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May 2005 GAMES
The usual. One contest by occasional UCDP commenter Adam Fromm called Spin Cycle is a neat new variant on place-the-letter-to-make-the-longest-words-you-can type contest. The Stocking Stuffer results are in (and just because we go to church in Middleton doesn't mean I know who these people are). The usual contests, features and puzzles await the motivated
Comments
For a description of the contest, see my post in April's site.
Posted by: Toni | Mar 10, 2005 1:22:17 PM
Thanks Toni, seems like a sufficient description of the contest to begin working on it.
Posted by: Jim Miller | Mar 10, 2005 4:18:41 PM
Hello UCDPers,
Can anyone straighten something out for me? The most recent issue of GWoP I've received is January 2005 (armchair car rally). Have there been any more recent issues than this? I know my subscription is up to date, but I haven't received anything.
Thanks,
Steve
Posted by: Stephen | Mar 12, 2005 1:19:07 PM
To clear thing up a bit, I do not know the other "Stocking Stuffer" runner-up from Middleton. It is just a coincidence that two people from the same small city happened to be runners-up.
I am surprised that I am the first runner-up. My previous highest placement in a "best answer" contest was sixth place.
The "Spin Cycle" contest appears to be quite challenging. It is highly unlikely that the winner will spend under an hour to get the best entry.
Posted by: Laurie | Mar 12, 2005 2:15:30 PM
I haven't seen GWoP in quite a while, Stephen. I'm not a subscriber - I buy mine in the bookstore, but there have not been any for months.
Posted by: Michael | Mar 12, 2005 2:26:17 PM
Hi Stephen,
I usually buy my GWOP at the bookstore too...
While I don't remember offhand the month, I do remember the most recent contest...
It was titled "Horseshoes"...
I'm pretty sure it was the March 2005 issue...
Posted by: Jim from Minnesota | Mar 12, 2005 3:25:03 PM
Right, Jim. I have the March issue, with
Horseshoes" the contest puzzle. I believe GWOP is a 6-per-year every other month publication, so the next one will be May. But Stephen, you should have received your March issue long ago. I'd suggest letting them know you didn't receive it, and with luck they will send a replacement.
Posted by: Bob Lodge | Mar 12, 2005 7:19:23 PM
Laurie,
You're in Middleton. We're in Madison. I thought it was odd that there were so many Middleton winners but I also realized that WI is usually well-represented in GAMES contests for its pop.
Posted by: JmSR | Mar 12, 2005 7:51:35 PM
In response to Stephen, I'm in somewhat the same boat; do you live outside the U.S. as well, by any chance? My March issue of GWoP finally arrived around March 1st, after I had broken down and purchased it from the newsstand a couple of days before. (If I hadn't given the extra one away, I would have offered to send it to you.)
It seems counter-intuitive to have given up on a magazine before its "cover date" has even arrived, but getting the April issue of GAMES the previous week seemed like a fair indication that the March one had gone missing.
For what it's worth, I tend to receive issues of both magazines in the mail about 2-3 weeks after the point that people on this site start talking about them.
Posted by: Bill from Canada | Mar 14, 2005 8:41:49 AM
Bill, I expect the fact that it is 2nd-class mail crossing the border to Canada may have much to do with the delay. Ordinarily I'd expect subscription copies to be delivered BEFORE newsstand copies appear, however. I'd write a letter to the subscription department and ask them about it.
I have noticed that many magazines offer a first-class mailing option for foreign subscriptions, but they are usually very expensive, probably more than buying it at a newsstand each month.
I checked one place in town to see if the May GWOP might be in yet, but I'm not sure if they carry it anyway. I'm going to look where I bought my March issue today, if I remember while I am out and about.
Posted by: Bob Lodge | Mar 15, 2005 1:00:11 PM
I wasn't sure which month's thread to post this under, since this one if for the May 2005 issue, but the discussion of the Spin Cycle contest began in the April thread... Anyway, I was just wondering if anyone who already has the issue can post the rules of acceptable words. GAMES had been using the same rules for years, until, on a recent contest, they only allowed boldface entries, not forms of words which could be inferred from boldface entries. Also, they recently began referring to the CD-ROM version of the dictionary (I believe disallowing words found only there). The exact wording from the magazine would be perfect, if that's allowed (not sure of all the site rules; this is my first posting)... Thanks!
Posted by: Alex B | Mar 16, 2005 10:33:47 PM
Alex,
I'm too lazy to type the exact rules, but it's basically back to their traditional inflection rules (non-boldface ok, and noun and verb forms acceptable if merely implied by inflectional patterns); and yes, words must appear in the print dictionary. Everything else seems normal.
