Top Labyrinthier Hall Of Fame

[MNOWAX]

As some of you may know the first quickfire was to create a puzzle around a nursery rhyme. The challenge was that it had to be able to be solved by a second grader. Here are the puzzles!

[LordKinbote]

It's Kinbote! Kinbote!

[marcusI]

Lots of great puzzles! I'm glad it's not up to me to pick a winner.
Only one was too tough for me.

[LordKinbote]

It's a bit awkward to have the puzzles here and the judging all the over in Visitor Games.

[MNOWAX]

i only put them here vs VG because they are visitor submitted puzzles, regardless if it is part of the game or not, and i make sure that everyone gets a chance to show off their work.

Its like the gallery of art is here, the judging is done iin the paper.
_________________
The Man The Myth The Legend
MNOWAX

[mps1453]

My favorite was the first one. I got so into finding the cute lambs, that when I looked over I actually got scared at the scary photos

[Tahnan]

I'd love it if answers were available for those of us not as smart as a second grader. (Mine's at http://www.suberic.net/~tahnan/Puzzle-Answer.jpg .)

[MNOWAX]

For our first elimination challenge, we split the group into four teams, in which each team picked a subject, and had to do a puzzle that was centered around a figure in that subject. these are the puzzles!

math puzzle:

http://www.mediafire.com/?32tdtzymz51

Art puzzle (two links)

http://www.mediafire.com/?fgp9s0emijx
http://www.mediafire.com/?a9zyecd7mve

History

http://www.mediafire.com/?zv1trwmeyi3

Music

http://www.mediafire.com/?iydj1juztsb
_________________
The Man The Myth The Legend
MNOWAX

[Cordelia]

Hasn't anyone given MNO a glpics account yet?

[MNOWAX]

lol
_________________
The Man The Myth The Legend
MNOWAX

[Cordelia]

So...has anyone tried these? You know, outside the fanatics that made them? Just curious...

[groza528]

I made some progress on one of the ones I didn't make

[Zag]

I opened the history one, flipped the image, and arranged all the squares so that the text made sense. Most of the items of text pointed to a particular individual, so I made the list of the ones I knew, and didn't see where to go from there.

For the math one, I didn't bother to take the obvious step of pasting the text into a crypto-solver tool. Either it would work or it wouldn't, and and answer was right there, anyway.

For the art one, the text was intriguing, but the puzzle content was in an XLS file, which I don't happen to have anything that can read it on this computer.

I was one of the authors of the music one. I hope that the first step, at least, people found to be pretty easy. I included hints from there, such that I think most GL'ers should be able to get it. Some of the luminaries would probably get it without the hints (but I don't think I would).

[Scurra]

I did the first stage of the music one (and was embarrassed about how long it took for the penny to drop), but couldn't see anything obvious to direct me to the next stage and didn't entirely understand the hints.

I had a similar problem with the Maths one - did the first step, but didn't understand where to go next. Finding the answer underneath was a little disconcerting.

The Art one scared me, quite frankly. I had no idea where to begin.

Our History one may have the same second-stage "aha" moment problem as I was having with the Maths and Music ones - if you don't see where the clues are leading you, it's possible you never will. We thought it was pretty logical, but then again setters do tend to do that... a lot
_________________
_{still Quiz Olympiad champion. Must get a life.
New definitions: COFFEE - someone who is coughed upon}

[marcusI]

Sorry about the solution being right there on the math one. We just sent it in the same file. Will know better next time.
I tried the others some, but didn't get far.

[Zag]

[Cordelia]

Hm, we scared Scurra. What if I told you that the text was really all just set-up? That the entirety of the puzzle was really just the excel sheet?

[groza528]

I think the Excel sheet is the scary part

[MNOWAX]

Zag

Puzzle
------------------------------------------------------
It is a clear Friday evening, with the moon out and a few stars showing past the streetlights. You step away from the ATM and head across the street to your favorite bar, ready for a fun night. As you walk in, who do you see waving you over but Skinny Dakota! Uh oh. You keep a firm grasp on your wallet and plunk yourself down at his table, wondering how, exactly, he will scam drinks off you this time. Well, at least he keeps it entertaining.

