Re: Historical Clue Histeria
 

Wasn't this year's (09) clue a moonfish?

I haven't really paid much attention to the clues in the past, but I probably will start paying more attention next year.

Re: Historical Clue Histeria
 

Yep.

2003: I'm not sure if this one was the official one or not, but y=ax^2+bx+c.
2004: lines from "Stairway to Heaven"
2005: riddle about amethyst glasses, two baseball players who'd made unassisted triple plays, and pi. I don't remember the exact wording; search for the thread discussing it.
2006: See my earlier post here
2007: still from the game animation, zoomed in
2008: chain going to statues, among other things
2009: Moonfish picture and a riddle

The game has been figured out once or twice, and elements have been found, but never the entire thing.

Re: Historical Clue Histeria
 

Can you explain this clue? I searched and found no real answers.

Re: Historical Clue Histeria
 

The best I remember was that it was the scoring formula, or a relative thereof. Or the field shape (due to the massive ramp in the middle).

Re: Historical Clue Histeria
 

I thought it might be the ramp, but I can't figure out why they would have the formula for a parabola. Unless the ramp was parabolic? Oh well, they often don't make sense. Guess I'll just have to let this one go.

Re: Historical Clue Histeria
 

I believe the lines on the ground was a parabala.

Re: Historical Clue Histeria
 

Nope, sorry. Semicircle bordered by straight lines. Centered at the edge of the ramp. Not that my team ever used that; we preferred to drive out, tweak our angle, and come straight back into the bins...

Re: Historical Clue Histeria
 

Wasn't it the shape of the bins as set up atop the platform?

Re: Historical Clue Histeria
 

I had always heard that it was the scoring formula, but that's not strictly correct.

If that were the case, the clue should have been something like:

y = a(x-1)+b
or
y = ax - a + b

Where:
y = score
a = height of tallest stack
x = number of bins in zone, including those in the stack
b = bonus points from ramp

(The -1 is because the bins making up the stack did not count towards the total, e.g. if there were 6 bins in the zone but 3 of them were in a stack the score would be 3*3=9 instead of 6*3=18)

Re: Historical Clue Histeria
 

Nope, it WAS the scoring. Doing a little searching, I found some old threads, which took me to this post, which lead me to http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...ht=quadrat ic

Search for "clue" for as old as you can go, by start date, and look for the threads started in late 2002. One of them has a list of 4 threads, the last of which is the first link above.

It's how you optimize your score.

Re: Historical Clue Histeria
 

Re: Historical Clue Histeria
 

I remember about two weeks before kickoff this year, a couple friends and I were trying to figure out what in the world the challenge would be, based on the numbers they gave us and the moonfish clue. We put the numbers into Google Earth, and after a little work ended up getting some weird result off the coast of Australia. For the moonfish, we jokingly claimed we would have to go the either Mars or the moon, I forget which. We came somewhat close about the second one, I guess.

Re: Historical Clue Histeria
 

I think the parabola is officially the coolest clue ever. It makes this thread fully worthwhile to me. Thanks to all for the information.