2011 Microsoft Puzzle Hunt

[Scurra]

[Suspence]

One of the hard parts of this is that you can't fill it out like a regular score sheet. For that you'd need to know the defensive plays that resulted in each out. For example, a standard ground ball to short would be listed as 6-3.

Given that there are plenty of outs we have no details on, I'm not even sure what to score in those boxes.

Nice catch on the pitchers stats leading to INDICES.
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[Zahariel]

Suspence, while technically your request for confirmation is too general to be allowed, I'll go ahead and confirm it anyway in the interest of keeping this thread moving. Everything you have so far is correct. Note the multi-base hit statistics.

I'll also give you (for free) that the exact defensive plays don't matter. Just assume no one made bases on fly outs, and that the DP in the 6th is the very common 6-5-3 grounder, but again it doesn't matter.

Scurra is on the right track for what to do once you have the score sheet filled out.

[Quailman]

[Suspence]

That DP is actually a 6-5-3 per the description in the text, it's the one out with enough detail to score accurately.
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[Scurra]

I still have no idea what you are talking about.
I can understand 41.2-6-84-3 in cricket, but baseball is beyond me.
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_{still Quiz Olympiad champion. Must get a life.
New definitions: COFFEE - someone who is coughed upon}

[referee]

in baseball 4126843 would be a heck of a runoff.
_________________
Jan 21st, 2008: The pillaging continues.
Mar 4th, 2008: Rest in Peace, Gary Gygax. May your dice always roll a natural 20 wherever you are.

Be the Ultimate Ninja! Play Billy Vs. SNAKEMAN today!

[Scurra]

Having to call a blank on this one from this end. I have been reading up on Baseball but am still none the wiser about how to fill out the card...

Must remember to dig out my Cricket fielding positions puzzle again sometime.
_________________
_{still Quiz Olympiad champion. Must get a life.
New definitions: COFFEE - someone who is coughed upon}

[Scurra]

Any chance of a prod here? I would like to crack on with a puzzle I can actually contribute to.
_________________
_{still Quiz Olympiad champion. Must get a life.
New definitions: COFFEE - someone who is coughed upon}

[Zahariel]

Well, I don't know what happened to Suspence. It looked like he was well on his way to finishing the scorecard.

INDICES is a good catch; that's a clue to the one other piece of information you can extract from this page without having the score filled out.

I'll hand out the finished scorecard if Suspence doesn't come back by Friday.

[Scurra]

I suspect I had already done that bit (that's why I said that I had an idea about what came next but was a bit stuck on how to actually get there.)

Spoiler guess (just for confirmation): The players fielding positions indexed into their names spell out BRAILLEHB, and that scorecard looks like it will give some braille letters if some are filled and some are blank. Although I did have to look up some field positions to figure the message out!
_________________
_{still Quiz Olympiad champion. Must get a life.
New definitions: COFFEE - someone who is coughed upon}

[Suspence]

Sorry, been away for a bit and not working on this. It's been too quiet in VSP.

Logically trying to reconstruct the 7th:
- Williams leads off
- Lambin gets caught stealing to end the 7th.
- Ibanez had his only hit in the 5th, and can't strikeout as all strikeouts are inning enders. He must GIDP in the 7th.

Given the above accounts for all 3 outs, no others must make outs. Therefore:

Williams - Hit - Man on 1st (BB is eventually ruled out by the below, as 4 hits are required)
Seguignol - BB (had his only hit in the 5th) - Men on 1st and 2nd
Sherrill - 2B Hit (had his only BB in the 5th) - One run scores
Sweeney - Hit - One run scores, men on 1st and 3rd
Ashburn - BB - Bases loaded
Ibanez - GIDP - One run scores, man on 3rd
Lambin - H - One run scores

Inning ends with Lambin getting caught stealing.
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[Zahariel]

Scurra's guess about what to do next is correct, except he's missing the last letter (another B from Borders).

Suspence's 7th inning is also correct. Deanna's recommend solve path suggests working horizontally at this point (or actually a few steps ago), since you have the lists of what each batter did over the game.

[Scurra]

See now I would never have thought to include that name on the team, even though in retrospect it seems obvious because it was the one position I hadn't used.
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_{still Quiz Olympiad champion. Must get a life.
New definitions: COFFEE - someone who is coughed upon}

[referee]

That inning doesn't compute. Sherrill's double must have scored only one, if Sweeney is to drive in another one and still leave a runner on 3rd.
_________________
Jan 21st, 2008: The pillaging continues.
Mar 4th, 2008: Rest in Peace, Gary Gygax. May your dice always roll a natural 20 wherever you are.

