BANG 25: A Study in Scholarship, Part Three

(Part 1 and Part 2)

Clue Eight - A Quick Exercise

I went and grabbed some water that GC was kind enough to provide as Given, Rob, William, and Jonathan sat down to solve our next puzzle. It had a list of people you would never expect to play baseball, their position, and batting order. My teammates were already matching player names to capital cities of states (Abraham Lincoln = NEBRASKA). I grabbed my almanac to help verify data. What to do with a list of states, then? Rob, our sports expert, astutely pointed out that baseball positions have an implicit numbering. "Really?" was the basic response of the rest of the team. Rob wrote down the numbers and, indexing them into state names revealing CT CAPITAL, giving HARTFORD as our answer. It was over so quickly, I felt like I had barely seen the puzzle.

Clue Nine - Our Genetic Malfunction

Our next puzzle was near tennis courts, so we grabbed some seats to sit and solve. I heard some visitors behind us remark that they sometimes used these courts for competitions and would move bleachers over the first and third court (I guess they were talking about the Bank of the West Classic?). I always find it neat to solve in a place with history or uniqueness. I think sometimes how neat it would be to get teams into baseball or football stadiums to solve, but that would probably require more money than would be worth it.

Anyway, this was a cool puzzle. It had a lot of stuff to play with: A bunch of double-sided multi-colored tags with a single letter and a curved edge, a wooden dowel, and a set of six rhomboids with IN on one side and OUT on the other with crossword clues. I had a brief thought that the IN and OUT referred to the tennis, but nothing about the puzzle spoke to that idea. In fact, some other details and the class name (biology) led us in a different direction.

The letters on the multi-colored tags were all A, C, G, and T, all DNA codes. The holes in them fit the dowel. The answers to each of the crossword clues was two letters long, also of using DNA letters. Jonathan wanted to build a double-helix, but how? We spent nearly a half hour trying to figure out how to do it. One thing did become clear, though: Getting only two hours of sleep and then having to wake up early enough in order to drive three hours to Stanford was beginning to take its toll on Jonathan. Rob and William were trying to explain some of their ideas to him and they just didn't seem to sink in or make sense in his mind.

We used the crossword clues to build a circular chain (AT -> TC -> CT, etc.), with the IN side facing in and the OUT side facing out. Something felt wrong about it, though, as two tags ended in A and two ended in T, making multiple chains possible. Eventually, a configuration worked. We put all of the tags on the dowel and put them in the center of our circle. Semaphore was mentioned and we tried to line up all the tags so that one of each color was showing and in a semaphore position. It wasn't working and besides we had no orientation for north even if it did. William or Rob (or both) mentioned that the rounded ends were there for a reason, but we couldn't figure out how to work them in. As time was running out for our bonus, I suggested we go confirm our data. Balancing our little model precariously, we took it to a staffer, who said it wasn't the right configuration.

Back in the courts, we took it apart and tried to start again. William (I think) explained that he wanted to connect the rounded end of the tags to the angled end of the rhomboids. William started putting them together, the rest of us caught on and we all started building. I was in charge of handing out strips of tape. The idea was working and we started getting twisty levels that looked like... "I knew it was supposed to be a double-helix," exclaimed Jonathan. And not only that, one of the tags had UP written on it and each color was paired. Semaphore for sure. It spelled out NATURE.

Just in time too: We didn't get our bonus, but did get full marks. And even though we didn't do the greatest, it was my favorite clue for the game.

Clue Ten, Eleven, and Twelve - Go Speed Solvers!

We were all itching to see if our position had changed and pestered Jonathan and Rob to see if we had moved up any in the standings. Although the P.E. clue had moved us close to the top ten, the Biology clue hadn't moved us either way. Some teams were finished, locking in their score. Trying to beat the Judean People's Front and win for once in our good-natured rivalry with Eric was clearly out of reach now. "We can beat Blood and Bones," Jonathan said confidently. "We just need more solves like P.E."

