Hi I’m Ethan Nguyen.
Here is a link to a spreadsheet.
(The spreadsheet is cool but the intention is that you click on the corresponding tabs at the bottom of the spreadsheet document whenever I get to that part in my story, so don’t click it just yet.) (link to spreadsheet) (This probably is better suited given as a presentation, but oh well) (Also the spreadsheet itself doesn’t tell you that much, it was just an engine that I used to find some new combos and the words here are the thing that actually tells stuff to you.
There are two parts to this post, first is the fact that I know an amount of FRC team names and numbers that I know and second is all the nifty fun trivial stuff that I did with this knowledge.
I’ve been in FRC for 4 years and I wondered to myself the other day (May 2021 but I’ve updated it since then with any new knowledge), How many team names and numbers do I know? So I went to thebluealliance.com and then I went to the Teams tab at the top, and went through all the FRC teams and asked myself whether or not I know that team name and number off the top of my head. I made a list and it is in the spreadsheet tab (in the spreadsheet that you can now click on and it is named “List of Teams that I know”). For this list, if you say a team number on the list, I can give you the team’s name and some stuff about them. Likewise, if you say a team name, I can give you the team or teams with that name if they are on the list and stuff about them. There are probably teams that I know that I forgot to put on the list or I glossed over not realizing that I know them, oopsie. I don’t like to say I memorized this team list. For instance, the question “Did you memorize the name of your dog?” seems like a weird question. It’s in my memory but I wouldn’t say I “memorized” it. Asking like that implies that I committed that information to memory externally from anything else I was doing, as if I went out, saw a big list of teams, and memorized it as if I was memorizing an ordered list of equations for a class or memorizing out of nowhere the list of all the species of pineapples. So I would not say that I memorized this list of FRC teams and numbers, I could say that I happen to have them in my memory, or that I just know them and picked this knowledge up throughout the past couple of years when talking about robots and doing this FRC thing. Because of me knowing these teams within contexts of FRC, I don’t just know the team name and number, I know some other nifty tidbits about the teams like maybe where they are from, some of the stuff they have done, a robot they have built, a result they had at a competition, a cool video, the normal things that you remember FRC teams for. The team number of the team isn’t the important part, it’s the stuff about their team and what they’ve done, but the team number is a great avenue for fun useless stuff which is the rest of this post.
So before I made this ‘list about the FRC teams that I know’, long long ago, in Spring 2019, I saw a cool thing randomly when looking at some lists of teams that our team had made in preparation for champs/ other strategy things. 3309, Friarbots from California, who is a very good team and 3310 Black Hawk Robotics who is one of the best teams in Texas, their team numbers are numerically next to each other on an integer number line thing. I thought this was really cool. so I started to find some other similar things. 2468, Team Appreciate and 2471 Mean Machine are 3 numbers apart. 1678 Citrus Circuits and 1684 Chimeras are 6 apart. 230, 231, 233, 234 are like next to each other. Nifty. Oh and this kinda brings up the reason why I mentioned the teams that I know. If someone came up to me and was like “Oh Ethan, this is so cool. FRC 2615 ‘Team something’ is right next to FRC 2616 ‘Team other filler word’." But then I don’t know those team numbers, you’ve said the equivalent of nothing to me because those numbers don’t really mean anything to me, I don’t know those teams. I could find any two random teams next to each other on the blue alliance teams page if I wanted to. If instead you were like “team 4910 and team 4911 are numerically adjacent”, I would be like “oh wow, I never realized that. That’s so cool. Because I know those teams and stuff about them. 4910 is that really good Georgia Team with the purple and green and 4911 are the Cyberknights who were Houston Champs finalists in 2018 with 2910 who they also won 2 regionals with in 2020 in weeks 1 and 2, oh and they have that chief post about them that is some number of words long. Wow that’s really cool and nifty I never thought about that.” It’s because I know about their robot and achievements and stuff about the teams themselves that I find these number combos really cool and nifty. That is to say, if you did not know what teams I’m talking about just now, none of what I said was probably particularly nifty to you and I realize that, but maybe there will be some combos in here that you do recognize. But, even outside of knowing the ones I’m saying, part of the fun is thinking about some of the teams that you, viewer, know due to your experiences in FRC and potentially finding a cool combo among those yourself. And im not gonna list all of the combos that I know into this post both because it is too long, and maybe you can find some of these yourself because maybe you know those teams too. It’s really fun and gratifying to find some of the combos yourself. I should also mention that I am from Texas so lots of the teams and some of the lesser overall well known teams I know are from Texas because that is where I competed as a student and I saw the teams and yeah. So many of the ones that you might not know may probably be from Texas.
