**FIRST EMAIL**/FRC Game Hint #3

[Akash Rastogi]

Originally Posted by dlavery

psssh. Sleep is for the weak.

-dave



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Wise words from an insomniac master?

[Optimizer]

Originally Posted by dlavery

psssh. Sleep is for the weak.

-dave



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Point taken!

[EddieMcD]

Say Dave, isn't it past your bedtime? Big day tomorrow, and whatnot?

Anyhow, I may as well put in my annual "<12 hours before kickoff" game prediction.

And there's really only one thing all three clues have been telling us. The abnormally square piece of paper in the first game hint, the coordinates pointing us to a "globe cafe" in the second hint, tetras in the third clue: whatever you guys are doing will involve the first logo in some way. Whether or not you'll be manipulating cubes, tetrahedrons, & spheres all at once into a single goal for differing point values/multipliers (which BTW, has always figured into my "dream game" in some fashion), or whether it'll be some variety of stacking or putting different-shaped objects into other-shaped goals, somehow, my prediction is that something square-ish, something circle-ish, & something triangular will be involved. And all the clues link up too (Copely Square, and the FIRST Corps of Cadets Veterans [hurdling tetras] located in said square)! And since this is FIRST we're talking about, there's probably going to be a choice to make at the end between continuing what you're doing, or scoring secondary points. Say, what if the end game is another autonomous period where that IR receiver helps you perform your last point scoring maneuvers...

Finally since I can, I'll step into WATER GAME!!1! territory for just a second: what good is a globe without it being 70% water? I kid, of course.

[Binome]

Dave must have just finished the game animation, and decided to take a breather from animating

[Optimizer]

First, I should correct myself - Kick-off is today!

Then I just wanted to take my last shot at this. I took to heart Dave's somewhat lengthy (but worthwhile) discussion on the importance of knowing what precision you have, as well as what precision you need.

Revisiting the "where, exactly, is this spot?" question, I recalled that the first people who located the spot (on Google, I think) varied the input and got the same result. This means that has a significant (if undetermined) inaccuracy.

I figured where the spot should be independently, using topo map images, and had estimated that the answer might be good to about 30FT. The closest thing to that spot, BTW, is a statue of Philips Brooks (not Copely), which is along the north side of Trinity Church. Given the unknown accuracy of Google, I'm going with this spot now.

My first estimate was that the bearing headed toward the burger joints from there, but looking more carefully at it, it looks more like it's really across from a subway stop. If I still thought it was looking at the Burger King, I would confidently conclude that the clue meant "Stack Attack" (meaning that elements of that previous game would return this time).

All I can do is speculate that my errors are a bit worse than I thought, and that #2 really does just mean "Stack Attack" (plus a hint of better floating-point computing this time).

Hint #1 was probably just so we wouldn't freak out about this new equipment that seems complicated at first, but isn't really such a big deal after you sit down and look at it. They must really want to make sure we succeed at employing it.

#3 just seems to be another reference to aspects of previous games being revisited (with a new twist, I'm sure). So far we have a combo of Stack Attack (the Burger King campaign), Triple Play (the tetras), and Aim High (something airborne - "hurdling").

Sounds like fun!

[organman42]

Originally Posted by dlavery

psssh. Sleep is for the weak.

-dave



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only during build season

[Nin_estarSaerah]

the encryption key is an anagram of vet hurdling first tetra

[Andrew Bates]

It is? Hmm even if you figured that out though you wouldn't have the CAPS and the punctuation.

[Nin_estarSaerah]

yeah i know, because i tried about 20 anagrams, including drivestraitturnleft but yeah...punctuation was the problem

[KarenH]

Originally Posted by Nin_estarSaerah

yeah i know, because i tried about 20 anagrams, including drivestraitturnleft but yeah...punctuation was the problem

Originally Posted by corpralchee

It is? Hmm even if you figured that out though you wouldn't have the CAPS and the punctuation.

The anagram, spelled correctly, is
drive straight turn left

It corresponds letter for letter with the words in the clue. Word puzzles don't generally rely on capitalization and punctuation, so as far as I can tell, it's 100 percent accurate.

[Nin_estarSaerah]

pardon me, my spelling is generally bad when i'm typing too fast...

word puzzles don't rely much on punctuation and capitalization, but passwords do!

[ahecht]

Password or not, "drive straight turn left" does describe what the robots do in this year's game.

[ShotgunNinja]

Well, whatever the game ends up being, I sure hope it involves the IR sensor and the IP camera intensively. I got accepted to MSOE for my work last year (AS A PROGRAMMER) on my team's IR board, from wiring to mounting to programming to interface design. I would love to have that kind of challenge again, especially if it is made a core part of gameplay and more teams feel obligated to work with it.

[Joe G.]

Someone should probably edit the title of this to clarify that this is for the 2008 game, I know I jumped when I thought "How did a game hint and 200+ replies get generated without me noticing?"

[McGurky]

Um ya, this was last years hint, just an FYI