Let's Go Funballing!

Two weeks ago, twelve of us (known as Team Hummucks) us participated in the first annual Google Puzzle Hunt. Both Microsoft and MIT host events like this, but if you're not familiar with those, it's two days full of solving logic puzzles. Each puzzle/task leads to more puzzles/tasks, and the goal is to find out where some ultimate prize is hidden and find it before all the other teams. Here's one of the puzzles I worked on. (Sadly, it's the only picture I took!) We had to twist up a Rubick's Snake according to some instructions, and eventually the various snake configurations spelled a word:


My personal favorite was the "Mathematician" puzzle. Hopefully the organizers publish the puzzles at some point so I can show you! The instructions for the puzzle simply said "Math is hard! Ego is imaginary! Let's go funballing!" I, of course, had been hoping since I joined Google that I would have some excuse to jump into our ball pit (you know, like the ball pits they have at McDonald's?), and I didn't need any further prompting than "Let's go funballing!". Best of all, there turned out to be crucial clues in the ball pit!

Unfortunately, once we made all the tough logical leaps, I screwed up the math. (Where by "screw up" I mean that not only could I not remember how to find ln -i, but I didn't even think to just enter it into the Google Calculator, which knows the answer.) Ah well, we got there eventually, and finished a respectable 11th out of 21 teams. That's exactly average -- which is not bad considering how many (practically) professional teams of puzzlers were competing. So, I didn't come out feeling like a total retard, which is always great after a weekend of thinking really really hard, and I hope there's another one next year!