TOP GL'ER VEGAS - Alas, we knew it well....

[xalolo*]

Yeah, I'm not quite done yet either. Water disaster in eastern MA combined with suddenly summer temperatures have made this weekend less than conducive to writing puzzles. Wed's good for me too.

[jbvntx]

Mine is now submitted! It came out pretty long, but I'm happy with it. Good luck all.
jbvntx
_________________
jbv

[LordKinbote]

Any word on when we'll get to try out other people's puzzles?

[Undercover Monk]

still waiting on Xaolo and lexprod.
_________________
The Classic Blunders:
1. never get involved in a land war in Asia
2.Never go in against a Sicilian when DEATH is on the line
3. Never release Peyton Manning

[xalolo*]

Mine is submitted, sorry for the delay! Crazy week for me, with moving print deadlines.

It is shorter and simpler than I hoped, but I think it will still be fun!

[Undercover Monk]

Judging almost completed Groza should post the results soon. I probably wont be around until Monday so play nice and get ready for quickfire #2
_________________
The Classic Blunders:
1. never get involved in a land war in Asia
2.Never go in against a Sicilian when DEATH is on the line
3. Never release Peyton Manning

[MNOWAX]

once they kick someone off the "show", the next quickfire will be posted. you guys will have a week to do the next challenge, so be wary of the time!
_________________
The Man The Myth The Legend
MNOWAX

[groza528]

Elimination Challenge #1: What's On TV?

In this challenge, contestants were asked to create a puzzle inspired by a favorite television program. Plenty of good shows were represented this round including three of my all-time favorites (sorry fellows, you don't get any points for matching my tastes), and luckily no duplicates.

This challenge also added stress to the players who knew that after it, Undercover Monk and I would be choosing one of them to eliminate from the game.

Also, my own comments are a bit verbose this round-- I'll try to trim them back next round. Sorry about that.

Posted in the order in which puzzles were received. WARNING: MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS

Zag
UM's analysis: The King of theme is back again. I want to take off a point for using the mentalist which I dislike due to its similarity to Psyche (a far superior show IMHO). But you nailed the crime scene drama trope. (heehee) I have waited both seasons for a puzzle like this. Its basically a riddle which is how I found this site to begin with. The style with the continual narrative was very nice. I am tempted once again to give a perfect score. However as I hold your Prince of Persia puzzle from last year in such high regard someone will have to top it to get a perfect score from me.

Theme: 9 =)
Technique: 10
Style: 9

groza's analysis: Theme – 9: I liked the way you represent some of the title character’s abilities in the puzzle, particularly your indication when a suspect is lying and the way you use some directed questions from Jane to hint at the theories he is putting together. Your puzzle seems to match the description of the show that you put forth and it does what any good mystery show should—invites the audience to play detective.

Technique – 5: I have some pretty big problems with the intended solution to this puzzle: first off, it requires a limited suspect list. The basic solution you’ve provided is “X must be the killer because Y and Z have alibis.” Although you specifically denoted that we needn’t consider outside possibilities, the killer was not caught saying or doing anything incriminating, which makes it far from conclusive.
It also strikes me that you mentioned how he deftly avoided specifically lying about where he was, which I think also falls apart a little bit. That the reader did not detect a lie when the suspect gave a shifty answer implies that your polygraphy is related to words rather than subtle motions and tells. Avoiding a question would (I imagine) invoke a similar psychological and neurochemical response to outright lying, and our infallible lie detector should have at least noticed that something was amiss in the reply.
Now let’s move on to one of the other suspects, specifically the husband. As you correctly identified, there is ample evidence to support that he was telling the truth about golfing. I do not see how this is an airtight alibi because we have no established timeline as to how long he played. Maybe he only played the back nine? Maybe he shot two holes and got so frustrated with his driving that he left immediately? The only evidence we have that he stayed for a full round is his reported score, which is a lie.
To put things bluntly, I think your killer’s alibi is better than the husband’s, at least until we talk with the golf buddies. I guess my mind isn’t as strong as Patrick Jane’s, but this puzzle seems far from clear-cut.