Be the Ultimate Ninja! Play Billy Vs. SNAKEMAN today!

[Suspence]

Yeah, I had revised that inning and forgot to fix that. As constructed, it also has five runs scoring, when only four are scored. So, just change Sherrill's double to "One run scored" and everything else works (I think).
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[Suspence]

Here's what I have:

[Zahariel]

Innings 1, 3, and 8 are wrong. Probably one of them is wrong and you used the wrong information to fill in the others, since they involve most of the same batters. The rest is correct.

[Suspence]

I'm trying to see what about innings 1, 3, and 8 don't fit the criteria. I haven't worked out why they don't work yet. I'm probably missing something simple though.
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I hate people who try to write interesting things in their signature.

[Zahariel]

I was in kind of a rush earlier, but I can give you this hint now: Williams has 5 RBI; you've only given him 3.

[Suspence]

OK, how's this? How the 7th can unfold with 1 RBI for Sherrill and 2 for Sweeney still seems odd to me though.

[Scurra]

Well, applying the earlier instruction, I get BASEBALL
out of the first bit, but the last line doesn't seem to work at all.

edit: ...oh, wait. Oh that's sneaky.
The last line is shifted one space across.
It reads BASEBALL BAT
_________________
_{still Quiz Olympiad champion. Must get a life.
New definitions: COFFEE - someone who is coughed upon}

[Suspence]

Finally...so my scorecard was correct.

I think I've figured out the 7th

Williams - Hit (1B) - Williams on 1st
Seguignol - BB - Williams on 2nd, Seguignol on on 1st
Sherrill - Hit (2B) - Williams scores, Seguignol on 3rd, Sherrill on 2nd (1 RBI)
Sweeney - Hit (2B) - Seguignol and Sherrill score, Sweeney on 2nd (2 RBI)
Ashburn - BB - Sweeney on 2nd, Ashburn on 1st
Ibanez - GIDP - Sweeney on 3rd
Lambin - H - Sweeney scores, Lambin on 1st (1 RBI)
Lambin caught stealing to end the inning.

[Zahariel]

It does, congratulations. The response is "And where would you find one of those?" after which you are supposed to ask for permission to take a field trip to the baseball diamond on MS main campus. When you get there, you find the uniforms of the Red Staplers, each in their appropriate position (Incaviglia, as the DH, is chilling on the bench).

[Suspence]

So, ATLANTA. Converting the uni numbers to letters, going around the diamond by numbered positions, you get BRAVES CITY.
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[Zahariel]

Huzzah! And, finally, that's the answer. Sorry that one was such a long slog. I'll mention it to Deanna next time I see her.

Hopefully more people will be able to help out on this next one. Cryptic Non-Crossword

[Suspence]

Strange bowel joint (5) - ELBOW
Odd penis part required for humans to stand erect (5) - SPINE
Vaguely steal smallest amount (5) - LEAST
Jittery setup succeeded unexpectedly (5) - UPSET
Different era to speak (5) - ORATE
Atrocious bad grade with university found in leatherworking tool (5) - AWFUL
Reject garbage (6) - REFUSE
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[ralphmerridew]

Unfortunately dying, i yell obediently -> yieldingly
Neptune's path ... -> ORBIT
Popular wind toys ... -> KITES
Aluminum ... -> ALTER ?

[Suspence]

Fish struggle (8) - FLOUNDER
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I hate people who try to write interesting things in their signature.

[Suspence]

Back home following true test (5)
Aluminum, Tellurium share change (10) - ALTERATION
KITES
ELBOW
Excavations, bull fighter, exclamation found in high school (5)
Cardinal direction, unit of energy gains, for example hidden holiday decorations (6,3)
AWFUL
Leak a lost party (5)
Unit I respect possesses traction control devices (5)
ORBIT
FLOUNDER
Innate ability to burst out audibly (5)
Circuit board for Ethernet transmission after input/output consisting of charged particles (5) IONIC
Trapped in trivial sized glass containers (5) - VIALS
Opening delight (8)
SPINE
Awkward motion stymies first graffiti artist (7) - STAGGER
ORATE
REFUSE
Racket sport: a threatening combination, so to speak (6)
Rations of Thai currency originally became a habit to save (5)
YIELDINGLY
Gracious chap lead four near Illinois (5) - CIVIL
LEAST
UPSET
Advertisement infects, eludes adventures (9) ESCAPADES
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I hate people who try to write interesting things in their signature.