Posted by: Jim Miller | Mar 16, 2005 11:24:56 PM
Alex B....Here it is, word for word..."Acceptable Words...To be acceptable, a word must be recognized by the printed (not just CD-ROM or online) edition of Webster's Third New International Dictionary (unabridged), in which the word must either be listed in boldface or be an inflected form of a boldface entry. Comparative and superlative forms of adjectives are acceptalble only if specified after a boldface entry, but noun plurals and verb forms are acceptable if clearly implied by the inflectional patterns of related words. Words may contain accent marks. A word is unacceptable if it: (1) is composed of two or more component words separated by a space, or appears only as a component part: (2) contains an apostrope, hyphen, or period: (3) is designated only as capitalized or usually capitalized; (4) is listed only as an abbreviation or symbol; (5)appears only in the Addenda."
Posted by: Toni | Mar 16, 2005 11:35:33 PM
Well, here is my result of computer search of Spin Cycle. I used simulated annealing to swap the letters around in the circle to find the best score. The search is not exhaustive, so it may not be the highest possible score (besides my word list is not complete).
The most number of words I found was
(1411 + 149) / 13
do the math if you want to know it.
My computer won a t-shirt last month so this time I think I will NOT submit the entry...
Posted by: Mark Mammel | Mar 22, 2005 9:28:41 AM
er, of course I meant to say the number of LETTERS :)
Posted by: Mark Mammel | Mar 22, 2005 9:32:20 AM
It is in my opinion that people like Mark makes these contests unfair to the people who actually use their brain to solve a contest and not some computer generated program.
Yesterday, I went to Barnes and Noble and picked up both the May 2005 issue of GAMES as well as the May 2005 issue of GWOP....a first time that has happened, being able to purchase both issues at the same time.
Posted by: The_Steppum | Mar 22, 2005 3:35:55 PM
Steppum -
1. Programming a solution also takes brains. I'm not as adept at programming as some, but I do respect the craft, and those that can apply their skill set to problem solving.
2. If I recall, there was a certain rebus contest that you participated in that you continued to ask for hints and answers throughout the life of the contest.
It is interesting the distinction that you draw between fair and unfair.
Posted by: Jay Winter | Mar 22, 2005 3:45:35 PM
I must agree that programming takes A LOT more effort than pleading "I got_____, I need ______" on a discussion board.
Although programming seems to be an unfair advantage, it is not really "unfair". Trivia questions could be considered as an equally unfair advantage for couch potatoes to a person who does not watch TV...
Posted by: Paula | Mar 22, 2005 4:28:03 PM
Mark, that's a pretty good score. Up to this point, my total, without the use of programming, is about 75% of yours. Your total is in the range I'd suspected was possible. I'm curious to find out the highest possible score.(Or the highest scores submitted.) I'll have to wait until the contest is over, because I doubt if I'll ever see it.
Posted by: Toni | Mar 22, 2005 4:38:29 PM
It takes skill to learn programming languages, and it shouldn't be considered unfair. I am not a good programmer, and I can't use programming to win a contest. I understand that people have different skills, which is part of any contest.
It is highly likely that the winner of the "Spin Cycle" will use programming, so I don't see why Mark shouldn't enter the contest.
Posted by: Laurie | Mar 22, 2005 6:49:33 PM
My reaction to Mark's announcement of his early high score achieved through programming is disappointment. Not because he is finding high scores, with an advanced programming technique, which I might not equal, but because he deflated a lot of mystery and excitement out of the contest by announcing a high-or-close-to-high score so soon after the contest got underway, before most people had probably done any significant work on it. Sort of like the person who ruins your joke by beating you to the punch line. (The simple term he used to disguise his answer wasn't nearly opaque enough.)
I'm somewhat on the fence about programming Games contests. My favorite contests are the ones which are difficult enough to not be completely attackable by programmers, and I fully appreciate the sentiment about "using your own brain". Yes, programming does require intelligence, but in the end, the programmer is offloading much of the work to a 3rd party, an external machine, and it's very clear just from reading the posts here that many entrants do not use programming, maybe don't own a computer or know how to program, and prefer to use "just their brains".
Is this mixture fair? Maybe a solution is to divide Games contest entrants into declared programmers and non-programmers, and give prizes in each category.
To muddy the waters, I announced a few days ago that I might attack the contest with a computer if I think there is enough time. My plan was or is to finally extricate all the words from the Webster's 3rd CD and bring them into a simple text file, through clever use of several 3rd-party programs to automate the extraction process. Might take a month, might take 6, I don't know, but not really any "programming" involved per se directly related to the contest problem at hand. Then when I have all the words in a file, I can use simple pattern matching programs like "grep" to search for words according to hopefully intelligent plans of attack I thought up. You could call this a "cyborg" technique because it's mostly human-brain-directed but using a few mechanical prostheses to do very rote stuff. If I had to choose between declaring myself as a programmer or not, I suppose I would err on the side of caution and declare "programmer", but I wouldn't have brought nearly the computing resources to bear as someone who programmed a technique such as "simulated annealing", driving at the heart of the Spin Cycle problem.
Non-programmers tend to progress on the contest at one speed, and programmers at another, definitely so in this case. I enjoy the progress reports of our best scores so far as the contest period goes on, even a little taunting, but that's when we're all sort of "in the same boat". Mark just lunged ahead with a technique that very, very few people reading this forum would be able to use and rather spoiled it, in my opinion.