So I saw these numerical adjacencies and closenesses on the number line in spring 2019 and I never really thought about it too much afterwards. Summer 2020 rolls around and I realize that oh wow, 2481 Roboteers swerve team from illinois, 3481 Bronc Bots who my team had competed with recently, and 4481 the 2019 Detroit Champion team from the Netherlands all ended in ‘481’. So I wondered, what other teams do I know about have this similarity of the last 3 numbers being the same. I realized that 1310 Runnymede Robotics, the robot that climbed first on the Detroit champs 2019 finalist alliance and 3310 the texas team that also was on a champs finalist alliance in 2019 (Houston) both ended in ‘310’. What a nifty!! I tried to think of some others and had some here and there but then I stopped thinking about this.
August 2021 rolls around and I mention this to someone who knows lots and lots of FRC team numbers and they mention a couple more ending in the same 3 numbers and I was like “Oh wow, that’s really cool. I forgot how actually cool this is” And it was then that I realized that I had made a list for no reason before the summer of the teams that I know by going down the blue alliance team list. So now I have this list of all the FRC teams that I know. Surely I can figure out a way to sort by teams that I know who end in the same three numbers. So I spent some time and made a quick spreadsheet magic thing that got the last three numbers (oh I should mention that if you are a 2 digit team say team 12, I treated that as 0012 and likewise 118 got treated like 0118. So for instance 12 and 3012 would end in the same three numbers (012) but 12 and 3812 would not (012 does not equal 812).) This was kinda cool but I was like oh, why don’t I do this for the first three numbers as well, and then I did it for all the permutations of like numbers in any slot. So the way I categorized this was there are 4 digits in an FRC team number and it goes 4321 for the digit index that I have assigned. And also I named these ‘Number Families’ so 2481, 3481, and 4481, are all a part of the same ‘321 Family’ because the digits in the 321 places are the same. But as you can imagine there could be other permutations like the 421 family or the 431 family or the 41 family or the 32 family. So if you go to the ‘Number Families’ tab in the spreadsheet there is the list of what family each team is in for each of the digit permutations. So 2481, 3481, and 4481 are in the X481 ‘321 Family’.
So I made this thing and all the combos are so incredibly nifty to me. Who knew that 5414 and 4414 were one digit change away. 2056 and 2046. 254 and 5254, 2168 and 2468, 971 and 973, 5499 and 5199, 5419 and 5499 (this ones kinda nice). 4253 and 253, 2122 and 2102 and the list goes on and on. The biggest absolute mind blown moment was when I realized that 2582 pantherbots, 2583 Robowarriors, 2585 Impact, and 2587 Discobots, all teams from texas that I competed with in some way, were in the same 432 family, the 258X family. That’s bonkers, bonkers nifty. I also did this other cool thing where in the ‘Team Lookup NumberFamilies’ spreadsheet tab (in the spreadsheet), I can change the team at the top in the b1 cell and it does spreadsheet magic to tell me what family it is in specifically for each permutation of the 4321 and all the teams that are also in those families with that team. I think if you make a copy of the spreadsheet for yourself you can edit that cell and see the families for the teams I know, but also you could potentially edit the whole spreadsheet to be for the team numbers that you know. That’s a lot of effort probably but it’s mildly nifty. You certainly know teams that I don’t, so you may have different cool combos of teams in this way with the Family Permutations. Also, some of the permutations are more impressive than others. For instance 0XXX is just what teams are less than 1000. XXX7 is just what teams end in 7. The really cool permutations are the ones with only one X like X538 which for me has 1538 and 3538, Holy Cows and RoboJackets which is, like, super nifty. I know of both of those teams but never realized how similar their numbers were. 2587 also has a pair in all of the 432, 321, 431, 421 families according to my personal team number knowledge. You can swap digit 4 to get 4587 Jersey Voltage, digit 3 to get 2687 Team Apprentice, digit 2 to get 2557 SOTAbots from PNW, and digit 1 to get any of the 2583, 2583, or 2585 from earlier. BIG Nifty. Another cool thing is that you can play a game. only change one digit to make a chain between teams. For instance, watch this, 1323 Madtown Robotics is one digit off from 323 Lights out, is one digit off from 324 Chips is one digit off from 624 CRyptonite, is one digit off from 694 StuyPulse is one digit off from 294 Beach Cities Robotics is one digit off of 254 the Cheesy Poofs and Look I went from one California blue robot to another California Blue robot. Nifty. Another nifty one pair that shook me was 179, Children of the Swamp the black and green robots with nice reveal videos, and 7179, Crossfire, the team that was really good and they were in Texas and they won their division in 2019, oh wait, both of these teams won their division at South Champs in 2019 as the first pick, THAT’S EVEN NIFTIER!!
