011
Posts: 29

 		The 3D model in the LAME google earth application (it will occasionally jump to oddball locations for no apparent reason) has the wrong number of columns. This is the second time M has trusted a BAD source. The "crayola crayon" theorem relied on bad values for crayon colors, the ones that someone had "reverse engineered" on wikipedia rather than the officially listed values on the crayola website. There are quite a few nice clear pictures of the Parthenon on the net... Good Grief! Sad

PostPosted: Thu Sep 22, 2011 8:08 am
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Welkin
Boot

Joined: 26 May 2011
Posts: 14
pzlr wrote:
The 3D model in the LAME google earth application (it will occasionally jump to oddball locations for no apparent reason) has the wrong number of columns. This is the second time M has trusted a BAD source. The "crayola crayon" theorem relied on bad values for crayon colors, the ones that someone had "reverse engineered" on wikipedia rather than the officially listed values on the crayola website. There are quite a few nice clear pictures of the Parthenon on the net... Good Grief! Sad


Crayola website has their RGB colors? Where?

PostPosted: Thu Sep 22, 2011 8:53 am
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Welkin
Boot

Joined: 26 May 2011
Posts: 14

 		This puzzle, aside from the errors and ambiguity, is just following directions and some busy work. There's no Aha moment. Disappointed.

PostPosted: Thu Sep 22, 2011 8:55 am
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Guest
Guest


 		okvnar competent
Relying on solvers using Google Earth sucks.

I misread the B clue as the dimensions of the base in columns
Spoiler (Rollover to View):
ie a column is 10m high, the perimeter is w=70m, h=30m, so answer = 20
.

Since this doesn't resolve the fraction (for minutes in the E co-ord), I put the fraction into Google Maps as is
Spoiler (Rollover to View):
18 5 16.23 N, 14 3/35 13.38 E
and google helpfully provided a location:

Cancun.

I have no idea what google's logic is, but that was a pretty frustrating because it places right in the middle of the city (which fits the clue pretty well as a place you dream of travelling to)

PostPosted: Thu Sep 22, 2011 9:24 am
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pzlr
Boot

Joined: 14 Sep 2011
Posts: 29
Welkin wrote:
pzlr wrote:
The 3D model in the LAME google earth application (it will occasionally jump to oddball locations for no apparent reason) has the wrong number of columns. This is the second time M has trusted a BAD source. The "crayola crayon" theorem relied on bad values for crayon colors, the ones that someone had "reverse engineered" on wikipedia rather than the officially listed values on the crayola website. There are quite a few nice clear pictures of the Parthenon on the net... Good Grief! Sad


Crayola website has their RGB colors? Where?


Go to the "color census" page. Look up a color. Use any image analysis tool to get the RGB from the "Crayon Stroke" image. That is the official RGB for the color.

PostPosted: Thu Sep 22, 2011 10:26 am
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EGo
Unfettered


Joined: 24 Oct 2005
Posts: 545
Location: Wasting time in east New Jersey

 		The amount of vitriol here astounds even me. True, there was one factual mistake, with B. Yeah, it was less of a puzzle and more busywork. And... those are the only things I can really see wrong.

No one had to install Google Earth. I didn't. I converted the coordinates to decimals and plugged them into Maps, then looked up information about the buildings. Though, in some cases I was able to count the asked-for item from the overhead view. If your hate is Google-directed, there's Yahoo, Bing, even goddamned Rand McNally, and for the purposes of this they work just as well.

Just... what the hell, people. Chill out.
_________________
When I speak, I cross my fingers.

PostPosted: Thu Sep 22, 2011 10:28 am
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pzlr
Boot

Joined: 14 Sep 2011
Posts: 29

 		Re: okvnar competent
Anonymous wrote:
Relying on solvers using Google Earth sucks.

I have no idea what google's logic is, but that was a pretty frustrating because it places right in the middle of the city (which fits the clue pretty well as a place you dream of travelling to)


Or typo a comma instead of a period... or typo an 'o' instead of a zero... As I said, LAME.

PostPosted: Thu Sep 22, 2011 10:29 am
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The Baffled King
Boot

Joined: 07 Sep 2011
Posts: 34
EGo wrote:
The amount of vitriol here astounds even me. True, there was one factual mistake, with B. Yeah, it was less of a puzzle and more busywork. And... those are the only things I can really see wrong.