Style – 8: It’s a great concept. Everyone likes the challenge of pulling something out of nothing, and sifting through a sea of lies definitely makes it pretty fun. My one complaint here is: wall of text. It’s hard to process a complex system like this when it’s all written out; if it were feasible a few pictures would definitely have made it a lot more fun, because we’d be trying to match up the testimony with the image (which also provides better opportunities for catching the killer in a lie with a bit more subtlety.) I say “if it were feasible” because building a murder scene for photographs is not exactly a small undertaking. Besides that, it might have just made things more complex because it would be harder to accentuate the bits you want readers to notice. Nonetheless, I have to consider that the puzzle didn’t generate a lot of conversation in the thread, so maybe the wall of text was a little more off-putting than I thought.

Overall: You described the show’s premise as drawing large conclusions from rather flimsy evidence, and for better or for worse, that is precisely the situation you have written. You’ve left the puzzle quite open-ended, which is… daring. Obviously there is some room for interpretation. *A little* room for interpretation makes the puzzle more complex and gripping, but unfortunately I think you’ve left too much wiggle-room and there isn’t enough evidence to reach a satisfactory conclusion.
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Projectyl
UM's analysis: You handled theme differently than all the players. You made it part of your puzzle. However I disliked how the answer did not fit into the theme. The puzzle itself was easy enough until you started putting groups together. I thought at that point it became a bit complicated. A decent puzzle but not as good as your coin puzzle from last round.

Theme: 6
Technique: 6
Style: 6

groza's analysis: Theme – 6: This puzzle is inspired by a great show, but doesn’t even touch upon why it’s great. I highly doubt that you enjoy this show because the characters have names with multiple meanings. The answer matches the mechanism reasonably well, but I don’t see its connection to the program.

Technique – 7 : I approached this puzzle kind of backward. I figured out the show from the puzzle title and the description of a cult following (confirmed when I had several clue words filled in and the character names fit into the appropriate slots alphabetically.) Then I stared at the letters in the parentheses until I figured out how they were useful. Only after that did the groupings start to fall out.
Having come at the puzzle from this direction underscored its greatest weakness. An intuitive solver (that is, a solver who has a knack for identifying puzzle mechanisms even two to three steps in advance) can skip a HUGE chunk of the puzzle. At the extreme, this puzzle can be solved without even reading a single clue. Pull the given letters out of the letter bank, and of the remaining nine that make the answer you can even position four of them right off the bat by the order of the characters in the puzzle.
The intended solving progression is relatively smooth, though I question some of the groupings. I realize that some of the names were rather constraining, but I think the second group in particular was a bit poor in that it was difficult to identify and only meaningful because of the show.
I liked the clues themselves, especially the “found in a kitchen or programming loop” one; took me a long time to figure out what those two had in common. Glad you put the words in alphabetical order; besides the necessity of distinguishing between characters it definitely helped to solve the trickier clues.

Style – 9: It had not occurred to me how many of the character’s names have additional meanings; definitely a cool route to work in the program. The use of groupings is a tried-and-true method that is still always fun to work out and allows for some backsolvability. There were definitely some good mechanisms represented here and following them in the correct progression seems like it would have been a really cool process.

Overall: This puzzle’s major shortcoming was giving us too much information in the form of the parenthetical letters. As I mentioned, it can allow solvers to completely short-circuit the meatiest part of the puzzle, provided they can see where to go. Perhaps a better option would have been to put indices into parentheses that pull letters out of the clued words? The downside to the creator is it puts a further constraint on the groupings and the words chosen, but from a solver’s point-of-view constraints just make the puzzle more impressive. And more importantly it would require the clues (or the majority of them) to actually be solved so people don’t miss the work you did coming up with the groupings.
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LordKinbote
UM's analysis: Lost, Ugh! as soon as I figured out the theme I was worried about the insanity I was about to dive into. To be honest I think the puzzle would have been very solvable if I had any idea what it was. Its like if I was presented with a Su-Do-Ku for the first time with no idea what it was called or how to even begin. There was no hint in the intro this was a specific type of puzzle. I liked the survivor reference but theme was not really integrated as well as the other puzzles. Style was fine but not brilliant. In general, a mediocre puzzle.

Theme: 7
Technique: 5
Style: 7

groza's analysis: Theme – 8.5: Clearly recognizable as a LOST puzzle, but you could have done better with the “Show why LOST is worth watching” bit. Mostly it was just a mishmash of names and concepts and a logic puzzle around a show that is anything but logical. Granted some of those concepts are intriguing like “time travel” and “playing with fate” but none of them were ever described. You regained a half-point for using the famous “numbers” as a central position.