"Fancy a little liar's poker?" he asks, pulling a bill from his pocket.
"No thanks," you reply. "You still have that $20 with the seven 8's?"
"Hah! I can't pull one over on you," he replies. "How about a different game? You pull out a $20 at random, and we'll compare serial numbers with this one. Just to be fair, we will only consider bills with 8 digits in their serial numbers (which most bills have). I bet that at least one digit between yours and mine will match -- same digit in the same position."

You pull out your calculator and punch in a few numbers. 0.9 raised to the 8th power is 0.43 -- only a 43% chance of all 8 digits going unmatched. "No thanks, Skinny," you reply, holding up your calculator. "I came prepared this time."

"Ok, ok. You're clearly too clever for me," he grins, laying it on thick. Let's do a different game which I was just thinking about. I don't even know the actual odds, but my gut tells me that they are pretty close. Anyway, I will let YOU choose which side of the bet to take. How could I possibly get an advantage?

One person will pull out one bill. The other person pulls out 5 bills. For each digit on the one bill, we check all 5 of that same digit by position. If any of the 5 bills has the same digit in the same position, we'll say that that digit is "covered." If at least 4 digits are covered, then the person with the 5 bills wins $20, otherwise the person with one bill wins $20.

So, the question is, do you take this bet? Which side do you want?




Here is the answer --
-------------------------------------------------------

As you should have guessed from the beginning, DO NOT BET WITH SKINNY DAKOTA!!

Assuming you choose the one-bill side of the bet, Skinny has accumulated 5 bills with 5 different digits in each of the 8 positions, so for each digit, he has a 50% chance of covering it. He will win 155 times to your 101 times.

On the other hand, if you take the five-bill side of the bet, you probably don't have such carefully chosen bills. In fact, since you just got your bills from the ATM, there is a serious risk that your bills are sequential, and they have the same values for the first 6 digits. However, even if your bills are random, then you still lose a little more than 57% of the time (from simulation). This is because you typically only have 3 or 4 different digits in each position.


Lex

You just finished beating Skinny Dakota in checkers for the 7th game in a row.

"Best 8 out of 15?" he says hopefully.

You roll your eyes. "No thanks Skinny, I think it's safe to say I beat you. Now pay up!"

He rubs his chin for a moment, then gets a sparkle in his eye. "Ok, but before I do I have one last wager, double or nothing. You game?"

"Let me see it first," you say skeptically. Skinny leaves the table and reaches into a games chest behind him. He returns with a 3-d tic tac toe game, three 3x3 grids that are on top of each other on a stand. He then pulls out 27 checkers and places them one on each space.

"There. The wager is for you to move each checker one space either east, west, north, south, up, or down on the game boards so that each checker is in a new spot, and no two checkers are on the same space. It's a simple problem, and I'm sure a bright mind like you can figure it out. So how about it?" Skinny leans back in his chair, sure he's going to get his money back.

"Well I think the answer to that is obvious..."

Should you take the bet? Why or why not?


-----
You should not take this bet, as it's impossible. To explain it, we'll start with a 3x3 board. Now pretend it's colored like a checkers board, red and black. Now all the pieces on a red space can only move onto black spaces, and vice versa, because you cannot move diagonally. Now on a 3x3 board, there are 5 red and 4 black spots, so one piece is always stuck! When you add the two extra boards and one more dimension, the answer is the same. If each board was colored alternating between 5 black and 4 red with 5 red and 4 black, you'd find that once again the red spaces can only move to black spaces, and that there are 14 of one color and 13 of the other. If the wager was made on a board with an even amount of spaces, like a real checkers board, then it would be simple to do. But the odd number of squares makes this bet impossible. Skinny Dakota harumphs as you refuse and he reaches into his pocket to write you an I O U.
-----

