The Hint in the Blog

[weaversam8]

Frank's recent blog post about something new for 2015 can be found here.

Wait. Isn’t the new game always, well, new? Yes, but that’s the point of this note. Every year we try to do a little something different. Sometimes a lot of something different. No one should look at any rules from prior years and think “They would never change that”, because we may. Number of teams on an alliance, number of alliances in a match, match length, bumper rules, field surfaces, robot size, every element from prior year games is carefully considered anew every year. You should make no assumptions. This is all we can say, and all we plan to say on this. All will be revealed on January 3, 2015!*

Frank

*Looking at this, if I were a team, and knew nothing about the 2015 game, I might be nervous. Knowing the game, though, I think there’s nothing to be nervous about. OK, almost nothing.

Let's analyze this. If we split the string every 7th character, then run an anagram decoder on the first result, it decodes to tiwai. Google defines tiwai as:

Tiwai Point
Tiwai Point lies at the entrance to Bluff Harbour on the southern coast of the South Island of New Zealand. A spit which extends from the western end of the Awarua Plain, it lies between Awarua Bay to the north and Foveaux Strait to the south. Wikipedia

Another thing to note is that the 7th result of the 7 letter split is the word "Yes"

Coincidence? I think not.

[g_sawchuk]

And here we go again....

[aldaeron]

Thanks for spending the time to decode the hint. But what does it mean?

<rumormill>

...

[Whippet]

If you subtract "ai," or Artificial Intelligence, from Tiwai, you'll get "Tiw," which has three letters.

What else has 3? Half-Life 3.

No autonomous mode and Half Life 3 confirmed in one hint!

[Kimmeh]

Is it December?
No.

Does the post say game hint?
No.

Is this a game hint?
No.



What should you take away from this blog post?

Just because the rules haven't changed for years, doesn't mean they won't. The game was once played on corn, for crying out loud. Things may change. Things may not. Just remember that they can. "You should make no assumptions"

All will be revealed on January 3, 2015.

[weaversam8]

Is it December?
No.

Does the blog say game hint?
No.

Is it a game hint?
Yes.

[weaversam8]

The first letters of the sentences are: WIYESENNYTAFLKO. There's YES again!

[weaversam8]

That string can be rearranged to form YNSNOWFLAKEYETI

[Caleb Sykes]

Hmm...
The post was created at 14:41. The fourteenth word is "of" and the 41st word is "prior". If we take the first letter of both of these words, we get "op". The post was also conveniently posted in October, when Frank could very easily have posted it anytime throughout the month of September, which means the number 10 has some significance. The country that has the 10th highest population density is Saint Marteen, which has national languages of Dutch and English. If we translate "op" from Dutch to English, we get "on", and if we plug "on" into an anagram solver, we get....

NO

Clearly Frank is sending very mixed messages in this post.

[mrnoble]

'tis the season for happy trolling!

[wilsonmw04]

This is great!



please continue.

[weaversam8]

The following can be found in WIYESENNYTAFLKO.

Skeleton,
towlines,
nations,
twinkle,
seafowl,
intense,
sonnet,
linens,
skyway,
eons,
walk,
sofa,
soil.

[Whippet]

Originally Posted by weaversam8

soil.

Soil has water in it. Water game confirmed.

[weaversam8]

It can also translate into INSANELY WET.

[alexis tuggle]

Originally Posted by weaversam8

It can also translate into INSANELY WET.

WATER GAME!!!