Posted by: Jim Miller | Mar 22, 2005 8:56:09 PM
I'm a programmer by trade and I'll admit I've definitely used computers to solve GAMES contests when appropiate. However, I don't feel that I've taken the easy way out. I've spent a lot of time on the contests that I won.
The most recent was the AFO-AGH contest with the 3 letter abbreviations. I spent a lot of time extracting a word list from Websters online unabridged dictionary (as well as some other sources) and I also spent quite a bit of time writing and fine tuning a program to try and sift out the best 20 words. The contest was just too complex to fully solve with a computer and I ended up using the computer to get "close" and then manually manipulating the top 5 or 10 sets myself to come up with a better answer.
In the end, I did not have the best answer submitted, but I did win a T-shirt. I think my weak point was my word list and not the computer.
There was another contest a while back with a stock market ROI theme. I used a computer to find what I thought was a good answer and I submitted it. I was disappointed to find out that 5000 other people also came up with that answer. And I'm betting they all used computers.
I think GAMES is fair with the programmer/non-programmer issue. Not all of their contests can be solved with computers, like the Rebuses and Stocking stuffer for example. These require more manual manipulation. So whether you use computers or rely on pencil and paper there is something for everyone.
For spin cycle, I doubt I will enter this one. I cannot come up with a good idea for how to even begin to program the problem and right now I'd rather concentrate on the March Madness contest here. And for the record, I haven't used computers to solve any of the March madness questions so far. Unless you count getting a ton of answers out of Google. That takes good internet search skills though and not programming ability.
Just my 2 cents.
Posted by: Jeannette | Mar 23, 2005 7:30:34 AM
Jim, sorry if I spoiled anything for you. I tried to disguise the score to prevent a spoiler but I guess its not hard to get a good idea by glancing at it. But knowing a high score should not discourage you from trying for your own best score. I will not be entering it so you are not competing against it.
I think there will be room for t-shirts for those who put together a good entry -- especially seeing the results of stocking stuffer which had a wide range of scores making up the top 11.
I do not necessarily think programmers will get the top scores -- I don't know how well other programmers will do but there is no reason why a human can't match any programmed answer by using our intelligent approach to constructing a solution (well, at least Kyle Corbin can :)
I think this contest is reasonably fair to human vs programmers, it is a difficult problem to solve by programming (well, we'll see at the end where my score falls). It is not feasible to do an exhaustive search of all possible configurations. One of the most difficult contests for programming for me was the one where you had to write a phrase (Jabberwocky) in the smallest grid possible. I tried a computer solution but was not getting any decent results. I'll have to think about it some more, it seems similar to protein folding. Very few contests (Roi and Million) were pathetically easy to solve exhaustively by computer, most contests seem to be hard enough for good competition between man and machine.
Having separate categories might be a good idea but I don't know if GAMES would have enough interest or would want to split prizes.
Posted by: Mark Mammel | Mar 23, 2005 11:00:57 AM
I guess in the big picture no biggie, Mark. I personally don't have a problem with you or other programmers submitting their ultra-high entries, but it's decent of you to offer to bow out. I just wish you'd keep it mum till late in the game, if you suspect it's close to perfect.
So this contest we have an early target to aim at. It seems amazing that such a score is achievable; it's like finding 12 (log(380000000/pi)+2)-letter words (rounded to the nearest integer).
Posted by: Jim Miller | Mar 23, 2005 7:50:25 PM
Hm. Honestly, I'm not sure where I fall in the computers / no-computers issue. Obviously, it's impossible to outlaw them altogether (or at least impossible to enforce such a ban). Years ago, in response to a reader's letter on the subject, the editors took the writing-a-computer-program-is-a-challenge-too-so-do-as-you-will line, and traditionally I have agreed with that. I certainly wouldn't call it cheating, any more so than Googling the answer to a Calculatrivia question is.
But this doesn't really address the issue of fair play. The problem is that, being essentially an issue of personal ethics, there isn't really an Answer with a capital A. I don't use a computer myself because (a) I can't, and (b) personally speaking, I wouldn't feel very good about a victory gained in that manner, so that's MY answer. But I would never presume to tell someone else that they're wrong for doing it that way. Each contest is a problem to be solved, and like many problems, there are several ways to go about solving it.
As a writer of contests, though, my take on it shifts a bit. I wrote Spin Cycle to be too rich in possibilities to make a brute-force solution feasible, and I hope beyond hope that I was successful. (There are 26!/4 essentially different ways to place the letters in the ring; multiply that by the number of acceptible words the program would have to search through, and, well, you get the idea.) A few years back, another contest of mine, Transcendental Language, was apparently computer-crunched by many, enough so that even the editors commented on it in the write-up (hundreds of entries had exactly the same word list). I have to admit that that bummed me out something fierce, in spite of all I wrote above. I felt like the problem had been answered but not solved, much like someone who enters a guess-the-number-of-jellybeans drawing a thousand times.