Groza

You've invited Skinny Dakota to dinner (actually he conned you into it, but that's beside the point.) While you're busy setting the table, Skinny excuses himself to the bathroom. You assume he's going to wash his hands, but when he comes back he's carrying your shampoo.
"Why do I get the feeling that you're not planning to wash your hair with that?" you ask.
"I have a wager for you," says Skinny. "I'll need a cake pan. Do you have one?"
"Of course," you respond, pulling an stainless steel rectangular cake pan out of the cupboard. Skinny sets the pan on the counter.
"Alright," says Skinny. "I bet you that I can pour this shampoo into that cake pan until it goes over the side and gets on the counter. And if I can't, I'll get you a new bottle of shampoo in addition to whatever we wager."
There's no way that shampoo bottle can hold enough shampoo to overflow out of the pan, but you know Skinny too well to accept anything he says at face value. You ask, "What are the conditions of the wager?"
"Well, first of all, from this point on I won't touch the pan. As you can see, it's right-side-up, level, and undamaged. I won't put anything else in the pan, including the bottle itself. I'll hold the shampoo bottle approximately above the center of the pan and let it fall straight down. So I won't be blowing on the stream or anything like that; it'll just come straight down and pool in the middle. Also, I promise I haven't done anything to the shampoo."
Is this a good bet to take?

Dimensions of the pan: 13 x 9 x 2.25 inches (approx. 33 x 23 x 6 cm)
The shampoo bottle holds 16 fl oz. (473 mL) and is roughly half full.

Here is the solution to my round 3 submission:

As you might expect from Skinny, this is a bad bet to take.
As you've observed, the bottle does not hold enough shampoo (even when completely full) to fill the pan to the point of overflowing, so obviously something else is at work here.
Skinny can win this wager by taking advantage of a natural phenomenon known as the "Kaye effect." The trick is to pour the shampoo slowly, so that only a thin stream is coming down. Due to the viscosity of the fluid, the thin stream will accumulate into a small heap. After that, the force from the incoming stream will carve a small divot into the heap and a jet of shampoo will actually shoot outward (similar to a ski jump.) Here is a video of the Kaye effect in action: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GX4_3cV_3Mw
I tested this myself to make sure it could overcome a 2.25" barrier and as long as you're pouring from high enough, (I had to pour from higher than the 20cm mentioned in the video, probably closer to 70cm) it can.

-groza528

scurra

http://www.scurra.com/labyrinth/scurra-round03.pdf


lordkinbote


It is a dark and dreary afternoon. You stare sourly at the in-box overflowing on your desk as a thunderclap shakes the office building that is currently your prison. Sentence? 35 to life...or until something better comes along. The cubicle is beginning to take on strange dimensions straight out of a German expressionist film.

"Psst!" you hear. "Hey, guy! Wanna make some money?"

You look around for the source of the voice and see a hand crossing over the cubicle threshold, one inkstained finger making a come hither motion.

Skinny Dakota. It was Dakota's third week at the firm, and you're not sure that you had ever seen him do a lick of work. There were rumors of three card monte games by the water cooler, coin flipping in the break room, and blackjack in the supply closet. You had even heard he had gotten the job by passing his body through a Jack of Clubs.

You push your rolling chair out of the cubicle with one strong push of your legs, stop yourself in the hallway, rotate, and push yourself into Dakota's office space.

Dakota's computer contains an Excel sheet with incomprehensible numbers. He peers into the hallways, looks left, looks right, and smiles. He moves back to his computer, hits a button, and a half-finished game of Minesweeper pops up. Clicking one button, he forces a loss.

"You look like you're in the mood for some...entertainment," Dakota whispers.

"I have to warn you," you smile. "I'm a terrible fiddle player."

Dakota smiles. "Here's something to pass the time." He opens up a new Beginner game of Minesweeper. "I'm going to place the ten flags randomly on the board without clicking on any clues. For every flag I incorrectly place, I give you a buck. For every flag I put in the correct spot, you give me a buck. What do you say?"