So we kicked it into high gear. The next three puzzles took us about a half-hour to solve, which for us is pretty fast. The tenth clue dealt with descriptions of movies that were actually two titles combined ("Can't Buy Me Love Actually") and the common word in the title fed into an acrostic. Fairly straight forward and a fun team solve.

The next one had cryptic clues that fed into a letter drop chart. My practice using Kelger's Kryptics (for junior high school) had certainly paid off, as these once alien and confusing clues fell one after the other. The letter drop helped clue us in on the idea that each solution was paired to make an oxymoron. The hidden cryptic within the oxymorons gave us ACT so the answer was NATURALLY. Again, lots of fun mini-ahas.

And for the final regular clue, we were given a bunch cards, each with a questions about naming cities on it. Half the cards in different foreign languages, but seemed to be the same questions. On the back of each card was a twelve-pointed star, with a circle at each point. We started filling the circles with city names matching the question. The highlighted circles indicated which letter of the city name to use, but only on the English cards. We anagrammed the letters into FESTIVAL. As we walked away, I figured out there was an ordering mechanism using the cards with foreign languages.

Clue Thirteen - Meta Homework

As we came round to the campus eatery again, we were excited about our chances. A quick solve on this meta and we could maybe place ahead of Blood and Bones. A really quick solve and we might be able to overtake Mystic Fish. CRANEA, then in fifth place, was out of reach though.

After the past few puzzles, we felt like could take the meta no problem. We sat down at the same table we'd had lunch at and looked looked at our clue: A bunch of strips of paper with different mini-clues on them. Some of the more obvious ones indicated that they were directly related to the the previous clues we'd just solved. At first, I thought they would use the same solving mechanism, but it became clear that wasn't exactly the case. For example, one read "If you get to me, it means you've almost had sex... but not quite." 3rd base, right? And the third baseman in the P.E. clue was Abraham Lincoln.

With only a couple of answers like that, it became clear we're dealing with presidents. "I wasn't first, but today I was." referred to the example clue (McKinley), so even that was being used. We had a hard time matching one of them to a clue, though. It was orientated vertically instead of horizontally. Jonathan then asked us to count the strips... there were fourteen. So that must mean the extra strip was our extraction method: It had thirteen numbers on it, so they must mean indexes.

But in what order? Presidents had an innate ordering, so we went with that and began to get something, along the lines of LEAF of ???ADA??. At that point, for reasons I can't remember, I went inside the cafe to look at the pictures of presidents on the wall. While I was in there, though, the thought struck me, "What if it's LEAF of CANADA?" That would make the answer MAPLE. I went back out and pitched my idea, but Jonathan had been figuring the answer would be a president or president related. Finally, a few more letters fell into place, confirming my idea, and we did enter MAPLE.

Epilogue

We had time left after finishing. Some of our team grabbed some much needed food. Teams that had already finished and were still hanging around were in a social mood, so we talked with a bunch of them.

The one thing about talking with Jonathan is that his passion for puzzles comes out clearly. He's read so many writeups and puzzles that he can talk on so many subjects as if he was there, even if it was an event he never played in. I know on more than one occasion I saw people's eyes almost begin to glaze over. I know mine did and from time to time I went back to my eating team, just to talk about non-puzzle things.

The game ended. Bob got up to give his talk about the game and announced the rankings.

The rankings revealed something we didn't know: coed astronomy and CRANEA had voluntarily disqualified themselves in order to play with an oversized team. This put us in fifth! Prizes were still left when our team was called, so I walked away with a darn good bottle of wine. Blood and Bones came in behind us and started looking over the prizes. Our contribution, Guitar Hero 3 (with guitar), had yet to be taken. Rich Bragg said it was probably the most expensive prize he'd seen in a BANG, but it showed just how unpopular the PS3 was that nobody had taken it. He kind of talked Matt into getting it, even though he didn't have a system. "I always meant to buy one," Matt mentioned, looking over the box. "Now you'll have a good excuse to get it!" Rich laughed.

We stayed around talking with people until it was nearly dark and then headed home. It had been a good day.