For all of these future combo types, there is no spreadsheet magic support, I know that I could do it, I just haven’t and I just noticed these combos by thinking about the numbers I know/looking at the list, but nifty nonetheless.
Concatenations
(Concatenate is when you put the numbers next to each other. So the concatenation of 12 and 34 would be 1234.)
Speaking of 7179, the first time I heard of them in Spring 2018, I was told their team was ‘Beatty Krunch’. I thought the name was a little odd but sure. I then go to event with them and I see that their name on the blue alliance is ‘Crossfire’. Hmm that’s odd. Turns out 7179’s robot was named Beatty Krunch and was something about name Beatty mentor related to team 71 and 79 having name Krunch. Hadn’t heard of any of these teams 71 or 79 so I didn’t think much of it. But yeah I know more teams now including 71 and 79 so this concatenation thing is kinda cool, here are all the others that I know, these are nifty and cool. 1678 Citrus Circuits is 16 Bomb Squad and 78 AIR STRIKE. 2767 Stryke Force is Team Rush 27 and 67 The HOT Team. 2733 Pigmice who were division finalists in Turing 2019 with 2403 plasma robotics and 5930 Lunar kitties is concatenation of Team Rush 27 and 33 the killer bees. 6768 denison robojackets from texas is 67 and 68 truck town thunder concatenated.
Anagrams
Some teams have the same numbers as another team. A quite recognizable one is 971 and 179 who won their 2019 division together. 948 and 498 both made einstein in 2019 as the third pick of their respective alliances, nifty stuff. 5026 Iron Panthers who won Houston champs 2019 and 2056 OP Robotics are anagrams. 3467 Windham Windup, 3476 Code Orange, 3647 Millenium Falcons from California, and 3674 Cloverbots all have the same numbers. 3847 Spectrum and 3478 PrepaTec -LamBot have the same numbers. There are many many more. This is mostly a thing you stumble on naturally and notice more quickly because it hinders your ability to accurately remember FRC team names and numbers because you mix them up.
Anagrams but it’s also coincidentally the exact reverse in numbers.
190 reversed is 910 if you count the zero at the beginning. You could also not count the zero at the beginning if you didn’t want yo, it’s your nifty you can do whatever you want with it. 141 WOBOT Backwards could be themselves or it could be 1410 Kraken. 1024 Kil-a-Bytes reversed is 4201 The Vitruvian bots who won the world championship in 2019. 3604 Goon Squad reversed is Team 4063 TrikzR4Kidz from Texas who have the cool hats.
Extra Nifty Finale. 7120 ThunderChicas are from Texas. Not only are they an anagram of both 217 the ThunderChickens, and 1720 PhyXTGears, but 7120 reversed is exactly 217 which is ThunderChickens. I’m not sure if the naming decision was intentional, I assume it was but I’ve never asked them personally, but nifty nonetheless. 7120 also shares number family X120 with team 120 Cleveland’s team, a hall of fame team who also won the world championship in 2016. They also share the 712X family and are adjacent in number to 7121 Keller Fusion robotics, another team from Texas. And on top of that 7120 is a concatenation of 71 Team Hammond and Team 20 Rocketeers from New York. Nifty. Nifty. Nifty.
I encourage you to find some nifty cool custom combos yourself with the teams that you know if you feel so inclined. Thanks for going on this journey with me, and have a nice day!