You look at Dakota skeptically. It would seem the odds are well in your favor, but the man's reputation precedes him.

So...should you make the bet, or is it time to tackle that in-box of yours?

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Answer: While the odds are definitely in your favor, probability has nothing to do with it. Dakota is cheating, taking advantage of a Minesweeper secret.

Before you arrived at his computer, Dakota opened up Minesweeper and entered a secret code on his computer: xyzzy. The code causes a single white pixel to appear at the top left corner of one's computer screen that disappears whenever the mouse passes over the location of a mine. Dakota now only has to pass his mouse over every square, placing a flag whenever the pixel disappears. If he takes his time, he's guaranteed to place all flags correctly...and pick up a cool $10 from you.



Marcusl

Commuter flight


It's a small world. After parking at the Kansas City airport you turn just in time to see Skinny Dakota being dropped off.
“Hi Skinny, going somewhere?”
“Yes, Chicago. You?”
“Saint Louis. When is your flight?
“I don't know yet. It's a commuter flight. They take off every ½ hour.”
“Small world isn't it, mine is the same.”
Skinny gets a thoughtful look. Not one to pass up an opportunity to wager, he says: “I'll give you two to one odds my plane takes off before yours.”
Knowing Skinny, you are suspicious. He doesn't offer odds lightly. What could he know that moves the odds in his favor?
“Skinny, do you know what time it is?”
“No.”
You take the bet. Big mistake.


Solution

Skinny doesn't have to know the time to have better odds than you.
He knows that your airline leaves on the half hour and his airline leaves five minutes before the half hour. He could offer four to one odds and still have the advantage.

jbvntx

How Skinny Dakota ever managed to get himself elected governor of first Moon Colony is a story for another day. Right now your main concern is how you’re going to pay for repairs to your ship so you can get back to Earth. You have no doubt that Skinny intends to use his new position to squeeze every gram of profit he can from the colonists.

Skinny has put out a request for proposals to conduct crater-farming surveys for the colony. Farming is only possible within craters, as the meteor impact removed the top crust of sterile dirt, revealing the fertile topsoil beneath. Since the seed is so expensive, it’s critical to know the exact area that can be farmed within each crater. The central portion of each crater, containing the remains of the meteor that created it, is also sterile. So, it’s necessary to conduct surveys to determine the area of the washer-shaped region within each crater which is suitable for farming.

Each of the firms bidding on the proposal have to buy their oxygen from the government (some of which you suspect makes it’s way into Skinny’s retirement plan). The firms which are bidding on the contract have various approaches to surveying the craters.

The traditional approach is to measure the areas of the crater and that of the central meteor (which are both circular and concentric), then compute the farmable area by subtraction. Some firms prefer to measure circumference, some prefer diameters or radii. In possibly his most fiendish scam yet, Skinny has worked out the amount of oxygen needed to conduct two measurements and priced it such that surveyors can only eke out a marginal existence at best.

If you can work out a way to survey each crater with a single measurement, you’ll use less oxygen and make enough money on this contract to pay for your ship repairs. If your survey is inaccurate you’ll be thrown into the Dakota green cheese mines for a long time. Oh, and one more thing, you realize as you dig through your ship’s supply hold. You have no access to sophisticated surveying equipment. You have no laser range-finders. You have no tools at all. All you have is a very long piece of string, on which you can mark a measurement.

You can bid on the contract or abandon your ship (and life savings) and hitch a ride back to Earth as a hired crewman on another ship. What should you do?



ANSWER:

Take the contract. Make a single measurement of the distance across the crater such that your string is tangent to the inner circle. The area of the washer-shaped region between the two circles is equal to that of a circle whose diameter matches this measurement. You don’t need to know the actual area of either circle to determine the difference between their areas!

_________________
The Man The Myth The Legend
MNOWAX

[jbvntx]

I liked the way the dollar bill one was set up - you can choose either side of the bet but you still lose.

