Shoe Solution

How it works

The first, obvious step is to get the boot out of the concrete

Upon doing this, teams see a bunch of nails and screws sticking out of the side of the shoe.

The screws and nails encode a ternary sequence based on the number of slots on the head. ie. nails are 0, slotted screws are 1, and phillips-head screws are 2. Reading the full sequence from left to right starting on the side with the toe on the left yields the following sequence:

121 210 110 110 120 210 202 202 / 022 012 201 010 200 012 212 201

This decodes to PULLOUTT/HESCREWS

The next step is to pull out only the screws and note that there are colors painted on all of them.

Take note of the number of red, orange, etc. screws and turn them into letters.

LABEL is an indication that teams need to tear off the label on the tongue.

Tear/rip/cut the label off of the tongue and look for a little piece of paper underneath it.

The paper says "ADD FOUR TO NAILS IN COLORS USED," which is a clue to then pull out the nails and again count up the colors, but this time add 4 to all the counts.

Solution

GEODE

Design notes

The general idea for making concrete overshoes was knocking around for a while, but was initially dismissed on the worry that concrete would be too strong. After deliberately making the first block of concrete very weak (dropping it would shatter it), it was realized that this would actually be feasible and not require heavy-duty tools to solve. Final production totals across all versions came out to 12 pairs of shoes, 800 lbs of concrete, 800 screws, and 400 nails. Each shoe (amortized) took around 3 hours to make.

GC notes

• Throwing the concrete blocks against the ground tended to rip up the tarp that was there to aid cleanup, but didn't really damage the concrete.
• The recommended method of breaking the block was to use a standard claw-hammer. Other methods used included throwing it at the ground from ~15 feet up and putting the shoe on and stomping on the ground.
• One team managed to break their hammer.