No one had to install Google Earth. I didn't. I converted the coordinates to decimals and plugged them into Maps, then looked up information about the buildings. Though, in some cases I was able to count the asked-for item from the overhead view. If your hate is Google-directed, there's Yahoo, Bing, even goddamned Rand McNally, and for the purposes of this they work just as well.

Just... what the hell, people. Chill out.


Yeah, I basically agree with this. True, the counting error (and relying on Google Earth to provide a correct count) is annoying. But it really wasn't necessary for solvers to use Google Earth. It was just a helpful tool, like using an anagram-finder online. And, as is now obvious, it wasn't all that useful.

It took me over a half hour, and if I had been sharp and used a slightly better strategy I would have got the half hour bonus (but I had no chance at the bigger bonuses).

I was disappointed that it was more busywork and less puzzle. In the past M has had some really nice Aha!-producing puzzles, and this one fell short. But jeez, the Master Theorem is a nice, fun set-up, there's an enjoyable pretend mysterious atmosphere, many of the Seals are very creative... and the whole thing is free. So, yeah, chill.

PostPosted: Thu Sep 22, 2011 10:40 am
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abelenky
Guest


 		Got it! :)
I'd never heard for the Master Theorem before, but bumped into it this week.

Took me about 1 1/2 hour to get the Geocaching puzzle.

The clue, with respect to B, is tricky on several levels. Most significantly, the model in Google-Earth differs from the diagram on Wikipedia. (I can't say which one is authoritative, but the puzzle works when I count the model on GoogleEarth).

PostPosted: Thu Sep 22, 2011 11:45 am
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SoItBegins
Veteran

Joined: 16 May 2011
Posts: 83

 		Re: okvnar competent
Anonymous wrote:
Relying on solvers using Google Earth sucks.

I misread the B clue as the dimensions of the base in columns
Spoiler (Rollover to View):
ie a column is 10m high, the perimeter is w=70m, h=30m, so answer = 20
.

Since this doesn't resolve the fraction (for minutes in the E co-ord), I put the fraction into Google Maps as is
Spoiler (Rollover to View):
18 5 16.23 N, 14 3/35 13.38 E
and google helpfully provided a location:

Cancun.

I have no idea what google's logic is, but that was a pretty frustrating because it places right in the middle of the city (which fits the clue pretty well as a place you dream of travelling to)


You have to type the DMS symbols, or google will get it wrong.

Quote:

This week's 'theorem' if flawed in that:
1) It requires installation of a specific piece of suspect software,
2) that one be previously familiar with the operation of this software,
3) that use of the software (or any likely near equivalent) further exacerbates the already unfair bias in scoring given to fast machines and connections (neither of which are actually related to puzzle solving ability)
4) there was a massive fail on the fact checking re the number for B
5) the original puzzle gave an incorrect formula for finding B (2wh vs 2w+2h)
6) there is ambiguity in what is intended to be counted in C
7) at least one source indicated an answer for A that included an extra level (although the site did mention this was quite a pedantic counting)
8 ) even if one acquires the intended (rather than the correct) numbers for a through e, working the math and using the found values leads to a wrong answer (see my above post for the correct city -- one of the two based on how the numbers are to be coded)

Also, @Fed up: Cool it.
1. I didn't have Google Earth on my computer either and I used Google Maps.
2. See above.
3. I honestly can't say anything about this one. It took me almost 15 minutes to look up all the locations, and I'm on 10Mbps cable.
4. Yep, you're right on that one.
5. Yes, it did give an incorrect formula at the beginning. M and co. noticed and corrected it.
6. That's part of the puzzle.
7. Wikipedia doesn't. For these puzzles, Wikipedia is usually where you want to look up things first.
8. No, it doesn't. When I input the correct coords into Google Maps, it put me near a rather famous square in the correct city (which, just to be clear, IS NOT Cancun. The correct city is somewhere in Eurasia.)