The minesweeper and shampoo ones were interesting, too. I didn't know about either one.
_________________
jbv

[MNOWAX]

thanks again to DF for helping me in this round.

Round 4 puzzle entries below:


---

lexprod:

Hey guys, I just got back from my globe trot and man was it great! I did have one favorite stop, but instead of just telling you, this being GL, I've left it as a puzzle. See if you can discern what destination I liked best.

JS Built it

33 d 44 ' N, 117 d 11' W
50 d 3' N, 8 d 34' E
35 d 46' N, 140 d 23' E
36 d 44' N, 91 d 51' W
41 d 08' N, 16 d 45' E
32 d 33' S, 149 d 36' E

3, 4, 2, 3, 6

solution:

the co-ordinates are airports
the airports' three-letter codes are as follows:

SAN FRA NRT UNO BRI DGE

Using the numbers to separate the letters...

San Fran Rt Uno Bridge

Uno is One obviously, and route one in san fran goes through the Golden Gate Bridge, built by Joseph Strauss, JS

golden gate bridge is the answer Revenge most foul!


---

Scurra:

Here (rather late) is my entry. I have had a very stressful couple of weeks and didn't really pay proper attention to the instructions, so this puzzle didn't use just a single topic... It also has nothing to do with misspeelings - but it was very unclear if that was supposed to be part of it (there's no mention of that in the puzzle post.)
However, I still like the puzzle so I'm submitting what I've done anyway.

http://www.scurra.com/labyrinth/scurra-round04.pdf

The detailed solution may be found here:

http://www.scurra.com/labyrinth/scurra-round04-solution.pdf

---

Zag:

This is based on the first single-entry game I played in, and it is still the best one, in my opinion. http://www.greylabyrinth.com/discussion/viewtopic.php?t=12280

Suppose we add the rule that, if any two circles with identical size intersect, they cancel each other out (in their intersection only), and that space is available for a larger circle that might be beneath them.

The first player goes for volume -- he makes a circle centered at (500, 500) and a radius of 1000. (That is, he covers the board.)

The next four players each have the same idea -- they want a circle which is tangent to two edges and goes through the center point. However, they each pick a different corner to put their circle in. This produces the following diagram, where the blue corresponds to the first player's region.



Question 1: What is the radius of each of the four smaller circles?
Question 2: Is it a 4-way tie for first? Or a 4-way tie for second?

---

(NB, there is a solution for Zag's but I'm working out how to post it without it being unspoilered, since it includes tags and images. I may just wait a little and put it up unspoilered anyway. DF)

---

groza528:

Please forgive the wordiness; the game itself is a tad complex.

I've been running a Mafia variant since the beginning of May called Schrödinger's Wolves (created by Steven Irrgang). Think of it as Mafia, of the werewolf flavor, with quantum uncertainty. In the ten-player game I'm running there are two werewolves (Mafia), an alpha and a beta wolf, as well as a seer (cop). Please refer to the actual game thread if there is still confusion after my explanation.

For those who don't know, in standard Mafia players are secretly assigned roles at the beginning of the game; some players are designated as the Mafia and during the "night" phase of the game they have the chance to kill an innocent townsperson. Often there is also a cop. The cop may investigate one player each night, and will be told whether that player is a member of the Mafia. There are other roles as well but they aren't relevant to this puzzle. During the day phase, the entire town, Mafia included, discuss and vote on which member of the town they would like to lynch. The town wins if they successfully lynch all the Mafia. The Mafia win if they kill enough people that the quantity of living Mafia is equal to or greater than the number of living innocents.

Unlike standard Mafia, in Schrödinger's Wolves players are not assigned roles at the beginning of the game, but rather the roles are given an. Instead, consider that all 720 possible subgames are occurring simultaneously until events of the game disprove them. A "subgame" is defined as one permutation of two non-interchangeable wolves and one seer.

