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Happy puzzling!
Your hosts,
Nichole and JM
Games '09 (January-March)
Sorry this is so late. Feel free to talk here.
GAMES '08 Thread
A thread to discuss contests within the confines of the issue. (I'll try to spend more time here.)
NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP
FINAL:
A: WHAT IS THE LAST TWO DIGITS OF THE WORD VALUE OF THE STATE THAT HAS THE UNIVERSITY PICTURED BELOW ?
Z: OM HDI XGSG WRFHOV LBG LDW BFRM DM HFBLQGG FVT LBG MOSCL LDGG DM LBG TOKG HOGRTC FRR CONGC, FVT LBG VGNL LDCC HOGRTC FRR MOAGC, LBGV FRR MDISC, FVT CD DV, TDXV LD FRR DVGC; XBFL XDIRT PG LBG LDLFR FL LBG GVT DM LBG CON LBSDXC, OVKRITOVU LBG FTTOLODVFR BIVTSGT WDOVL PDVICGC XDV FMLGS LBG OVOLOFR HFBLQGG, WRIC LBOSLH-MOAG GNLSF WDOVLC MDS GNKGGTOVU LBG ZOVOZIZ LDLFR MDS WFSL DVG?
A "WORD VALUE" IS THE SUM OF ALL IT’S LETTERS GIVEN A=1,B=2,C=3,ETC…
FINAL FOUR
NORTH/SOUTH Semi-Final:
A: WHAT IS THE SUM OF THE DIGITS IN THE PRODUCT OF THE FOLLOWING FOUR NUMBERS ? Z: Add the year he was born, plus the year he died, less the year he had his first number one record; then add the age he would have been when his movie, which co-starred the actress who played the TV wife of the man whose brother played a father on TV, was first released.
("year" being the last two digits)
EAST/WEST Semi-Final:
A: TO FIND THE NUMBER, DO THE FOLLOWING…
1. WRITE OUT THE ANSWER TO THESE FIVE PICTURES.
2. TAKE TWO OF THE ANSWERS AND REMOVE THEM FROM THE OTHER THREE ANSWERS.
3. ANAGRAM THE LEFT OVER LETTERS TO SPELL THE NUMBER.
Z: The domain of a function f(x) includes the whole numbers from 1 to t, where t is some number between 50 and 100. The range consists only of whole numbers as well with the maximum of the function being f(y) = 2t + y – 1 and the second-highest value of the function being f(23) = t. The function has several minimums, including f(t – 1), f(t – 2), and f(t – 3), which are all equal to 1. Additionally, the endpoints of this function are f(1) = 50 and f(t) = y + 3. What is f(2) + f(3) + y?
[THE FOURTH NUMBER IS RELATED TO THE OTHER THREE IN SOME WAY.]
2989, 3245, 3501, ?
ELITE EIGHT: East & West Regions
EAST:
Game G:
H: Number of politicians whose surname begins with M in the work issued to them by the man responsible for a sonnet with a different letter at the end of every line.
L: Mrs. Poplar Wintergreen's fifth grade class contains sixteen students. Every morning, Mrs. Wintergreen randomly divides the classroom into five groups of three students each to venture off into a different area of Fantasy Elementary to slay those lurking metaphorical dragons. However, since that only accounts for fifteen students, the remaining student gets to accompany Mrs. Wintergreen on her never-ending quest to unlock the secrets behind the golden oracles of Swan Kingdom. One of the students, Sheila, considers herself happy if she is in the same group with both of her twin sisters Ashlie and Elisha or if she or either of her sisters is the student to join Mrs. Wintergreen on her quest. In simplest terms, assuming none of the students in the class are ever absent, the probability that Sheila is happy on any given day can be expressed as A/B. What is A + B?
WEST:
Game G:
H: Carolina Dublin
L: After determining the logic between the columns, you can match each word in the left-hand column of the image below to exactly one entry in the right-hand column (the last three entries in the right-hand column are correctly empty). Notice, however, that one entry from the left-hand column has been replaced by a set of question marks. The answer to this clue is the standard alphanumeric sum (A = 1, Z = 26) of all the letters in this missing word.