PostPosted: Thu Sep 22, 2011 1:03 pm
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Nylund
Boot

Joined: 21 Jul 2011
Posts: 12

 		Count me as frustrated as well. The Parthenon column thing was confusing. The wording implies 46, but the math...well, it depends on what equation you used (since he changed it) implies 50, but he wanted 52, but then he corrected it back to 50 by changing the final equation at the bottom (by switching from B/4 to (B+2)/4 ). That was just a wreck.

But that's not my real problem with the puzzle. It's that it wasn't a puzzle. It was more like a virtual scavenger hunt. Go here, count, go here, count. Do math. The process for solving it was entirely laid out. It was just a matter of actually going through the tedious actions.

Puzzles are fun when you have to figure out HOW to solve them. There was nothing to figure out here. It was just "Do this tedious process."

PostPosted: Thu Sep 22, 2011 3:10 pm
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caf
Boot

Joined: 21 Jul 2011
Posts: 10

 		I'm still seeing people commenting on a site starting with C. If that's your answer, you have everything right, Google maps just has East and West flipped (or something similar...)

Really not getting the anger... B was messed up, this was a bit more tedious than normal, and it was less easy to get an idea if you were correct until all pieces were right - not TMT's finest week. M *should* do a better job fact checking than wikipedia and Google (and should probably have posted another correction), but if he had and his correct answers differed from the wrong ones that everyone would find first, people would still be complaining. Whoever made the Earth model ALSO should have done a better job fact checking, though.

Even the problems with B didn't really matter THAT much - the math dictated pretty much dictated the number given (unless you thought there were double or triple the number of columns or thought fractional degrees made any sense in this problem). No special software required - an atlas and an encyclopedia would be sufficient, as would any number of other ways of looking up facts and plotting coordinates.

Good weeks and bad weeks. This one wasn't that bad, IMHO.

PostPosted: Thu Sep 22, 2011 3:23 pm
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Ace
Boot

Joined: 22 Sep 2011
Posts: 11
EGo wrote:
No one had to install Google Earth.


You had to install Google Earth if you wanted to get B correct. If you relied on other sources for that answer specifically you would not get the answer correct.

I found this forum, thankfully, because Google Earth wouldn't run properly on my computer (it's an older computer), so I had the correct answer for B, not the one relying on a bad source. I would have had the answer two hours before I had if M had looked up B via another source than a model in a program.

PostPosted: Thu Sep 22, 2011 3:49 pm
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scooter22
Guest
Nylund wrote:

But that's not my real problem with the puzzle. It's that it wasn't a puzzle. It was more like a virtual scavenger hunt. Go here, count, go here, count. Do math. The process for solving it was entirely laid out. It was just a matter of actually going through the tedious actions.

Puzzles are fun when you have to figure out HOW to solve them. There was nothing to figure out here. It was just "Do this tedious process."


I agree. Maybe I should submit a puzzle with dots with numbers 1 to 50... start with 1, then draw a line from 1 to 2, and continue and get a picture and type in the answer. Just a lazy puzzle by M, but I'll take this off-week since most are pretty good. It *may* have been worth it if the answer was cool.... (like "my mind" or the "Mariana trench" or where Atlantis is though to be) but the answer city is just so "bleh'"... since this was so laid out, I wonder what the 3 hints were

PostPosted: Thu Sep 22, 2011 5:03 pm
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UnboundPrometheus
Kilroy

Joined: 22 Sep 2011
Posts: 1
scooter22 wrote:
I wonder what the 3 hints were

I don't know if you really care, but for your own edification here they are.
Hint #1
Spoiler (Rollover to View):
Try using Google Earth. I highly recommend turning on the "3-D Buildings" option in the sidebar at lower left.

Hint #2
Spoiler (Rollover to View):
Use Google Earth with the 3-D Buildings option turned to search for the GPS coordinates I've given. Each one pinpoints a famous landmark. Find the information requested about each landmark and see what you can do with it.

Hint #3
Spoiler (Rollover to View):
If you're not using Google Earth, you might need to do a little digging to find these values. Try Wikipedia for the third and fifth values. Plug the answers to each riddle into the final equation. Which city does that take you to?

So as has already been mentioned, this puzzle was nothing more than following a set of instructions. Oh well, there's always next week.

PostPosted: Thu Sep 22, 2011 11:04 pm
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