Because nobody is certain of their own role, everyone sends a target to investigate as well as a target to attack-- they may be the same target, but it is not required. Investigation results are determined randomly based on the probability that the targeted player is evil. The investigation is only meaningful if the investigating player is in fact the seer, though may otherwise turn out to be correct by chance. Attacks are only fatal if made by the dominant werewolf (alpha unless the alpha wolf is dead, then beta.)

Each morning players are told, via secret numbers assigned to them, what is the likelihood that they are a) evil and b) dead. A player is still permitted to participate until they are 100% dead. When the player *does* become 100% dead, their role is randomly determined based on the probabilities from the remaining subgames. Lynched players are 100% dead.

The manner in which I've been tracking the game in my spreadsheet is to start with 720 rows representing all possible subgames, and hiding the rows as they become disproven. A subgame might be disproven for any of the following reasons:
- The designated alpha wolf has chosen to attack the designated beta wolf (i.e. wolves may not kill each other)
- The designated seer gets the incorrect result on their investigation target (i.e. seer visions are always correct)
- A recently dead player is designated under a different role than the one they were randomly assigned upon dying (i.e. players only have one role)
- A player who has been voted by the town to lynch is already dead in that subgame (i.e. you may not lynch a corpse)
- A combination of events produces a paradox, or a scenario that cannot be reconciled except by randomly eliminating subgames (e.g. two players remain and either one could be the last wolf.)

It occurred to me during the early part of game day 1 that players could force a win for the town. This strategy forces a win regardless of the number of players, as long as there are at least two more innocents than there are wolves. Since I discovered this strategy I've been crossing my fingers hoping my players don't figure it out. So far nobody has found this game-breaking strategy (or at least nobody has announced that they have found it.)

My puzzle should be clear at this point: What strategy can the town employ in order to force a win? You may assume that a player will cooperate unless he or she can be proven to be a wolf.


solution:

Players in my game actually did try to manipulate the game through investigations, but they were barking up the wrong tree. Actually, the seer doesn't play into the strategy at all. The path to manipulating the game is through attacks. The winning strategy exploits this criterion for disproving a subgame:
"A player who has been voted by the town to lynch is already dead in that subgame (i.e. you may not lynch a corpse)"

On day 1 the players determine who is to be their alpha wolf. Let's say that they choose Internet Stranger. After they've made this decision they lynch somebody, anybody, EXCEPT for Internet Stranger.

During the following night, everyone attacks Internet Stranger (except Internet Stranger, who is thoroughly annoyed at the whole ordeal but can't do anything to stop it. It doesn't matter who he attacks.)

The following day the players must lynch Internet Stranger. Lynching him will disprove any subgame in which he was already dead, as per the quoted criterion. However, since everybody attacked him except himself, he has already been killed in every subgame except those in which he was the dominant wolf! As long as players agree on the next wolf before the lynch occurs they can repeat this process until all wolves have been lynched.

It's interesting to note that the revealed evil percentages do not indicate that the strategy is working. At daybreak, it's quite possible to see an ordinary distribution of evil among the players. Internet Stranger might even be the most innocent of the bunch, numerically speaking; it is the lynch that proves him to be guilty.

MarcusI:

Puzzle: http://www.maroonraccoon.com/glpics/UC2.pdf

Solution: http://www.maroonraccoon.com/glpics/UC2solution.pdf

---

jbvntx:

Triple-Clued Cryptic

This is a twist on a cryptic crossword clues. There are three cryptic clues, all interleaved together. Each clue has the standard two parts, and the words of each clue appear in the correct order. Each of the clues has the same answer. Have fun!

Glue gets almost every 50% other pseudonymous tackier grey puzzle pozer trance with louder acute after epoxying with puzzling leg Alias poster fracture labyrinthian (3,1,4).

--

Glue gets almost 50% tackier after epoxying Alias poster.

- G (e) (tac) LUE - epoxying = "e"; almost 50% tackier = "tac"

Pseudonymous puzzle pozer with acute leg fracture.

- acute leg (anagram)

Every other grey trance louder with puzzling labyrinthian.