ELITE EIGHT: North & South Regions
SOUTH:
Game G:
H: There exists a one-word county (*) somewhere in the United States whose name contains the word (#) but doesn't start with (#) ("SCARE" but not "CEDAR" contains the word "CAR"). No other county in the United States has the name (*) and (#) is the first word in the title of a #1 song whose title also contains the title of the movie with part of theatrical poster seen below. The southernmost town in (*) has a certain zip code--let A equal the first digit of the zip code multiplied by the number formed by its last four digits (a zip code of 23456 means A would equal 2 * 3456). B is a prime number permutation of A (293 is a PNP of 392) that immediately follows the word "is" in the lyrics to another song. If X = A – B and Y is the sum of all digits in the completely written out prime factorization of X (if X = 72, then the prime factorization of X is 2 * 2 * 2 * 3 * 3 and Y = 12), what integer is closest to X/Y?
L: 
SWEET SIXTEEN: East & West Regions
EAST
Game E:
H: The number found in the title of the record album on which the songs begin with the words: Well, If, Got, Ali, She, I, Little, I, They. The first song begins with the word 'Well', the second song begins with the word 'If', etc.
L: Value of question mark in the list below.
Atlanta, GA = 9,600
Billings, MT = 16
Boston, MA = 190
Chicago, IL = 537
Corpus Christi, TX = ?
Dayton, OH = 100
Denver, CO = 297
Muncie, IN = 6
Nome, AK = 0
Washington, DC = 36,791
Game F:
H: The sum of the ages at time of death of 1) the composer of a song whose title is the title of a movie (except perhaps for punctuation), and 2) a musician who is portrayed in the movie and whose name (the musician's) can be formed by the anagram of the letters derived when the following group of words are correctly paired and researched: Carraway, Caterham, Coleman,
Daisy, Father, Freirs, Hammond, Jeremy, John, Maisy, Old Man, Olguin, Pim, Thomas, Willow, Young.
L:
WEST
Game E:
H: At Marie Matif's Big Fun House of Useless Things Nobody Needs, some NAKED WIGS cost $43, an embroidered SLIM MOTH NAPKIN is an affordable $21, and both precious SUIT RANK FABRICS and a painting of the pioneer town MOUNT RAVEN'S NEST each go for $57 apiece. Using the same logic, how many dollars is Marie charging for the biography of A WOMAN LEGEND?
L: The difference between A and B where:
A=the largest prime factor of the year of origin (as listed in Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, 9th edition+) of the n-letter word which a) is found in a 1791 poem n words after a word containing a diaeresis (and not a tittle) and b) contains consecutively the Roman numeral equivalent of the Hexadecimal number obtained by removing the first letter of the English acronym (also contained in its English URL) of the organization that is identified since 1969 by variants of the following logo:
Note: be careful of poor spelling and vague dating of poems on some websites.
B=the number of fireworks 'dots' that appear after winning a game of Spider Solitaire included in Windows XP (if any doubt rounded to the nearest 10)
Game F:
H: Largest prime factor of the largest number mentioned in the lyrics of the song whose lyrics also contain the following encoded words (some of which are pluralized in the lyrics). Each word has been encoded using the same key except for one letter in each, which has not been encoded at all. OLXLTMBY, SFVRPY, KTOVTMBT, DSUUEP, TVCB, MTCP, CLFMBYPR, RTJTUP
L: Age of the award-winning movie and television actor whose characters’ names from the two longest-running television shows he appeared in have in common the same characteristic which is the difference in the two ways he is credited for the same role in his first feature film, which has an alliterative title and involved puzzle solving, and whose initials (the actor) are the same as those of a character who ‘lived’ nearly 50 years and had a birth and death occurring on different days of annual celebration in the United States, with large gatherings for these celebrations on opposite coasts. A significant part of the celebration that occurs on the day of the character’s birth occurs almost exactly 10 hours after the time, but on a different day, at which another event is most appropriately celebrated, which is more commonly held on a different than the day of the character’s death but celebrates the same thing (more or less), whose first letter is the same as the middle initial of the two television show characters referenced earlier.
SWEET SIXTEEN: North & South Regions
NORTH:
The answer to the high seed of game E is 50.
Game E:
H: All Systems University
L: Marginal Benefit University
Game F:
H: Texas Texas
L: Best Picture
SOUTH:
Game E:
H: The number on the "Take 6" card in Decennial Edition of Wolfgang Kramer and Richard Ulrich's El Grande.
