**FIRST EMAIL**/FRC Game Hint #2

[SgtMillhouse648]

Originally Posted by popo308

hmmm but what to we have to rhyme off of?

copley square makes rip out my hair?

[popo308]

Originally Posted by SgtMillhouse648

copley square makes me want to rip out my hair?

ahh very nice

[Alan Anderson]

Originally Posted by 114ManualLabor

Ok, so I did a little graphing. Straight from the coordinates, at 342 degrees, you're looking through the two obelisks, straight at the Globe Cafe.

I did the same thing, but I stopped when I found a fountain in that direction. It's right between the obelisks.

[amethyst23s]

ok, so I don't know much about this infrared sensor thing, but is it possible to input numbers? In which case... could the numbers in the clue be input? Or does it just measure light? In which case they could be a measurement? Or something along those lines... I think if FIRST is giving us 2 clues that they must be somehow connected.

[Arefin Bari]

I have a feeling that the numbers that are given to us has nothing to do with the coordinate system. Think about it, when did GDC ever gave us a clue where it was very obvious. When anyone sees those 3 numbers, they will think about the coordinate system.

I believe, the hints have a VERY obvious relation to the game that we are just not being able to relate to yet. Look at the previous year's game hints. In 2004, we were given a velocity and we were guessing robot speed when it was the mechanism speed. In 2006, we were told that there will be dangling pasta and we had many unique and intelligent guesses. I am loving the discussions we are having here about counterweights, places that are around the coordinates; but these 2 hints given to us will be messing with our heads until kickoff. Who knows, maybe we will get something else right after Christmas.

By the way, did FIRST ever email us the hints in previous years or were they given to us in other form?

[popo308]

I'm pretty sure it was just sent out via the FIRST-BLAST email list.

I do believe this is the first year they have actually sent us a part

[+()c|D]

Originally Posted by Mentor 2660

I'm thinking that it might be the position of something on the game field. If each of the numbers given are in inches the maximum value is something like 28.5 feet.

i think that everyone is looking into the whole copley square thing. it does make sense, but then whats the third number for? as the mentor said above about position it makes a lot of sense. It might have something to do with the where the ir sensor on the field will be... Someone made a point about a rabbit and hare statue in copley square, it might be the thing that they were refering to with the square, but that just might be something that has nothing to do with it.

It looks like there are a lot of ideas running around about copley square, if there is any one who has other ideas about the hint please speak up because this forum has taken a turn to copley square and only that.

Here are the numbers again:
42.349905
-71.076072
342.242026

[Mike Nawrot]

Originally Posted by Arefin Bari

By the way, did FIRST ever email us the hints in previous years or were they given to us in other form?

I believe '05 and '06 were emailed.

After reading through all 16 pages, here's what I think:

First of all, I'm not completely ruling out the coordinates. It may be an obvious hint, but clearly interpreting it has proven to be very difficult. Keep in mind, Woodie works at MIT, right across the river from the coordinates given. Maybe Dave was visiting Woodie and happened to notice the Hancock building. Though many buildings throughout the world use sway dampers, I think the Hancock tower represents FIRST engineering quite well. They built a tower, realized there was a problem, and solved it with an innovative solution. We build robots, get to competition, and find innovative solutions to problems we were not expecting. In the past (alluding to Dave's signature), especially 2005, swaying has been a huge problem for some teams. The third number could be the height of the counterweight in the tower (I'm too tired to check right now).

As for the song idea,
"Sometimes the light's all shining on me
Other times I can barely see"
Tracking the light with the CMU cam
other times, tracking IR (invisible to the human eye)

The one question that has been bothering me all along has been "why six decimal places?" The coordinates justify the accuracy, but height? The only thing I've seen a number of times with six decimal places of accuracy has been atomic mass... I checked, and no elements have any of those numbers as their mass. Maybe isotopes... Spelling words with elements? Masses of compounds, enthalpy and entropy? I had a chem test today...

Seriously though, what applications would use numbers that accurate? The Heading seems to point directly to the globe cafe. Maybe there's a hint in there. I've been racking my brain for hours now. Time to get some sleep

[Nuttyman54]

Originally Posted by steadfasttuna

The FRC game will be essentially the same [As Quad Quandry] except we will have circles, squares and triangles to put onto corresponding posts.

...A similar game was developed a few years back at WPI for Savage Soccer...I got to play it, very interesting game...I don't know if it relates to this year's game at all tho

[JoeXIII'007]

Originally Posted by Nuttyman54

342.24 hours in days gives 14 days 6 hours 14 mins and 31 seconds....
Kickoff is still 14 days, 16 hours and 12 minutes away
Maybe something happens at that time...which is 10 hours from now (approximately)
is anyone else reminded of XKCD comic number 240?

I dunno if anyone branched off of this previously because I merely skimmed through the 200 something responses to the most ridiculous (or that's just how I perceive it, I may be wrong) game hint I have seen.