- GrEyTrAnCeLoUdEr (alternate letters)

--
_________________
The Man The Myth The Legend
MNOWAX

[Scurra]

Any chance of seeing the other mystery puzzle (especially since all the judges apparently liked it so much!)
_________________
_{still Quiz Olympiad champion. Must get a life.
New definitions: COFFEE - someone who is coughed upon}

[Dented Ford]

LK's submission:

"Yeah, that's right. Iss ME again. You thought you'd be rid of me but yer WRONG! All of yez!

"Seriously, though. Seriously. I love you guys. I love you guys soooo much."

"You know, I'm an expert at mixin' drinks. See, the trick, see, is you take this one. And you take that one. And you mix 'em together! Back and forth, like, see? You don't want one ingredient bein' too overpowerin', so I like to add a little somethin' to the mix, and THAT'S somethin' you can count on! In fact, there's only one type of drink I haven't perfected, and I bet you kin figure out what it is, too. You think yer so SMART!

"Seriously, though, yous guyses are awesomezzzzzzzzzzzz."

MREUSDSLARCEDIDNIEM
DUNIARCABNMUMASACKLCAEOLDB
REMGRMAEELSNGAMOBLEABALAIN
SNAPILINLOCKLMAODTY
DINTOALMIALADNSUETNSRHIASEOT
HAHRCAVEEYWABLEHLBATNNGOEAXERS
ALYOGBONRQBUOINR
BEDOITILEBERMKANAKERS
GANFRILISCAENRBROPEAGEAZNISE
TROREZORDYLOARAJOP
ACETUBNAEDILISBERPLERE
FREUVZIRZYNDWEAVRKCELS

[Zag]

Well, I don't see what forum or thread it is directly related to (I had thought that we were supposed to state that up front), but I do like the puzzle already, even though I haven't gotten very far. The thing I like about it is that I looked at it for just a minute and immediately saw something to do.

In at least some of the lines are some well-known drinks. Here are the ones I found, and I have removed those letters (which appear in order) from the line. In a few cases I had to choose which one of the same letter to remove, but most were straightforward.


ah ha! It looks like there is another drink (maybe?) hidden backwards in each one. Removing those leaves a single letter.

RESARCEDNIM - mudslide
DUNIARCABNMUMASACKLCAEOLDB
REMGRMAEELSNGAMOBLEABALAIN
SNAPILINLOCKLMAODTY
DINTOALMIALADNSUETNSRHIASEOT
A - harvey wallbanger, (backwards) sex on the beach (?)
ALYOGBONRQBUOINR
D - boilermaker, (backwards) snake bite
GANFRILISCAENRBROPEAGEAZNISE
TROREZORDYLOARAJOP
ACETUBNAEDILISBERPLERE
K - fuzzy navel, (backwards) screwdriver

[LordKinbote*]

[LordKinbote*]

[Scurra]

I had a similar issue - I had thought that the forum I had used was sufficiently obvious - although in my case all the judges were confused
_________________
_{still Quiz Olympiad champion. Must get a life.
New definitions: COFFEE - someone who is coughed upon}

[ralphmerridew]

algonquin / ruby?

[Zag]

[Dented Ford]

Sorry I cut off a line when I was highlighting and copy-pasting LK's puzzle, but I still thought it was pretty obvious that it was a "drunken posts" theme.
I didn't mark any down for not explicitly stating the forum on which they were based, I'm not sure that was a criterion - as long as we're able to identify what it was readily. (eg, lexprod's is not exactly clear, but I'm assuming it's a Visitor Submitted News theme. If not, then what?)
(notice the positive light in which I've cast Scurra's puzzle in this context )

[MNOWAX]

The Puzzle this time was:

The next challenge will be pretty simple. I personally am an avid video game fan. In video games, you run across many different puzzles that you have to s solve. For this quickfire challenge, you must make up puzzle around a specific video game, specifically, you must use a puzzle that has been featured in that video game. Obviously, don't use the same exact puzzle, however you may reformulate the puzzle however to your liking, or base a puzzle off of the original puzzle. For example, super Mario RPG, when you go into the castle and face the quizmaster there are puzzles that you can choose from, such as ball solitaire. If I were in this challenge, I would be making a puzzle that changed the aspects of the ball solitaire, like removing balls, and then your audience would have to figure out how to solve it in the fewest moves. Sounds simple, doesn't it?if you are not well versed in video games, there are many different resources can use including Google, Wikipedia, and of course, fellow GL'ers around you. Good luck!


