2006 Google U.S. Puzzle Championship is Open 75
Fortran IV writes "Registration is open until June 15 for the 2006 Google U.S. Puzzle Championship, to be held Saturday, June 17, 2006—it's 25 or so mind-bending pencil-and-paper puzzles that you have 2-1/2 very short hours to solve. The USPC is a qualifying test to choose 2 members for the U.S. team at the 2006 World Puzzle Championship to be held in Borovets, Bulgaria in October. For a mild taste of the puzzles try the 2006 Practice Test (as has been noted here in the past, if you can't get the Practice Test open you should probably give the real thing a pass!) For more of a workout the real tests for 2005 and 2004 are still available."
Oh noes (Score:5, Informative)
Note: Don't try to open the practice tests in IE/Firefox (with adobe reader), save to desktop.
Re:Oh noes (Score:1)
Re:Oh noes (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Oh noes (Score:5, Informative)
Although extensions are cool, this is overkill.
This is a configuration in the Adobe Reader for that.
Just go EDIT, PREFERENCES, INTERNET... and uncheck Display PDF in Browser.
OT: Wanted: Lightweight PDF viewer for Firefox (Score:2, Informative)
Thanks for that! Just updated settings on my system. BUT, I woul dlove to have a lightweight (i.e. small and quick-to-load) alternative to Adobe Acrobat for viewing (and printing) PDF files. I'e grown accustomed to some of the quirks of the user interface, my main complaint with Acrobat is its slow startup speed. That, and at least on my system, Acrobat 6.0 has a working set
Re:OT: Wanted: Lightweight PDF viewer for Firefox (Score:1)
Re:OT: Wanted: Lightweight PDF viewer for Firefox (Score:2)
Glad to hear it! BUT...
Re:OT: Wanted: Lightweight PDF viewer for Firefox (Score:1)
Yup -- I've been using gv to read PDFs in linux. It's fast, it's practically everywhere and I hapen to be familiar with the interface from over a decade of noodling with PostScript.
It ain't much to write home about, I'd say (no such thing as 'search for a keyword' etc) but for the usual reading of a normal document it's sure adequate. I like that I can mark particular pages and then print or save only those pages. Handy feature, t
Re:OT: Wanted: Lightweight PDF viewer for Firefox (Score:2)
Thanks for the reply; I'll have to check it out! Its a shame to not
Re:OT: Wanted: Lightweight PDF viewer for Firefox (Score:1)
Re:OT: Wanted: Lightweight PDF viewer for Firefox (Score:2)
Re:OT: Wanted: Lightweight PDF viewer for Firefox (Score:2)
Re:OT: Wanted: Lightweight PDF viewer for Firefox (Score:2)
If you're running Windows, there's Foxit Reader [foxitsoftware.com]. It's a 1.5 MB download, uses less memory, and loads almost instantly. In about 2 years of use, I've only encountered a single PDF that it wouldn't open.
If you're not on Windows, there's xpdf [foolabs.com], Evince [gnome.org], kpdf [kde.org], gv [uni-mainz.de], and probably a dozen others.
Re:OT: Wanted: Lightweight PDF viewer for Firefox (Score:1)
Adobe Reader 7.0 is much faster than Adobe Reader 6.0.x, so if you're using Windows 2000 or later, the first thing to try is upgrading to Adobe Reader 7.0.
Adobe Reader 6.0 can be dreadfully slow. You can speed it up by disabling unused Adobe Reader plugins. To do this, move all files and folders that are in the Adobe Reader plug_ins folder
Re:OT: Wanted: Lightweight PDF viewer for Firefox (Score:2)
Mod parent up
Re:Oh noes (Score:2)
Angrams (shameless plug) (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Angrams (shameless plug) (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Angrams (shameless plug) (Score:1)
Re:Angrams (shameless plug) (Score:1)
Wrong Password? (Score:1)
I guess this is part of the puzzle...
Re:Wrong Password? (Score:2)
Re:Wrong Password? (Score:2)
Bandwidth issues (Score:5, Informative)
3rd annual (Score:1)
Hmm (Score:2, Informative)
They should recruit at MIT Mystery Hunt (Score:4, Informative)
Sample quiz question. (Score:3, Informative)
Q1 is just a Sudoku that doesn't seem too hard.
Q2 can be solved with matrices.
Q3 involves finding the features easiest to compare and comparing all tiles with that feature (eg. one groundhog, two groundhogs, three groundhogs), comparing them, and then crossing out tiles that are definitely not similar to any others.
Sudoku and groundhog answers (Score:2)
Anyway...
Q1:
3164275
7235641
5421736
4612357
1573462
6357124
2746513
Q3:
A1-D4
C2-B4
E2-E5
Re:Sudoku and groundhog answers (Score:1)
Re:Sample quiz question. (Score:2)
Next, we are told that the track can't turn as it passes through stations. This helps, because we can see that there is only one direction in which the track can go through stations 1 and 2, and it also means that we can extend the track through stations 3 and 4 (previously in the middle of the stations) b
Re:Sample quiz question. (Score:1)
Re:Sample quiz question. (Score:1)
Re:Sample quiz question. (Score:1)
I wrote down a wrong forumla for one of the 2 vs 1 weights down the tree, ie a=b+2c instead of a=2b+c causing me to get the same answer as you but with the 3 and 4 swapped. Then all the equations ended up working out but the top level large equation.
I feel stupid now for wasting the last hour on that getting the wrong answer.
Re:Sample quiz question. (Score:1)
Re:Sample quiz question. (Score:1)
Re:Sample quiz question. (Score:1)
Re:Sample quiz question. (Score:1)
Re:Sample quiz question. (Score:2)
N.
Re:Sample quiz question. (Score:2)
Re:Sample quiz question. (Score:2)
Re:Sample quiz question. (Score:1)
Q2 Can't be solved with matrices/linear algebra alone. There are 10 unknowns and only 5 constraints arising from the balancing. The other constraints (using #s 1-10 exactly once) are nonlinear. I haven't finished it yet.
Q3 was really easy. but very boring!
Q4 was straight-forward-- a bit tedious though. You can reason your way through about 60% of the puzzle, and then the right answer sort of pops out at you.
Q5 seems annoying; I didn't try it.
Mirrors (Score:3, Informative)
The test [mirrordot.org], password: apple.
The instructions [mirrordot.org], password: grail.
Here's a puzzle... (Score:3, Funny)
Why bother password protecting a test file from two and three years ago?
Some of these are easy.... (Score:2)
Re:Question 2 (Score:1)
DaVinci Code (Score:1)
Last Two (Score:1)