Technique – 8: I unfortunately knew the puzzle type in advance, so I didn’t have the difficulty that other solvers seemed to in identifying the first step. Personally I thought it was pretty clearly a Nurikabe but then, I solve a fair quantity of Japanese logic puzzles on mathgrant’s blog. Anyway, the nurikabe was uniquely solvable, had an appropriate level of difficulty, and was enjoyable.
For the second step, I think you needed to highlight the central numbers more clearly. They were close enough to other numbers on the grid that someone unfamiliar with the show would not know that they were significant. Boldfacing them, for example, would have been perfect. It shows that they are important without really explaining why— exactly how they were introduced on the show. Solvers not familiar with the show would then have been able to parse the flavortext a bit better, which is considerable when you take into account how inexplicably elusive that last step was anyway.
Shame on you for presenting two grids with the same grid size and different image sizes. If I’m presented with non-photographic images I want them to be easy to manipulate; in this case I wanted them to be easy to overlay.
Incidentally, mathgrant has alerted me that this type of puzzle comes in prescribed grid sizes. This isn’t a hard and fast rule and none of those sizes were really appropriate for what you wanted to accomplish, I see no reason to take off anything for it, but thought you might want to be aware.

Style – 8: The nurikabe was good fun. I loved the use of the mystical numbers, although as I said earlier, non-fans may miss that point completely. I also think it’s GREAT that your solution clue phrase uses words relevant to the show without itself being necessarily inseparable from the show.
On the other hand, I don’t think you used the letter grid to its fullest potential. Maybe I’m biased because I wanted my overlaid grids to yield something easier to understand, but it’s still just a bunch of names and concepts that you grabbed some words from in an evidently unapparent manner. Many of the entries are necessarily there only for spacing, in which case I feel you might have been more careful with your wording: notably Hurley Reyes and Sawyer Ford were jarring to me, as I never associate the nicknames and the surnames in that manner.

Overall: I don’t understand why it was so difficult for solvers to know what they should be doing. Each step seemed sensible to me yet somehow everyone I spoke to overlooked the correct course (including myself). Perhaps this is simply a testament that we were all “lost,” _*cough* but I still think there was probably a better way to go from one grid to the other.
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Persona
UM's analysis: The dual show theme was very tricky and creative. I had heard of 1000 ways to die but if you hadn’t I think the next step would be very difficult. After that not too bad I like that you tied it back to the original dead like me show. A very good puzzle.

Theme: 10
Technique: 8
Style: 10

groza's analysis: Theme – 8.5: I feel like a pedantic ass for this, but the directions specify *one* of your favorite shows. The two you use tie together well but I still have to take a point for not following directions. The brief synopsis of Dead Like Me in the flavortext adequately shows that it is based on an interesting and offbeat topic that is also represented somewhat in the puzzle mechanic, even if it is really just a convenient way to put a lot of letters and numbers in the same place. As for your other program, although the puzzle doesn’t *require* the solver to read about the weird ways people die, I found that I wanted to anyway, so that one is spot on. Good answer, great title.

Technique – 9: The technique seems good to me. Each piece of the given information is used in a logical but not immediately obvious manner. Small gripe that 119 can be split in two different ways into a pair of sub-26 numbers, though once you get to that point it is obvious you don’t want TITULKI. It also bothers me that the times (and the times only) are used twice. While there are certainly no rules of puzzling that prohibit this it just seems… inconsistent.

Style – 6: As mentioned above, I really like that your puzzle does not *force* solvers to read about the interesting deaths in 1000 Ways, but rather *compels* them to do so. I liked the sticky note format taken right from Dead Like Me, very thematic. But when it really boils down to it, these are really just arbitrary names in which to hide a message and arbitrary numbers to use as indices. The same basic pattern can be applied anywhere; there was nothing particularly novel about it.

Overall: The puzzle is technically solid. I enjoyed the subject matter, and in my opinion this puzzle did the best job of making the program(s) on which it was based sound appealing. The puzzle methodology itself is a bit ordinary, however.
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jbvntx
UM's analysis: I loved the theme. I grew up watching Scooby Doo and thought you nailed the motivations and the side story was hilarious. The puzzle itself was a bit convoluted but workable. The biggest problem I have with the puzzle is that after the initial clue of Robert Downey and Magellan I immediately guessed the answer. I think the last half of the puzzle was not needed.

