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[Nova]

OK, I'll bite. What's with the fF?

[AngriBuddhist]

Scott, usernameguy did not brute force his way through this. It was
simple.

Working off SP's clue: What was the person I dislike the most, before she
was a Queen.

I pointed out that "what" implied that the word we were looking for should
be a noun and that "a Queen" was out of place because SP had always
described Mel as "the Queen". I figured the answer had to be "a _____".

I posted it and went to work. usernameguy put two and two together.
In chess, a Queen was always a Queen unless she used to be "a_pawn".

Two insights=One answer

No Brutes were forced in the making of this solution.

[SpghEddy]

I'm curious what the PMs were thinking when they made this puzzle.
When designing a puzzle, the designer expects the player to use a certain chain of logic to solve the puzzle. To solve any puzzle, we start with the facts (clues), and it may take several steps to get to the answer.

First, the clues:
Clue 1: sounds like
Clue 2: list is all prepositions
Clue 3: length is 41

Here's one possible chain of logic:

Step 1: 41 is 31337speak. Result: "AI"
Step 2: Rewrite "41 prepositions". Result: "AI pre- position"
Step 3: Understand "AI pre-position" to mean "What is the Queen beforehand?"
Step 4: Understand this to refer to the rank of a chess piece. Result: a pawn

The worst thing about this chain of logic is that it never uses Clue 1. Also, it takes three steps to get from the number 41 to thinking about a chess piece, which makes this very convoluted.

Another possible chain of reasoning:

Step 1: Think of prepositions that are not on the list.
Step 2: Choose "upon".
Step 3: Realize that it sounds like "a_pawn"

Well, we use Clue 1, but given that there are so many prepositions *not* on the list, it's pretty hard to expect us to specifically choose "upon". Also, Clue 3 is not used. Here, there are so many possibilities, that it's hard to expect a person to stick with this approach until it works.

I think both approaches seem unlikely, neither uses all the clues, and they don't reinforce one another -- you can verify that they both can lead to the same answer once you've got that answer, but they don't help you cut down on possible answers before you've found it.

I wonder if they actually expected us to come up with one of these approaches before they had the SP give us a hint.

[thebruce]

yes but "AI pre-position" is so stretching it it's not even funny... for once thing, a pawn isn't a position... there's just a very very vague connection between pre-position and clue #3... call it a connection if you want, but I'm 100% positive that was not one of the steps the PM's had planned... I'm 99% posive that the UPON was the way to go with the sounds like and prepositions... how? Maybe we missed something in the clues, who knows, we can ask the PMs after... but saying "AI pre-positions" was a definite step in solve to a pawn, well IMO, no...

[danteGA]

My .02 as someone who devoted countless man-hours trying out various possible solves for this puzzle:

a) Excellent job to usernameguy and all the others who contributed to finally getting the pawn, er- monkey off our backs!

b) I think this was a deeply-flawed puzzle. I don't see any realistic way we would have gotten it as it was originally presented to us. Bleah.


dante

[KwayZeeyT]

[l0rd0fm0rgul]

First of all, way to go usernameguy! I'm so glad we finally get this one done. Second, I agree with the people who say we were supposed to solve this by using upon (and not ai pre-positions), it all fits together if you know that it sounds like upon. My problem with this puzzle is that there are sooo many other prepositions that are never on the list. I wish they had put them in alphabetical order and put a blank where upon would go, or give us way more prepositions in the list. If there were ~150 in it, we could find the few that were left out and solve it based on that, instead of brute forcing over 100 possible prepositions and what they sound like. Other than this flaw, it was a great puzzle. Once again, way to go usernameguy, and way to go PM's!

[Elec]

[Torrasque]

J|_|$7 83[4|_|$3 |_| 7|-|!|\||< !7'$ |_337 $P34|< |)03$|\|'7 |\/|34|\| !7 !$.

[Llama]

Good jorb!

[usernameguy]

I agree that the proposed "front door" solutions for this puzzle are pretty shaky, at best. Checksum's solution (AI preposition) is really clever, but a bit of a stretch. Shad0's (sounds like "upon") feels right, but I really don't see how we were supposed to get to "upon" in the first place.

Maybe it's just that we still haven't found the front door they intended us to use. Maybe, somehow, the word "upon" is encoded in that list, and we still haven't seen it. For example, you can pick out the letters u-p-o-n from the first letters of the prepositions. Maybe there's something there. [shrug]

Or maybe the SP messed up. She just didn't realize there are 80+ prepositions in the English Language.

I doubt we'll know what the real deal before the PM's tell us.

[OmegaX]

First off, gratz, usernameguy, for doing what so many of us (us as in BeeKeepers in general, or you/them as in those who tried this puzzle) couldn't.

Second, before you hate on this puzzle for being hard, try where.gif (I never tried, but I read the whole article on it and I was there for son of where.gif), or the "wuzzles" (as the forum swear-filter turns the word into) at thisisnotporn.com.

[Ralen]

Off topic, but what is where.gif?

[krystyn]

Read it and weep:

http://www.unfiction.com/compendi/humor/wheregif.html

[detayl]