In the end, though, that's just my own insecurity. I only spelled out the problem, not the manner of solving it. And honestly, just the fact that people are taking the time to tackle it, be it with pencil or with PC, is horribly flattering and satisfying.
P.S. I'd be interested to see people's solutions, or at the very least the final totals, at some point down the line. I wrote this thing without the foggiest notion of what kind of numbers we'd see (and actually, I confess that my own attempts at solving it have been downright lousy). Theoretically, you all could show me them now, since I have no input in or effect on the judging, and I'm obviously not entering myself. Just to be safe%2
Posted by: Adam Fromm | Mar 24, 2005 12:56:53 AM
(Sorry, end of last post got chopped off...)
Just to be safe, though, if anyone would like to e-mail their letter and word lists to me AFTER the due date has passed, and not before, I'd be quite grateful.
Posted by: Adam Fromm | Mar 24, 2005 12:59:20 AM
Regarding computer vs. brain, I say we use the tools at hand, otherwise the issue will drown us. Anyone using the Internet to find out stuff is using a computer (one great BIG grep tool). Then there are people who have access to a University library and its "tools" vs. people who live in rural Québec (for example). Beautiful, but library-deprived. Unfair? It just makes me try harder.
Do what feels right for you. I do crosswords, turning to reference materials as a last resort. I used a computer to do the Tera-Marching bands contest in GWoP about a year back. Otherwise the combos were horrendous. I actually came up with a question, different from the real one. But figuring out the computer program made it more fun than slogging through by finger and eye.
Happy Easter/Passover/March break to all - John
Posted by: Anglo John | Mar 24, 2005 5:03:16 AM
Here's a dictionary interpretation question -- I am not sure about the capitalization of dasyproctine, it is listed under
dasyprocta n, cap
- dasyproctine adj
I guess the adjective is also capitalized?
How about
abelia, n
1 cap: a genus of ...
2 -s : a plant of the genus Abelia
Is the plural capitalized? I am thinking that it is not.
Posted by: Mark Mammel | Mar 26, 2005 1:55:27 PM
Mark,
Abelias and dasyproctine are not capitalized. If they were, the 'cap' would be at the very beginning of the definition, before the number 1.
Posted by: wilhelm | Mar 26, 2005 5:10:39 PM
I like the Interlopers contest in GWoP. (May issue) I can't decide how many entries to submit. On average, how many correct entries are there for that kind of contest?
Posted by: Thomas | Apr 4, 2005 12:40:51 AM
My take on the programming issue is probably biased by the fact that programming has been putting grub on the table for me for 30-odd years now. The GAMES editors have addressed the issue, saying thay have no quarrel with it. So I use it, but not exclusively. For AFG-AHO I used it mainly for creating lists of useful words, and the program I wrote for actually deriving a best solution never got fully debugged... my solution was, for the most part, cobbled together manually.
A similar issue exists in the world of chess problems -- there, use of computers for solving is strictly prohibited. But there's almost no way to enforce the rule, save at competitions where everyone is in the same room together. It has to be done on the honor system. Of course, you'd need to find some software that can solve the preposterous variety of chess problems which are currently popular... the 'white to play and mate in two moves' sort, while still the most widely-known form, barely scratches the surface. In other forms, black and white co-operate to produce the final effect, in others white tries to force black to checkmate white, on others the objective is stalemate. And then there's retro problems where you start from a given position and work backward, and fairy chess, where the rules are bascially all up for grabs -- the pieces move differently, pieces can change colors, captures come out all funny, and so on ad infinitum. To solve problems like these, you need rather specialized software; it does exist, but is used primarily by the composers of the problems to check that their creations are sound. But some of the puzzles or rule variants are messy enough that they can't even be tested... which leaves a little latitude to the solver to cook a problem (demonstrate its unsoundness). But anyway, just having a program like Chess Master 5000 isn't enough to give a body much of an edge. And writing your own software for this sort of thing is far too laborious to be effective. And if you could write it, you might be better off trying to sell it than just use it to solve problems for a solving ladder.
So anyway, if I use computers for solving something, it's often because I find writing the programming as entertaining as trying to solve the puzzle directly. And if the rules say 'no computers', I just leave 'em out of it.
Posted by: Matt Dickey | Apr 15, 2005 6:39:45 PM
Mr. Fromm, talk about being 'bummed out'. That's exactly how I felt when, in a previous contest, a contestant sent in a word list, with 900(?) words! My list, done manually, was nowhere near that. I enter these contests with the hopes of winning.
I tried Spin Cycle, but when a contestant wrote, saying he/she got (whatever) by computerized programming where my total, done manually, was about half that amount , I was discouraged from continuing. There's no way I can compete with a computer!
Don't get me wrong, I admire your ability, but I'd like to make a suggestion to those using computer programming in solving these contests; don't announce it here. I don't want to know. Let me think I have a chance.