L: [(A*B*C*D)/(E*F*G*H)]+I, where
A: Soldiers, without embracing temptation, retreated. (8)
B: Mathematical constant, a negative, on the keyboard. (5)
C: First two letters, less one, are the entire set? (8)
D: Boss beginning to investigate office workplace. (6)
E: Inspector sounds uninterested in pattern. (11)
F: Mixing lobster, beef to create pub favorite. (7,2,4)
G: Stages of a dance. (5)
H: Magician producing rabbit sporting achievement of goals. (3,5)
I: Headliner for Tenacious D on the roster for casino game. (9)
Game F:
H:
L: Last two digits of the only zip code that, because of its corresponding town name, could theoretically join and complete the set of two other zip codes X and Y, where X + Y is the zip code of the town whose name is formed by concatenating (the surname of the actor or actress who was born N + P days before the individual who wrote a novel whose title character's residence, when entered into a standard telephone keypad, forms the number that is P times the Dewey Decimal System classification number most closely corresponding to the categorization of a book written on the item mentioned in quotation marks in the preface to the notable play written less than a year after the same playwright's Androcles and the Lion, where N > P and the concatenation of N and P in that order equals the only area code to serve at least part of both the northern and southern borders of the state whose seal features the detail seen below) and (the last syllable of the character surname of the actor or actress's final role) and X - Y is the reversal (12345's reversal is 54321) of the zip code of the town that shares its name with that of the original album to contain the Zth greatest song on Rolling Stone's list of the 500 greatest songs of all time, where the Zth occurrence of the letter E in the first chapter of the aforementioned novel occurs in the word "drew."
ROUND TWO: East & West Regions
EAST
Game A:
H: The reverse of the score of Game B's higher seed.
L: The product of ten's place and the one's place digit of the score of Game B's higher seed.
Game B:
H: Twice Game D's lower seed's score plus 2.
L: The reverse of the score of Game C's lower seed.
Game C:
H: The highest score of any team in this region in this round.
L: A highway that passes through Osseo, Wisconsin.
Game D:
H: The difference in scores in game B in the round in this region.
L: The difference in scores in game C in the round in this region.
WEST:
The answer to Game A's higher seed is 60.
Game A:
H: North Dakota
L: Minnesota
Game B:
H: Indiana
L: Missouri
Game C:
H: Louisiana
L: Georgia
Game D:
H: Pennsylvania
L: Colorado
ROUND TWO: North & South Regions
NORTH:
The answer to Game A's higher seed is 65.
Game A:
H: Maine
L: South Dakota
Game B:
H: Nebraska
L: Connecticut
Game C:
H: North Dakota
L: Arizona
Game D:
H: Hawaii
L: South Carolina
SOUTH:
Look! Up in the sky! The Game A's higher seed scores 49.
Game A:
H: LAPSE
L: AFIRE
Game B:
H: ACCORDION
L: PHARISEE
Game C:
H: ORATE
L: PLIES
Game D:
H: DALE
L: RANIDAE
ROUND ONE: East & West Regions
EAST:
Here are sixteen card games. The answer to Sweeney Todd's Short-Term U.'s is 74. Figure out the pattern.
1 Sweeney Todd's Short-Term U.: Canasta
16 U Ardy-SUN: Bridge
8 Oxford: Rummy
9 Debilitating St.: Hearts
5 North Dakota Carolina: Poker
12 Jaguar U.: Whist
4 BLTU: Wizard
13 Sprimpton: Magic
6 Excelsior: Flinch
11 Best Picture: Pyramid
3 Baskin-Robbins: Pitch
14 Clintobamacain: Winner
7 Poplar: Piquet
10 Slippery Slope: Blink
2 Calc U. - LaTrivia: Clabber
15 UNNV: Kaiser
WEST
The answer to Maggie Mae or May Not U. is 83.
1 Maggie Mae or May Not U.: O
16 Frank Purdue: M
8 Newhouse: FYEO
9 Spice of Life Cooking Coll.: TWINE
5 Mighty Morhpin' Power University: TSWLM
12 Texas S&P: YOLT
4 AU - Guise: AVTAK
13 Mount Saint Dew: DN
6 CU (In September): TND
11 Oral Herscheiser: LALD
3 RI St.-Watch: TMWTGG
14 In the Year of the Dragon: DAF
7 Cancerous Poly: FRWL
10 Mean St.: T
2 DUI - Defensive Driving: LTK
15 Sienaitch: TLD