2013 ACTUAL game hint!!!

[DonRotolo]

Originally Posted by gabrielau23

Agreed. The anagram was pretty crazy. Could it be a coincidence? My heart says yes, my head says no.

There are no coincidences, and especially none of this magnitude.

Originally Posted by Richard Wallace

If you've ever mailed in your box tops and waited, impatiently, for several weeks until your secret decoder ring arrived -- only to discover that the secret message was a reminder to drink your Ovaltine -- well, a secret message telling you that there is a secret message does not seem strange at all.

Indeed. Perhaps that is what Frank meant when he wrote that it was a really good hint, in that it was very clever. Which it is, IMHO.

Originally Posted by Flimsor

I meant coming up with a solution to a possible game. We're still nowhere near figuring this out.

...and we never will be, at least not until this coming Saturday. Game hints are fun for speculation, but they never actually tell us anything about the game. At least, they haven't yet.

[Siri]

Originally Posted by DonRotolo

Um, I have not seen this mentioned in this thread yet:

(from here)

Is that as strange to you as it is to me?

Wow, incredibly. Unfortunately, following its advice (finding other rearrangements of the letters) is even more confusing. If it's not a coincidence that it spells that message, is it a coincidence that it spells any of the other combinations?

There are 28,331 recognized words* in those 48 letters. I played with it for maybe 15 minutes and found at least a half dozen well-articulated and absolutely terrifying games possibilities. In fact, I'd venture that there are literally thousands of ideas one could articulate with this collection of letters. How to sift through them...


*EDIT: To put this in perspective, this means that 1 in every 8 words included in the entire, unabridged Webster's dictionary [11th Ed. Collegiate] can be made from those 48 letters. (Maybe more, as it appears the anagram solver's database is smaller.)

More than 1 in every 8 words in the English language. ...Is it just me or is the room spinning?

[gabrielau23]

Originally Posted by Siri

Wow, incredibly. Unfortunately, following its advice (finding other rearrangements of the letters) is even more confusing. If it's not a coincidence that it spells that message, is it a coincidence that it spells any of the other combinations?

There are 28,331 recognized words* in those 48 letters. I played with it for maybe 15 minutes and found at least a half dozen well-articulated and absolutely terrifying games possibilities. In fact, I'd venture that there are literally thousands of ideas one could articulate with this collection of letters. How to sift through them...


*EDIT: To put this in perspective, this means that 1 in every 8 words included in the entire, unabridged Webster's dictionary [11th Ed. Collegiate] can be made from those 48 letters. (Maybe more, as it appears the anagram solver's database is smaller.)

More than 1 in every 8 words in the English language. ...Is it just me or is the room spinning?

GAHHHHHHHHHHHHH. Sorry, I don't really feel like going through 28831 words, lol. However, I don't think we actually need to. Probably just go through the ones where the first word actually makes sense.

[rhinobot]

Good job 500+ replies

[rsisk]

Originally Posted by DonRotolo

Submitted by Maddog on Fri, 12/28/2012 - 18:17.

Having a little time on my hands, I used an online, iterative anagram solver, to rearrange the poem into this:

"rearrange letters, showing message hiding inside, kiddos"

So, the hidden message is that there is a hidden message !?!?

Unfortunately there is no protection on the re-entrant clue eventually causing us to blow our stack

[Siri]

Originally Posted by rsisk

Unfortunately there is no protection on the re-entrant clue eventually causing us to blow our stack

Exactly. Honestly, while all 28,331 words do not make sense, there are literally thousands that do.

For instance, even after picking 2 words from among the longest sensible options, say, "disintegration" and "wearisomeness", there are still almost four thousand (well, 3,816) words left. And that's using two options that could well be a half dozen letters longer each than any of the words in the actual clue. Even two of the maximum length: "meaninglessness" and "interrogatories" still leave over a thousand additional words in the remaining 18 letters.

[mrmummert]

Ever see the CIA recrutiers at Championship? I remember them being at Atlanta
in 2006. Maybe they have you all doing this to show the CIA (and maybe the NSA) you guys might be able to break code (or write it)...laughs....better
hope its not actually written in Navaho or need a enigma machine for this.
But the good side of this is that all this speculation gets ideas and the old grey matter going for the up coming season and thats a good thing. Sorta sports
for the mind warm up.

[Bill_B]

I thought of anagrams very early in the hint cycle. Rick astley didn't give much. Nor did his song's title. Even tossing "pi" into it didn't improve things.

Don has struck something of a phrase lode. Did you consider the G/T duality of the original code, Don? Of course, trying it in your anagram won't help making a more "sensible" version without going back through the iteration. You just have to start again with a differing number of Gs and Ts to see what pops out.