Posted by: Toni | Apr 16, 2005 2:18:49 PM
Just as it is a challenge to devise a fact- or trivia-based puzzle that is Google-proof, a similar task awaits the composer of a mathematical or letter pattern type of puzzle, to make it hard to solve by writing a computer program to bash it out empirically. My only programming skills are in early forms of BASIC, but I have managed to solve some tricky problems with it. Even though I am not conversant with more modern languages, what little I know allows me to appreciate the capabilities of the modern PC, and to keep them in mind as I construct a puzzle.
In the early 1980s, a puzzle appeared in the Old Farmer's Almanac, in which a set of 19 hexagons fitted together in rows of 3-4-5-4-3, which you can see runs in 3 directions, making 15 rows. The challenge was to put the numbers 1-19 in the cells so that each of the 15 rows had the same sum! A friend had a computer (extremely primitive and slow by today's standards) and I set out to write a BASIC program to solve it. He ran my first attempt for a few hours, stopped to see how far it had gotten, and told me it would need about 300,000 years to finish! I went back to the program and found some optimization and shortcuts, and finally got a program that found the solution in about 5 hours, but ran about 22 hours total to determine that there were no other solutions. (The solution point was random in the running, based on an arbitrary starting point, so by chance it could have been anywhere in the 22 hours, and 5 instead of 10 or 20 was just luck.) I don't know if I can ever find a copy of that program, but I expect that today it would run in a few minutes, or maybe less than a minute! At the time, though, I was elated that I had solved it. (Try it with just a hand calculator and see how far you get!)
A few years later, I was wading through my packrat's hoard of old Scientific Americans, and I came across a 1957 article about this same problem! It had first been devised in 1910, by a man who then worked on it in spare moments for FORTY-TWO YEARS until he found a solution in 1952! Then he quickly managed to misplace his papers, and couldn't find it! Five years later he suffered an illness that kept him housebound for a few weeks, during which time he did some housecleaning and rediscovered his solution, which was then published. So all the time I had been working on that "beehive" problem, the solution was, unknown to me, down in my basement in a stack of magazines!
I still didn't win the prize ($50) and I started writing puzzles for their annual challenge (alas, now defunct) instead. If you check any OFAs for most of the 1980s, you'll find some of my early efforts in the puzzle section, usually in the prize category. I often used the current year in the puzzle. For 1980 (pretty much before computers, remember) it was to string together all the numbers from 1 to 1979, divide the >6000-digit number by 1980, and find the remainder! Can be done without a computer, without actually dividing it out.
Today's programmers and their languages and machines are all very sophisticated, light years ahead of me and early BASIC and a 1982 or whatever PC. I consider it a challenge to write a puzzle that does not give them a significant edge over the hand solvers like Toni, but it is getting harder to do. However, ve haff vays....
Posted by: Bob Lodge | Apr 16, 2005 3:33:55 PM
Thanks for the support, Bob, I appreciate it.
By the way, is that answer (to the 1980 puzzle): 715,400,000 (approx.)??
I attempted to calculate it, (a shortcut) but I'm sure I'm way off. I'm also certain there's a algebraic formula (of which, I don't know) that could calculate the answer in a shorter, more direct way.
Can you tell me your solution?
Posted by: Toni | Apr 16, 2005 9:37:28 PM
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/odd_gibberish_dc
7th paragraph....apparently it's a buzzphrase.
Posted by: Jim Miller | Apr 17, 2005 12:01:42 AM
Toni, the remainder must be smaller than the divisor. Also it will obviously be odd, so it's some odd number between 1 and 1979, inclusive. 12345678910111213...etc to ...197719781979, (about 6800 digits) DIVIDED by 1980, leaves what remainder? Hints: Digital root, divisibility tests.
Jim, make your own buzzphrases here. It's a hoot!
http://www.lurkertech.com/chris/corpspeak.html
Posted by: Bob Lodge | Apr 17, 2005 3:41:32 AM
Oh, boy was I not thinking straight last night! I was thrown off by the 6,000 digit number!
Now I'll try it again, for the real remainder.
Thanks for the hint.
Posted by: Toni | Apr 17, 2005 7:28:45 AM
Bob,
How about 1936??
Posted by: Toni | Apr 17, 2005 7:43:42 AM
Actually, I don't remember the answer, and would have to either re-solve it or find the Old Farmer's Almanac for 1981 that gives it. I recall it still took me about 30-60 min with a calculator to run through various divisibility tests, separately keeping track of 2-, 3-, and 4-digit portions as the patterns shifted. However, as 1980 is even, then 1980 times the integer portion of the quotient must also be even, so subtracting that from the dividend, which is odd, must leave an odd remainder. In fact, looking closer quickly reveals it must end in 19, 39, 59, 79, or 99. So I know 1936 is wrong.