Theme: 10
Technique: 7
Style: 10

groza's analysis: Theme – 9: Your puzzle, like the show on which it was based, is about solving a non-violent mystery, but where you really picked up the points on this one was in presenting it in a tone that is reminiscent of the show. You included some comic relief in the flavor and the dialogue and actions of the characters seems to come right out of the program. The board game theme you included was pretty cohesive but I couldn’t quite see how it related to the show—that’s where the point off comes from.

Technique – 8: The tetrominoes fit the grid uniquely and without too much difficulty. The word search worked great, loved the concept of the missing letters and you fit everything into the grid pretty well. I do have a couple of gripes about the Cube though. First and foremost, there is an error in it: It says “WOODEN SHIPS AOD IRON MEC” instead of the intended message. I think this is easily rectified by a slight recoloring of the grid, though you have to be careful to maintain a solvable position on the cube. The second is the way you laid the cube back out in the cross shape to achieve this message. I see two schools of thought here… either the orientation of the cube is arbitrary, in which case you ought to have used all four faces for the ODIRONMEC [sic] section, or it is NOT arbitrary in which case you needed to keep it identical to the original layout—savvy cubers know that the centers of the faces should never move. If the cube had been the entire puzzle that would have been worth probably twice as much.

Style – 9: Maybe it was the colorful pictures, but something about this puzzle just screamed “Solve me.” I loved the Rubik’s Cube despite its bugs, and the use of the 51st game (if it had worked properly) was a great touch, but probably my favorite moment in this puzzle was placing CIVILIZATION in the grid. I had two of the letters and I looked at it and said “That is just a little bit evil, and I probably would have done the exact same thing.”
As for what I didn’t like, the pieces of the puzzle seemed a little bit disparate. It was obvious from the beginning that it was a multi-step puzzle, and fairly evident how many steps; I like to get into a puzzle not knowing what I’m getting myself into. I also felt that the climax of the puzzle was solving the cube, rather than figuring out who the kidnapper was—a strong puzzle deserves a strong finish. Neither of these are major issues, though.

Overall: This was a terrific puzzle that I enjoyed solving immensely, and I was truly saddened when the Rubik’s Cube didn’t pan out quite right. Doublecheck those important details in the future, but keep up with the fun puzzles.
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xalolo - immune from elimination
UM's analysis: Amazing! Your ability to make a puzzle look great will probably propel you to the the finals. A bit simplistic though. The poster with all the red colors basically gives away the mechanic. A nice twist with Hawaii I am glad that there was only one I in the answer or this would be harder than it was. Theme-wise it completely captured the essence of BG. Another near perfect score

Theme: 10
Technique: 8
Style: 10

groza's analysis: Theme – 7.5: This is another one that doesn’t necessarily show why the show is worth watching; it goes into the major plot point of hunting for cylons, but really the appeal of the show is in the dramatic subplots and morally ambiguous character development, is it not? I also don’t see any connection between the program and the final answer, except for a brief mention in the opening sequence of the original series.

Technique – 8.5: Fairly simple puzzle mechanic, but I didn’t like that HAWAII changed the rules on us. I personally would have preferred something like HENRY VIII even though it is multiple words, but probably the best option would have been to choose an answer that did not require use of the letter I. Also, hygieia? Seriously? Maybe you should’ve tried for an answer without an E too.
Normally I’d say something about the “superfluous” non-cylon words and the coloring of the other vowels, but in this case they were really necessary a) to make the puzzle non-trivial and b) to advance the theme of searching for cylons hidden within the group. You seem to have a knack for putting unrelated words into your puzzles and getting away with it.

Style – 8: I did enjoy the mechanism, simple though it was. On the whole I was pleased with the word choice (“fairish” and “hygieia” and, to a lesser extent, “vomiting” made me cringe just a little.) I was less pleased with the final answer. It has little if anything to do with the subject matter as far as I can tell, and therefore was rather anticlimactic to reach. I very nearly missed the pun in the flavortext; it helped, some.