[Scurra]

I've finished this one (I think - I have a six-letter word as an answer although I won't post it right now.)
The steps were quite straight-forward although the last part caused me a bit of trouble, and I still have three blanks in my solution list.


Back home following true test (5) TRIAL (lair back)
ALTERATION
KITES
ELBOW
Excavations, bull fighter, exclamation found in high school (5) H(OLE)S
Cardinal direction, unit of energy gains, for example hidden holiday decorations (6,3) EAST-ER (EG)GS
AWFUL
Leak a lost party (5) REVE(A)L
Unit I respect possesses traction control devices (5) uniTIRESpect
ORBIT
FLOUNDER
Innate ability to burst out audibly (5) F...
IONIC
VIALS
Opening delight (8) ENTRANCE
SPINE
STAGGER
ORATE
REFUSE
Racket sport: a threatening combination, so to speak (6) T...
Rations of Thai currency originally became a habit to save (5) BAHTS
YIELDINGLY
CIVIL
LEAST
UPSET
ESCAPADES
_________________
_{still Quiz Olympiad champion. Must get a life.
New definitions: COFFEE - someone who is coughed upon}

[Suspence]

Racket sport: a threatening combination, so to speak (6) T... / I don't get it, but TENNIS?
Innate ability to burst out audibly (5) F... / FLAIR (Audibly is the homophone indicator for FLARE)

TAKE HEART OF FIVES SORT BY CLUE

I'm assuming TAKE HEART OF FIVES means to take the middle letter from the 5 letter words, which gives me: ITBLFVRBANAIAHVAS

Sorting by clues leads to: FINALVASVBITHBARA

FINAL seems to suggest I'm on the right track, but not sure where to go next, I'm assuming the cryptic square.
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I hate people who try to write interesting things in their signature.

[Quailman]

TENACE

[Scurra]

[Scurra]

Not sure if Suspence - or anyone else - has had a chance to get back to this, but here's the last stage.

First, turn HBARA into five-bit binary (V BIT)
Then overlay that onto the 5x5 grid and the 1s land on the letters MUSCLE.
_________________
_{still Quiz Olympiad champion. Must get a life.
New definitions: COFFEE - someone who is coughed upon}

[Suspence]

Nice work, looks like we're ready for the next puzzle.

Where did you find a converter for text to 5-bit binary? I haven't found anything that translates the letters conclusively, or an adequate explanation of how to convert them.
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I hate people who try to write interesting things in their signature.

[ralphmerridew]

A = 00000
B = 00001
C = 00010
...

(Or possibly start with A = 00001.)

[Zahariel]

Sorry, I'm slacking here. Have to do some work occasionally, after all, plus I've been heavily distracted by A Tale in the Desert and Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword in roughly equal measures. MUSCLE is correct, of course.

The next puzzle, Magical History Tour, is unfortunately a field trip from beginning to end; we'll be skipping it. The answer, if you're interested.

So the actual next puzzle for today is Not So Popular Science. Good luck!

[Suspence]

1. A Brief History of Time -> A Brief History of Lime
2. Black Swan -> Black Stan
3. Chaos -> Chars ???
4. The Wisdom of Crowds - > The Wisdom of Crowns
8. Nudge -> Fudge ???
9. The Calculus Wars -> The Calculus Wart
13. The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat -> The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hut
14. Bully for Brontosaurus -> Bulky for Brontosaurus
16. Broca's Brain -> Brock's Brain
19. Freakonomics -> Creakonomics
21. Guns, Germs and Steel -> Gins, Germs and Steel
23. Pale Blue Dot -> Pale Blue Cot
24. The First Three Minutes -> Tie First Three Minutes
25. The Red Queen -> The Rad Queen ???
27. The Night is Large -> The Night is Largo

Time to sleep...more tomorrow hopefully.
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I hate people who try to write interesting things in their signature.

[Jack_Ian]

Well 15 is probably Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid (commonly GEB), but I can't figure out what letter to change for "party".

22. A New Kind of Science > Pew
26. River out of Eden > Diver???