MicroSoft puzzle Challenge Blunders

きのう　MicroSoft puzzle Challenge　をしました。この　event はとてもあのしいです、わたしの　ｔeam　はあまじょずじゃありません。

http://www.collegepuzzlechallenge.com/Default.aspx


Microsoft Puzzle Challenge, also known as College Puzzle Challenge hosted by Microsoft is held in colleges all around US (with the exception of University of Toronto). On this one Saturday, students gather to solve interesting (and obscure) puzzles for 12 hours.

Being our first time, my team did not perform as well as other teams, nevertheless everyone had fun. Here are some clippets from the event.

10:00 am, 2 hour prior to the event. myself, being the captain of the team, calls Vanck to ensure that we have the proper equipments for the event (namingly scissor, colorpencil..etc)

11:30 am, at check-in

Vanck: hey viv, did you bring the scissors?

11:45am, during opening presentation, a cup of strategically placed orange juice by my other teammate:Eric, managed to find its way onto my pants. eliminating me from the auditorium.

12:15am, after a brief studder with the juice accident I returned to our designated room (Computer Science Lounge) only to realize that it is now the weekend and I did not have the proper security clearance to enter the computer science building.

12:25am, while waiting for my teammates to open up the CS building doors, I checked the univesial standing for the competition only to find that serveral MIT teams managed to solve 5-6 puzzles within the first 20 minutes.

1:00 am, finally settled down in our lounge and began to play with the scrabble puzzle.
Vanck: (playing with the crossword puzzle) gee I wonder why to solve this puzzle you only need the first 10 clues.
Eric & I: vanck, you are reading the wrong set of numbers!

2:00 am, the last member of our team managed to arrive on scene. Just in time to point out the various copying mistakes that Vanck was making and solve the puzzle. First answer sumbitted

2:30 am, someone finally decided to take a break and pick up our lunch.

5:00pm, with the Runaround puzzle solved, our team entered a roll of answer submition 4 puzzles were solved within the hour. realilzing that the colorful blocks on each page are going to be important, I began to cut them out.

5:15pm,
Vanck: Hey guys, I think those colorful blocks that appear on every page is the meta puzzle!
Me: that would be precisely why they are all cutted out.

10:00pm after a 4 hour deadlock with only one answer solved, we managed to answer 4 more questions during this hour.

11:40pm, last minute problem solving began

11:55pm, after a long day of struggle, Vanck finally was able to solve his first puzzle entirely by himself.

12:00am, closing event.