Aaron: I think this might actually be different. It looks like his main (at least longest) point is in asking for perennial tips for analyzing hints, rather than discussion of the hints themselves. (ie thuis thread could stand perennially with or without any unresolved game hints.)
If so:
I'd argue there's no wrong way to interpret a hint. (You won't actually get the game, but since when is that the point?
) They're mostly for fun. If you really do want to get somewhere, it's very hint-dependent. Use reasonable logic, recall what FIRST officials have said before (decide what to trust), and ultimately understand FIRST's goals and constraints in game development and what they logically need to in/exclude. (But where's the fun in that?) Other than that, a lot of it comes down to creative association, persistent Googling, image property lookups, and knowing (how to find) a lot of different things. Recognizing GPS coordinates, decoding poems, calculating the width of a bent polycarbonate piece based on guessing its thickness from a CAD rendering, trying to avoid nightmare flashbacks in seeing an IR transmitter on FIRST Choice (just me?)...
Basically you engage in a lot of craziness for brainstorming and then analyze the results in light of cold hard logic, iterate extensively, and accept you may still be wrong (or right) and figure out how to deal with all contingencies.
Does anyone else get the feeling FIRST does this for practice game analysis? And to tease us into insanity, of course. (But we knew that)
If not, suggest closing so no one else falls into the trap I have. It might be kind of a fun thread, though