Overall: It was a very simple puzzle, which worries me a little bit. Certainly this world needs simple puzzles too, or puzzle novices would never get involved. However, I caution that simple puzzles do not permit a creator to show their full potential and really impress a crowd of puzzlers.
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Lexprod
UM's analysis: Another puzzle where the theme was not evident right away. But I wagered a guess that Stargate or Startrek was involved. Unfortunately I knew nothing of constellations or Stargate so the puzzle was pretty unsolvable for me and for others to it seems according to the forums. After looking at the solution I don't think anyone would be able to solve this easily without use of a team or if they knew the series very well. Theme should not be a precursor to technique. I think you just way overshot the scope of the puzzle.

Theme: 7
Technique: 4
Style: 7

groza's analysis: Theme – 8.5: I immediately recognized the Stargate glyphs, and you did a pretty good job of representing some of the cool cliffhanger plotlines (e.g. Carter blowing up the star). The title was a little bit weak as the point of origin was not an important part of the puzzle mechanic, though it did have a reasonable connection to the answer.

Technique – 7: The puzzle was too difficult. The intended “in” to this puzzle, i.e. the repeated word in the first three addresses, is only useful if you recognize that the glyphs are based on constellations, which is not obvious for people who haven’t seen the movie. Even when you know a few of the letters, cryptograms are hard enough without character names, scrambling, and eliminating the enumerations. This is further exacerbated because, unlike text cryptograms, there is no easy find-and-replace option.
Amb also mentioned rotation and reflection of the constellations as a possible puzzle mechanic—since I have yet to find two sites that agree on the rotation of the constellations I’ll let that slide, though he’s right about the factual error in reflecting the Hydra glyph. Small details like that may (obviously) lead people down the garden path.

Style – 8: I generally enjoy a new take on a classic puzzle type, but this one may have changed a few too many rules at once; it wasn’t really recognizable as a cryptogram at all. Still, it was a fun take and it looked cool.

Overall: It’s a nice idea, but it’s rather intimidating and unapproachable. Most people won’t even get far enough in to realize why Stargate is worth their time. Could’ve used a little extra; maybe word breaks or enumerations, I don’t know, but *something* to break the wall of symbols.
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The decision following this was not easy. There were some great puzzles this round and some great ones last round, and not necessarily by the same contestants. Ultimately we decided to just go by the numbers.

Projectyl: You had the lowest score this round, but your strong showing in the first round saved you.

The lowest combined score belongs to...

LordKinbote.

HOWEVER there is additional information we've deliberately withheld, until now. One of the contestants has determined that his life is too hectic right now to continue the game. He did not submit a puzzle this round and bowed out of the tournament. In order to conceal this fact, I created a puzzle in his stead.

LordKinbote, you have been spared by this absentee. You will stay in the game, but you will incur some smaller penalty not disclosed to the other players.

Lexprod, thank you for playing. Please pack up your calculator and go home.

[groza528]

Quickfire #2: Hang by a Thread

Quickfire for the next round is another classic from the last round

You must pick a Topic in the Grey Labyrinth to base a puzzle off of. VSP is banned from being picked, as are the GL's front page puzzles. Additionally, a topic can not be picked that has been made after the start of this quickfire.

You may not use visual aides for your puzzle. it must be in all text, and the words may not be used to create a visual puzzle.

You have one week to complete this puzzle

Oh and one last thing. If you win this challenge, you can not be eliminated in the next elimination challenge.

[LordKinbote]

Well, this is a reality show, so here comes the drama (with puzzle spoilers):

I have to say I'm a bit flustered by UM's very low score, especially by a 5 in technique. I agree that the second grid was, yeah, just full of random Lost related words and that the fact that you had to take the word at the end of each respective island could have been a bit better clued (all test solvers managed to reach the ends of the islands and tried to take the letters they ended up on instead of the words, but all of them solved it after a bit of a nudge). Other than that, I feel the puzzle was *full* of technique. It took me 8-10 hours to get the nurikabe to work out to be unique, since it had a very specific constraint of using 4,8,15,16,23, and 42 exactly once. On top of that, it uses five Lost related words (and, well, one filler word) to clue something non-Lost related, but that ultimately was a Lost-thematic answer (the name Richard Hatch was too good not to use).