The puzzle was based on the fact that 1980 factors into 20 x 11 x 9, all relatively prime (sharing no common factors), and each of those offers shortcut tests for divisibility which can be applied independently, if somewhat laboriously (especially for 11), to find the remainder for each. From there it is easy to work backwards from the end to find the largest number that is a multiple of each. Somewhat tedious, perhaps, but WAY simpler than actually doing the division, once you start finding the right patterns through the almost 7000 digits. I could sit down with a big scratch pad and a good pen and have the answer in less than an hour, but not in 5 minutes. (Or I could write a BASIC program to just divide it out, but I had no computer in 1979 when I wrote this.)
Posted by: Bob Lodge | Apr 17, 2005 11:26:57 AM
Hi there!...
I just wanted to let everyone know that the June/July issue of GAMES Magazine is out...
There is one contest & the tagline reads ---
ALL YOU HAVE TO DO IS ANSWER ONE QUESTION. BUT FIRST, YOU HAVE TO FIND IT.
It's only a one-star contest so it shouldn't be that hard...
I was hoping for a really challenging contest that would take a long time to solve since it is a two-month issue...
Also in there are the results from the "Mixed Messages" contest...
Posted by: Jim from Minnesota | Apr 28, 2005 8:40:43 PM
Ugh again on the contest. But the fact that it's a June-July issue doesn't mean it will be a longer period until the next issue. I think all 10 issues throughout the year are spaced pretty much equally apart.
Posted by: Jim Miller | Apr 28, 2005 8:49:38 PM
The "Question Marks" contest is one of the "less than one hour" contests. Hopefully, August's contest will be more challenging.
Posted by: Laurie | May 1, 2005 4:12:49 PM
Just got my July 2005 issue of GAMES this morning...went directly towards the contest...solved it within 5 minutes...(with some assistance of Google for the answer to the question)...sending in my entry this afternoon...
is it just me or are they purposely trying to make these contests more easier...also...i noticed that the grand prize went down from $1,000 to $500. Are they that cheap now?
Anyways... see ya laterz
Posted by: The_Steppum | May 2, 2005 8:27:34 AM
Has anyone else had a long delay between sending in a T-shirt form and receiving a T-shirt? I still don't have the T-shirt that I won from the "Stocking Stuffer" contest. I know that I sent in the form over two months ago.
This doesn't compare to my first T-shirt, which took about 6 months to receive. I got multiple letters from GAMES saying that it was on back order.
Posted by: Laurie | May 4, 2005 5:27:01 PM
They've always been slow at getting things sent, but they eventually show up. All my checks for submissions usually showed up after the issue was already in print and on the stands, which is quite some time after submission and acceptance. But it was always welcome, whenever it came.
Posted by: Bob Lodge | May 5, 2005 12:09:06 PM
Today I received my July Games, and went right to the contest. As soon as I saw it I knew what I had to do. I solved it in 15 minutes (Found the question). Finding the answer took me another 20 minutes.
I would have liked just a bit more of a challenge.
Laurie, it usually takes about a month or two to get the shirt, longer when they're back-ordered. Six months is an extremely long time, shouldn't take that long.
If they'd ordered enough shirts (approx. 200 a year would cover the contests and Laundry/Eureka)we wouldn't have to wait for them.
Posted by: Toni | May 5, 2005 12:25:18 PM
I don't think they can pre-order the T-shirts...
On the form they ask you what size you want...
It wouldn't be prudent to have 200 shirts of each size...
By the way...Are the T-shirts still black?
Posted by: Jim from Minnesota | May 5, 2005 5:34:59 PM
Just got my July issue today too. The contest is pathetic. I saw the gimmick of it within 15 seconds of reading the directions, though I haven't done the grunt work. I'm guessing it would take me half an hour to finish.
There have been cereal box contests more challenging. It has my vote for worst Games contest ever.
Posted by: Jim Miller | May 5, 2005 10:06:22 PM
Jim from Minn... you're right, I forgot to consider the sizes!
Yes, they're still all black.
"Question Mark" wasn't much of a challenge. The puzzles in "March Madness" were more challenging!
By the way, JmSr, when is the next one starting? Are we going to be asked to send in puzzles?
Posted by: Toni | May 5, 2005 11:03:22 PM
All the GAMES T-shirts have been black only for many years. I don't know if different colors still come from GWOP or not. I have a green one that says , and also somewhere I think I have a couple other colors (seems like I had a purple one!) but I haven't seen them for many years, not sure where they might be buried. (If I ever find them they might make nice prizes here.)
Posted by: Bob Lodge | May 6, 2005 2:14:03 PM
Bob, You said "I have a green one that says...." what??
The shirts in color...if you do manage to locate them...would make interesting prizes. I wouldn't mind owning one of them.
Let us know if you find them.
Posted by: Toni | May 6, 2005 7:30:33 PM
Oops, sorry, Toni. I went to look for it and forgot I had an incomplete sentence there. Guess I should have reread it after I posted. I still don't know where it is. I think it says, "GAMES Premium Puzzles" or something like that. I'll have to find it and the others and do an inventory some day.
Posted by: Bob Lodge | May 7, 2005 1:38:09 AM
Thanks Bob.
Posted by: Toni | May 7, 2005 11:52:41 AM
How's Spin Cycle going? Anyone still working on it?