All the numerical stats given by others about words since then are curious, but no one is offering any alternate phrases to bemuse us. Wearisomeness might have as a meaning something like half-a-thousand messages in futile speculation. Here's hoping the game, when revealed, will be neither wearisome nor cause disintegrations of any significant sort.

[gyroscopeRaptor]

I think that anagrams are futile. The GDC wants the hints to be crackable, and I don't think they expect us to find one of 28,000 possible answers. Haven't we done enough already to crack any possible codes, and we can move on to the words themselves?

[DonRotolo]

Originally Posted by Bill_B

Don has struck something of a phrase lode. Did you consider the G/T duality of the original code, Don? Of course, trying it in your anagram ...

Much as I would like to take credit, it wasn't my anagram. I found it as a response to Frank's blog on hint #3, I linked to it in my post.

Hmmm, maybe there is another anagram in there? Not 28k words though (thanks Siri) but who knows cares?

[vinnie]

Originally Posted by gyroscopeRaptor

The GDC wants the hints to be crackable, and I don't think they expect us to find one of 28,000 possible answers.

Like it's been said before, I'm sure someone here has already deciphered the meaning of the hint, but no one knows who got the answer correct until kickoff. Although I would imagine that the GDC would use a different game if the models on the last page were actually the game pieces
I love reading this thread and I can't wait to see what you all come up with when we actually get to the competition!

[ElectricVeteran]

Have been reading for an couple of days andhad a thought. What if the poem is like the name or synonimous (I spell horribly) to the name. Just since the first two lines point to the name Seal, it would make sense the last two line would do the same.
The Rick Astley pick, vague as it may be, might actually be somhow contected to the game.
Has anyone else starting to in threes?

[Foster]

Ok kids, step away from the letters and go back to the original decode.

Seals. Balls. We thought that it would be Seals balancing balls, but no It's our robots balancing on balls!!

Just found this clip from CMU about robots on top of balls. Now it all makes sense, the smaller frames, the new flexi parts, new gyro components!!!

Even better than the water game, it's a BALL game!!!

[IisMathwizard]

Wow... a balancing game would be quite a challenge... but isn't that what makes FRC fun?

I have a few concerns however:

If we do have a game where robots balance on top of balls, doesn't that sound dangerous to not only the robots but to teams attempting to retrieve their robots at the end of the match?

Is the cRIO update speed fast enough to allow for tele-operation and balancing (separate task I would imagine)?


I would think the danger part would definitely be the part to rule out this possibility.. However, I do think it would be a ball balancing game. Last year was a shooter.. so you know how this trend normally goes.. Arm game, but this year, the arm balances balls. Or maybe we use the arm to get the balls somewhere that requires balancing the balls atop it.

I hope the game masters are getting a good chuckle at this thread because it is almost torturous for me.

[Orion.DeYoe]

Originally Posted by DeepWater

As a robot inspector, I am looking at the clue slightly differently. What if the clue was telling us more about the robot and less about the game? Every year lots of teams have “issues” with bumpers and understanding that what they call their robot’s “frame” and what FIRST calls the “FRAME PERIMETER” is not necessarily the same thing. Sometime back, I think in one of Bill’s blogs, teams were told that FIRST will be taking a hard look at the bumper rules this year to try to alleviate some of the confusion and frustration observed by both teams and inspectors. Maybe that was clue #1? Next we have also been told that the KitBot chassis will be a different this year. Couple that with the published box dimensions that (if you take as fact and not a typo) could lead one to conclude the KitBot chassis may be smaller this year. Let’s call that clue #2. Then the established clue #3 seems to refer to the singer Seal, missing something (i.e. “sliming down”), yet maintaining weight. This leads me to think that this year the bumpers must completely “seal” the robot (no gaps, no minimum bumper lengths, etc.). Also, I speculate that the robot must fit within the sizing box WITH bumpers attached. The sizing box may or may not be changed to accommodate a new robot dimension but the sizing box will include some sort of built in gauge or measurement system to check for bumper zone violations. The robot weight will remain at approximately 140 lbs (120 lbs + bumpers). I wouldn’t be surprised if the robots will still be sized 28”x38” but that will include the bumpers and the weight limit will be increased to 140 lbs but still won’t include the weight of the battery.

Wow. I must say this is really well thought through. I think you may have it.
The robots do get a bit large when you put bumpers on them. The bumpers end up being about 3.5-3.75 inches thick (.75 in plywood + 2.5 in + Fabric + Fasteners) on a side. This adds up to 7-7.5 inches per axis of frame dimension. So if the size limit is 38 in x 28 in and you subtract 7-7.5 in well that gives you a 30 in x 20 in frame which, coincidentally, fits within the AndyMark frame kit nicely.
Like I said, I would bet that you have it (assuming we're not missing something in the KOP list). I can't say I'm happy about it though, I really liked the size. Like other people have said, the large dimensions are what make FRC challenging and fun.