I completely understand Groza's point that, since it was a logic puzzle, it was a bit hard to get across why people should be watching, but I don't think that makes the puzzle necessarily unthematic. On top of the grid words, the flavortext (and method of solving) basically does follow the plot of the first few episodes of Lost (crashing and then wandering in and exploring the island). The puzzle is a Nurikabe, which is also known as "Islands in the Stream". Furthermore, this season it was revealed that the numbers, which appear often, do in fact refer to six of the cast members.

Anyway, gripe session is over. I was really proud of the way this puzzle turned out, and though it may be hard to see if you're neither a fan of Lost nor a fan of logic puzzles, it kinda hurts to receive low scores on theme and especially technique.

[xalolo*]

Oh man! Henry VIII (or something similar) would've been PERFECT. Duh duh duh.

[LordKinbote]

[xalolo*]

[Zag]

I'm also curious about the "may not be used to create a visual puzzle" qualifier. So, for instance, if the puzzle included a word search, would that be ok? (I assume that if the puzzle included a word search, but what you were supposed to get from it is the picture that the circled words make, that would clearly not be ok.)

[MNOWAX]

Alphanumeric is fine, word searches would not be. the point of the puzzle is to make a text based puzzle.
_________________
The Man The Myth The Legend
MNOWAX

[xalolo]

[Zag]

Oh, yikes. I forgot all about this. I guess I'd better get crackin'!

[LordKinbote]

It was the last week of school, and for some reason, I thought we had until Sunday. Is it possible I could get a tiny extension?

I'm talking, like, a few hours. I'm well into the puzzle, and I may not even need an extension, but a 2-3 hour cushion would make me feel more at ease (especially since I haven't even eaten dinner yet...)

[Projectyl]

Gack, seconded, sorry. I also thought we had until Sunday.
_________________
"I am now telling the computer exactly what it can do with a lifetime supply of chocolate..."

[xalolo]

[LordKinbote]

[Projectyl]

Whew, submitted.
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"I am now telling the computer exactly what it can do with a lifetime supply of chocolate..."

[LordKinbote]

Sent.

[xalolo]

[MNOWAX]

due to memorial day weekend in the US, everyone's got till Tuesday. if you submitted already, you may make revisions and resend by Tuesday11:59PM EST.
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The Man The Myth The Legend
MNOWAX

[MNOWAX]

missing just jbvntx?
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The Man The Myth The Legend
MNOWAX

[jbvntx]

Trying to send it now...
_________________
jbv

[jbvntx]

OK, I'm sent.
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jbv

[MNOWAX]

Okay puzzles have been put up in the VSP forum. the judges will be working in our secret room in the forum (don't Forget the secret knock!)

for the six of you remaining, i need you to roll 1d6, repeat if you get a number that already has been rolled.
_________________
The Man The Myth The Legend
MNOWAX

[xalolo]

[jbvntx]

Dice Roll:

Original Roll String: 1d6 1 6-Sided Dice Results: 1

jbv
_________________
jbv

[LordKinbote]

Thank you, random.org!

I rolled a 2.

[Zag]

Dice Roll:

Original Roll String: d6 6-Sided Dice Results: 3

[LordKinbote]

I am amused by the image of the sixth person rolling a die over and over again until he gets the required number.

[Persona]

Dice Roll:

Original Roll String: 1d6 1 6-Sided Dice Results: 3

[Persona]

Ok, I gave it one try. random.org says six.

[Projectyl]

Which leaves 5 for me.
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"I am now telling the computer exactly what it can do with a lifetime supply of chocolate..."

[MNOWAX]

1:jbv
2:LK
3:Zag
4:Xalolo
5:Projectyl
6:Persona

Odds and evens are teams for the next challenge, which will be posted soon I highly suggest getting a hold of each other and find out schedules. I highly suggest doing a private board or chat for the next challenge. yes it one of THOSE challenges.
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The Man The Myth The Legend
MNOWAX

[MNOWAX]

we are judging the puzzles for anyone interested.
_________________
The Man The Myth The Legend
MNOWAX

[Undercover Monk]

by "we" he means "UM is done and is waiting for his fellow judges to get on the ball"
_________________
The Classic Blunders:
1. never get involved in a land war in Asia
2.Never go in against a Sicilian when DEATH is on the line
3. Never release Peyton Manning