#1. Kudos for bringing in XKCD, I don't care if it gets anywhere, just major kudos to that reference. *Applause* XKCD is just an amazing comic, get the facebook feed if you can (that is, if you have facebook).

#2. From there, I have concluded that FIRST Frenzy has finally gotten its sequel. What is after the colon is still unknown, but I have a good gut feeling that FIRST Frenzy (or something of that nature) is part of the title.

#3. The Obelisks (or whatever you call those 2 spires across from the Globe Bar and Grill) I briefly read about remind me of the two major supports of the chin-up bar from 2004. Problem is that we have already done chin-ups in the past 4 years... what will be in the middle this year? IR something? A basket? What? I wouldnt know.

#4. Back to XKCD and the strange connection between that particular referenced comic (#240) and that last line of Dave Lavery's CD Signature:

Originally Posted by XKCD comic #240, last line

It turns out wanting something doesn't make it real.

Originally Posted by Dlavery's signature, last line

The answers to one of the most oft-debated questions of the year is sitting right there in their hands, but they refuse to see it because it does not conform to their expectations.

Wanting something does not make it real (there is no pot of gold at the end of a 'rainbow'(first clue)... refusing to see something because it does not conform to our expectations... HMMMMMMM....

"Sitting right there in their hands:" I have a keyboard, and even more directly, in my hands I have the many "Hairline" ridges that make various shapes (following a path this year for autonomous?... fun!). The keyboard though is as close to "hairline cracks" between keys (another XKCD #240 reference) that we are going to get, and looking at the pattern of these cracks, it looks much like a brick pattern of squares.

Conclusion: back to boxes after 4 years... sounds good to me. And do we build a wall between the obelisks this time around??? Oh yeah, can we put balls in the boxes this time???

#5. The 342.242026 is something I would not want to guess for. Height and launching sure do come to mind. But if we were to consider them in other coordinate systems, it could not work in spherical since the third coordinate (phi) can only go as far as 180 (it would be a bit excessive to go beyond that without changing theta (second coordinate) around). Cylindrical though might work. Mapping though is good enough I would assume.

Otherwise, there's all my pocket change for now... hopefully the game will be fun this year.

-Joe

[Stephan S.]

hey everybody,
here is my guess for the hint:
i was playing with some temperature calculations (because of global warming and stuff..) and one of the numbers might be and freezing/melting/boiling point of a element/compound that will be used in the game and can be interacting with the sensorchip.
One of the numbers could also contain a thermal conductivity or something like that.

I hope all can enter the resources that i provided
by the way i used this online caculator.
http://www.onlineconversion.com/temperature.htm

I know that it is pretty obvious and probably not much of a hint-solution for FIRST, but it is still different than all the goggle-map things

happy hint hunting and happy holidays

[Optimizer]

Originally Posted by legomaster3945

it seems to me that they dont rhyme so much as have the first two letters the same but i know what u mean if i knew the time i think i could rhyme(ok so i couldnt help it)
hum sleep... :/
daves response "DO NOT WANT!!!! MUAHAHAAHAHAH"

It's called "alliteration", rather than "rhyming", when neighboring words have the same consonant sound at the beginning. Just FYI!

But sometimes they rhyme too, right?

Personally, I think the word to work off of is "Square". Note that the IR receiver has four signals it can recieve - as in the four sides of a square, perhaps?

[pandamonium]

this is actualy a very interesting and unique idea for the third number. time but not normal time. decimal dime.

Decimal time is the representation of the time of day using units which are decimally related. This term is often used to refer specifically to French Revolutionary Time, which divides the day into 10 decimal hours, each decimal hour into 100 decimal minutes and each decimal minute into 100 decimal seconds, as opposed to the more familiar standard time, which divides the day into 24 hours, each hour into 60 minutes and each minute into 60 seconds.

this article goes more into depth http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decimal_time

One decimal second is 86,400/100,000 = 0.864 standard seconds
One decimal hour is 24/10 = 2.4 standard hours, or 2 standard hours and 24 standard minutes.

it is late and the math makes my head spin but this could make a different time that makes more sense

[Optimizer]

Some thoughts:

1) Anybody notice the similarity between Dave's what is "sitting right there in their hands" (a mouse?) and Woodie's "gerbils"?

2) Personally, I think Woodie's "Stock market" = "crash". So it's "Just be careful about the crash". Perhaps we will either need to catch something that is falling, or be wary of being hit by something. The "jello" could be some sort of cushioning (either to break the fall so the item doesn't break, or to protect us from the crash). The "gerbils" could be a control mechanism (mouse).

3) Could "K'nex blocks" be a reference to Lego robots?

[pandamonium]

i think we jumped the gun on this whole cordinate thing what else uses 6 decimal places. all three numbers are to the hundread thousandth place so they all refer to the same thing. What else besides cordinates uses numbers with 6 decimals? that is the real question.