Groza
http://www.glpics.com/groza528/grz_TL5.pdf
solution
http://www.glpics.com/groza528/grz_TL5_solution.pdf
Zag

http://www.zag.net/puzzle2/Prince.html

Lexprod

http://www.glpics.com/lexprod/qbertpuzzblnk.png
solution
http://www.glpics.com/lexprod/qbertpuzzsolu.png


Scurra

http://www.scurra.com/labyrinth/scurra-round05.pdf
solution:
http://www.scurra.com/labyrinth/scurra-round05-solution.pdf
Lord Kinbote

http://www.badongo.com/file/10716643
Solution:

This puzzle was obviously inspired by Rock Band. The first step is obvious: identify the Rock Band songs in the mp3 clip. They are as follows:

Reptilia
Foreplay/Long Time
Learn To Fly
Next To You
Wave of Mutilation
Detroit Rock City
Suffragette City
Can't Let Go
Should I Stay or Should I Go
Epic
Won't Get Fooled Again
Dani California
Electric Version

Now, the solver will hopefully notice that there are 13 songs and 13 icons on the PDF. I purposefully made them in a repeating pattern (drums, vocals, bass, guitar, repeat) so that it would look like a decorative banner. The flavortext tells the solver that the puzzle could be easy or hard. This coupled with the banner tells the solver that he needs to figure out the difficulty level of each song for its respective instrument. A full list of difficulty levels can be found here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_songs_in_Rock_Band

For example, the first song is Reptilia, and the first icon is the drums, and the difficulty level of the drums on Reptilia is Tier 3. The solver must index into the name of the song using this value and extract that particular letter (in this case, it would be the third letter of Reptilia, P).

One more example: The second song is Foreplay/Long Time, and the second icon is the microphone. Foreplay/Long Time is Tier 9 on vocals. The ninth letter is L.

If the solver repeats for all 13 songs, he'll get the final message on how to save some money: PLAY AIR GUITAR ------
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The Man The Myth The Legend
MNOWAX

[lostdummy]

That "Prince of Persia" puzzle from Zag was interesting. I didnt play that game, but if there are similar puzzles inside, maybe I should give it a try ;p

BTW, I couldnt find solution link for that one, so I wonder if solution I have (in 6 moves) is shortest possible ?

[Zag]

[Scurra]

The fights were what eventually finished me in Sands of Time. I really loved the rest of the game - the Sand trick was brilliant and the puzzles were clever, if reasonably straight-forward. But there was one point in the game where I literally couldn't defeat one of the Bosses, even when I'd worked out what the trick was. Maybe I'm just getting too old for this?
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_{still Quiz Olympiad champion. Must get a life.
New definitions: COFFEE - someone who is coughed upon}

[Zag]

Yeah, the penultimate boss was way too hard. I nearly gave up. There was a trick to avoiding his tornadoes, but even after I figured that out it took me something like 30 or 40 tries to kill him.

[Duke Gnome]

Could you put groza's puzzle on some site that isn't so pathetic? "I've" downloaded 900MB already apparently

[groza528]

I took the liberty of putting my puzzle and solution in my glpics account and updating the links in MNO's post. If anyone is still having trouble let me know and I can email it directly.

[MNOWAX]

thank you groza, one of these days im a gonna hound Hy to get me one of those.
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The Man The Myth The Legend
MNOWAX

[Zag]

[lostdummy]