Okay, after letting the hint digest for a few hours free of ChiefDelphi, I've come up with some ideas. But I reserve my right to revise these guestimates if need arises.
But before we get too far into really wild guesses, let's try to keep in mind a few things. We need a set of paramaters to think within
before we come to deciphering the official clue.
1. Nothing can extend
under the main plane of the playing field. This has to be the case because FIRST is not going to cut holes under the field to account for a subsurface feature. And raising the entire field is not cheap, nor is it probable. The odds are a 95% chance against something penetrating beneath the main plane of the playing field.
2. The main playing field components have to be readily available. Simple as that.
3. The playing field has to be something that does not intentionally cause physical entanglement with robots. How much of a nightmare would it be for field reseters if half of the robots at the end of each match were stuck in coils of rope? I give this a 90% against rope or other physical entanglements.
4. The playing field components have to something that can be easily mocked up by teams of parts from Home Depot.
5. Everything else that has to be considered, including regional logisitics, field reset, etc.
Alright, now to the clue part.
Quote:
five 'bots tangling with pasta
a game piece obsessed with a shovel's show
and seeing Montana's green heights
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The "five 'bots" does not actually refer to exactly five robots. There will most likely
not be five robots. However, there is a significant chance that there will be six robots. The five can be refering to the fact that only five of the six robots can be doing a task at once.
Other ideas, like a 2x2x1 or a 3x2 match seem very unlikely to happen. Having a team forcefully choose to defect or having one robot randomly disable itself during the match seems unlikely. FIRST always seems to try to "even the playing field" and ensure that each team is "equal before the law"; eg. each team has equal amounts of time to build their robot, as well as compete. And the idea of a "random disablement" must send shivers down the spines of the referees. And they thought too many teams complained now?
The "shovel's show" does not directly refer to scooping up sand, but to the process of what a shovel does. A shovel attempts to gather up raw materials from a large area, and deposit it into a dump truck, train car, barge, etc. or some other container. Therefore, for the game object to be obsessed with the "shovel's show", the game object must be scattered about the field. The duty of the robot is to gather all the objects and deposit them into the "dump trucks", aka goals.
The "green" most definitely refers again to the vision camera. But what about Montana? Montaņa is the Spanish word for mountain (which is why the state was named so). A mountain implies that there is an incline, which leads us to think that there is a ramp in the center of the field (a la 2003 style). But looking further into Montana reveals Butte as one of the major cities in that state. If I am not mistaken, a "
butte" is a tall mountain with a flat top to it and steep sides.
But here is where we tie the first hint back in. There is most likely going to be 3x3 alliances this year. (There is some probability of 2x2x2, but I seem to doubt FIRST would introduce a third alliance). The "five 'bots" can refer to the fact that only five robots can fit onto the ramp/goal/platform at any one time.
Or, this can be refering to the fact that the ramp is not two sided, but many sided. Can the ramp be a pentagon, with opportunities for only five of the fix robots to score at once?
The "tangling with pasta" can be refering not to actual pasta, but to a form of entanglement. If you stretch the definition of entanglement, we can get 'being hung up' in a task, or being 'busy' trying to accomplish something. This implies that the robots will have to venture up the ramp to satify an actual task or goal. This task can be hanging or scoring balls into a goal.
I am leaning toward some sort of balls in this year's game. Especially footballs - as they are still considered a ball, even though they are not a "ball" in traditional form. Plus, footballs are long, almost what one might call "baton-like".
(I think that there is some element of truth to the baton hypothesis', but I really find it hard to believe that there will actually be batons as the playing field objects.)
Looking further into Montana gives us the state nickname of "Big Sky Country". This can mean that the main goal is very tall, and we have to "reach for the sky". Can the name of the game involve "Sky High" somehow?
And wait, didn't IFI just release their plans for the production of
traction wheels? And I wonder why they chose to make a
Vex robot to pick up footballs? Why footballs? Why traction wheels? Does this imply a strond, brute-like game, that battles for control of a center goal? Will this finally be the year of "Grid Iron Frenzy"? After all, this leads back to the Joe Montana hint...