I haven't done any more with it since hearing that someone claims to have gotten more words than I could ever get. That put a damper on my enthusiasm. There's no way I can compete with a computer.;-)
Posted by: Toni | May 7, 2005 12:04:16 PM
The "simulated annealing" computer results for Spin Cycle announced early on still strike me as very high....maybe it's psychology, trying to get us all to give up and not even try!
Posted by: Jim Miller | May 9, 2005 12:16:07 AM
Definitely a psych-out, Jim. I don't want to know the score of others, especially if it's more than mine, while I'm working on a puzzle. I'd like to think my score is the best. The suspense is the motivation.
But you got me thinking. I might give it another try before the deadline!
Posted by: Toni | May 9, 2005 5:41:31 AM
I have got a lot on my plate this week (3 focus groups, a wedding to DJ etc.). I hope to get a crack at the contest (which is a race) by early next week sometime. Sorry for the delay.
Posted by: JmSR | May 9, 2005 9:18:47 AM
JmSR, sounds interesting, looking forward to it. Thanks.
Posted by: Toni | May 9, 2005 10:23:03 AM
I've been working on the Spin Cycle contest without much success. I haven't been able to improve my score more than a few points from my first attempt.
Posted by: Laurie | May 9, 2005 3:39:32 PM
Laurie, I worked on Spin Cycle last night and this morning and managed to improve my score....by ONE point!
For me, that's good!
We'll see if it's 'good enough'...
Posted by: Toni | May 10, 2005 9:36:12 AM
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calculatrivia
The beauty, of course, of wikipedia (and its ilk), is that if you do not agree, or would like to add, then just go ahead and do it!
Posted by: Michael | May 11, 2005 6:39:31 AM
Thanks Mike...
I see we're becoming "famous"...
The only problem was that the link for this site doesn't work...
It just says "The page cannot be displayed"...
Bob Lodge even has a personal bio too...
I wonder if he'll add to it...
I also wonder who wrote it...
Anyone care to "fess up"?...
Posted by: Jim from Minnesota | May 11, 2005 8:15:56 PM
I fixed the article's link to this site so now everyone can get here...
It was just a couple of typos...
Posted by: Jim from Minnesota | May 11, 2005 8:25:04 PM
Yeah!! I reworked Spin Cycle and boosted my score by one more point!! (One point higher than the other 'one-point-higher' score I reached on May 10th!)
Good for me...
Again, the question...is it 'good enough'?
Posted by: Toni | May 23, 2005 9:54:39 PM
June 1st! Spin Cycle deadline....contest over! Time to turn your cards over, let's find out "who beats what"!
JmSr....should we wait another day to reveal scores??
Posted by: Toni | Jun 1, 2005 7:56:00 AM
I'd wait until tomorrow. Make sure no last second entries are possible.
Posted by: JmSR | Jun 1, 2005 8:48:09 AM
Thanks Jm....well, it's June 2, so here goes.
At one point I reached 89, but then I was able to boost it up another point, to 90. I tried, but I couldn't get it above 90.
90 is my final answer!
What are some other scores...anyone?
Posted by: Toni | Jun 2, 2005 10:18:29 AM
Sounds like a decent score Toni, gl.
OK, here is the big evil computer generated answer ;)
For a score of 120
XSYHPAJTRBGONIMZEDVULFQCWK
PATRONIZED
AGONIZEDLY
GOEDUCKS
DUCKSTONE
VULCANIZED
CARBONIZED
SCENOGRAPHY
JACQUEMINOT
BRAWLING
DEMOGRAPHY
FLUVIOGRAPHS
CLINOGRAPHS
Notice the large amount of reuse of word parts. There were several variations with the same score, but in all cases the tie breaker score was the lowest possible (3).
If anyone wants the source code to look at, email me.
-Mark
Posted by: Mark Mammel | Jun 2, 2005 10:42:19 AM
Oh, to explain better, the string of letters is to start in a color that contains FIVE spaces.
-MM
Posted by: Mark Mammel | Jun 2, 2005 10:53:12 AM
For those of us who don't program well or at all, the source code won't help.
I didn't have a good word list. My final score was 100.
Posted by: Laurie | Jun 2, 2005 12:03:20 PM
Congrats, Mark, well done!
I'm with Laurie, a source code means nothing to me.
You're right, Mark, the key to a higher score was to have a good reuseable word ending. I knew this but I couldn't manage to get a better ending than I had.
Laurie, 100 is a great score!! (I knew my 90 would be low)I would think (with the exception of the computer-generated 120's :-)... most scores will be around 100, give or take a few.
Let's hear some more scores guys!!
Posted by: Toni | Jun 2, 2005 6:50:17 PM
Nice job Mark. I also tried to get a computer to do my work for me (well some of it). I got a 107. I'm proud of it, but at the same time deflated because of your score. I think my downfall was a bad wordlist... 4 of your words weren't even in mine. I tried punching in your letters, my computer only came out with a 109. Which makes me ask, where did you get the wordlist that you used from?
Posted by: Brent | Jun 2, 2005 7:18:55 PM
For posterity, here is my list of 118 -- interesting to compare and contrast with Mark's above. I used a computer to search for useful endings (OGRAPHY), then got up to about 114 by hand, then used a genetic algorithm programmed in Mathematica to get to 118.
My computer dictionary has been cobbled together over the years to approximate Webster's Third, but it is far from exact. So there may be more words hidden in my list, or a better wordlist might have allowed my Dell to climb a letter or two higher. Or perhaps not. (And I used the CD version to confirm word validity -- hopefully all these words are in the paper version!)
That said, here it is:
OGRA PVHYF LKWQ MDJU BSTEX ZINC
ADJUSTING
FLEXOGRAPHY
LEXICOGRAPHY
MUSICOGRAPHY
STENOGRAPHY
ZINCOGRAPHY
NEBULAR
BURGONETS
JARGONIZES
KYANIZES
VARIEDLY
AGONIZEDLY
Posted by: dave10000 | Jun 2, 2005 7:39:18 PM
Follwing Brent, I tried running Mark's sequence against my wordlist. Looks like mine's reasonably robust -- all the words are there EXCEPT for some reason my list did not have plurals for FLUVIOGRAPH, CLINOGRAPH, and GOEDUCK. (I've fixed that now!) I note that the CD version of Webster's Third does not say that "fluviograph" can take an "s" at the end, but perhaps that's sufficiently implied or perhaps the paper version says otherwise.
So, hmmm, my wordlist is not very plural-complete. I wonder -- how does my string of letters (see previous post) fare against the real Webster's Third? In fact, a slight rearrangement I found allowed SLAVONIZE, but at the risk of ending up with two 7-letter words (NEBULAR, PROUDLY) for the same score of 118. But perhaps a fuller list could have improved one or both of those to 8-letter (or 9-letter?) words?
For those interested:
ZINC OGVRA PHYF WLDJ KMQUB STEX
Posted by: dave10000 | Jun 2, 2005 8:10:19 PM
So that's a good question -- how did I make my word list? I wanted to get the CD version and try to import a text word list from it but the techs at Webster informed me I would not be able to access it that way. I suppose if I were smart enough I could "crack" it and access the data to make a word list but I don't know much about that. Instead I subscribed to Webster's online and wrote a PERL script to logon to the Website and systematically browse the dictionary, look up every word and save the word along with inflected forms and variants. I did not want to inundate their site with requests so I waited 7 secs between requests, only ran nighttime runs, and built the dictionary over about a month.
For words like fluviographs where the plural is not specifically listed but is implied by similar words I automatically added on some endings (which is a bit aggressive and I'm sure I have some invalid words on my list). I also have the printed version so I can verify words used in a solution (I forget how the entry for fluviograph reads in the printed...). There ARE differences between the CD and online dictionaries vs. the printed -- one thing I have noticed is that all the words from the Addenda are included in the online version so I have to watch out for those.
Here's a few other words that were used in other variants that scored 120
SULFATIZED, LEXICOGRAPHY, TALMUDIC, VENOGRAPHY, ECOGRAPHY
Posted by: Mark Mammel | Jun 3, 2005 9:56:59 AM
Similar to the method I'm working on, but I'm not using the online service, just the CD. Did you grab and parse the entries with your requests, or just return word lists (I don't know how the online service works exactly). If you get the whole entries, you can syntactically determine which implied inflections are valid, with some work. (How does a human determine which implied inflections are good?)
I would have chosen an entry using LEXICOGRAPHY - too apt to pass up.
Posted by: Jim Miller | Jun 4, 2005 12:17:08 AM
Too late, of course, but my computer cranked out another point to up my 118 to 119. Still doesn't match Mark's 120, but my list contains a 6-leter word. Surely that can be upped to a 7 (or 8), no?
mvbw luksq jdex zinc ogrta phyf
MUSICOGRAPHY
LEXICOGRAPHY
ECOGRAPHY
ZINCOGRAPHY
RAMBLING
FLEXOGRAPHY
-----------63
PATRONIZED
AGONIZEDLY
CUATRO (and several others)
JARGONIZED
SULFATIZED
MATRONIZED
-----------56
Posted by: dave10000 | Jun 13, 2005 12:18:39 AM
I received a letter from GAMES today that my 118-letter solution (above) was a runner-up. That adds a data point to what the ultimate range of scores will be.
Posted by: dave10000 | Jul 15, 2005 9:44:24 PM
it's not fair using computers to do the contest for you...that's like cheating...not even using any of your brain...
just my thoughts...
Posted by: The_Steppum | Jul 16, 2005 7:17:14 PM
Asking for clues to contests doesn't take much brainpower either...
If I recall, the debate on programmed solutions has been had in one of these forums. I'm no expert programmer (though I play one on TV), but I guarantee that it does require you to use your brain.
Posted by: Jay Winter | Jul 16, 2005 8:26:24 PM
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