Numb3rs

Owner:

Matt Vanderkolk (formerly Joel Phillip)

Solution:

GOLDEN

GC Notes:

GC to update day-of-game.

Presentation:

Part 1:

Teams approach Capitol Lake Park to find a girl with a man in a bear suit. She greets the teams and gives a speech about how her and her bear love the tiles around the lake, and hands them a sheet to record some numbers

Part 2 (after the sheets from part 1 are all filled out correctly):

After a short speech by the girl, teams are handed a sheet of paper with two large columns of numbers side-by-side on the left, then a third column on the right side of the page full of numbers.

Walkthrough:

Part 1:

The first part is very straightforward in that all teams have to do is walk around the lake and gather the information from each county tile. Once they think they have all of the information, they will return to the girl who will stamp all of the correct answers. If there are any incorrect answers she will send teams back out to fix their answers. Once they have all of the correct answers, she will give another speech and hand the teams part 2 of the puzzle. NOTE: if the teams try to get "Smart" and look up the county founding dates on Wikipedia, Wikipedia actually disagrees with the tiles in a couple of instances. The tiles are the defined correct answers here. Where is has been deemed that the correct numbers are ambiguous or confusing, these are prefilled on the part 1 sheet.

Part 2:

Teams should quickly notice that the first column has numbers that are large enough to be years, similar to the first column of numbers from part 1. However, not all of the numbers match the ones from the original column.

Teams should then remember from the speech they were just given that sometimes Mr. Beary writes numbers that are sometimes too big, sometimes too small, and sometimes just right. This should clue them into that the first two columns of part two match up to the 2 columns from part one, but some are offset by a seemingly random value.

The third column, when taken as A=1, B=2 etc. and using "NaN" as spaces gives the message BEARY MESSAGE OFFSET THIS WITH SUMTHING. The message should clue teams that not only is this column Beary's compliment, but the use of the word offset and the intentional misspelling of something should tell teams that they should take the sum of the differences of the first two columns and offset the third column by that amount. For example for the first row the math works like this:

(Beary's message #) + (Beary's year - actual year) + (Beary's tribe count - actual tribe count)

2 + ( 1896 - 1883 ) + ( 4 - 0 )

2 + 13 + 4

19

(S)

Doing that gives the message SEVEN FIFTEEN TWELVE FOUR FIVE FOURTEEN, which when translated to letters gives you the final answer GOLDEN.

Hinting:

Part 1:

• If teams don’t know where to find the information the sheet is asking for, tell them they should probably look at the tiles around the lake

• If teams have all the numbers but don't know what to do next, ask them if they've gone back to show their numbers to Mr. Beary

• If teams aren't sure if some of their answers are right, make sure they take it to Mr. Beary so he can answer check for them NOTE: Even if you give them some of these numbers, they still must show them to Mr. Beary so they can receive part 2

• Some of the answers, especially to the number of tribes, can be quite vague / could argue multiple answers. These should all be prefilled. If they get confused on any of the others, as long as they make an effort to fix their answers, the on-site staff have been instructed to be nice and give them the correct numbers. You may also help them with these numbers as long as they've put some effort into it. NOTE: Even if you give them some of these numbers, they still must show them to Mr. Beary so they can receive part 2

Part 2:

• If teams are having trouble finding how to make use of the columns of numbers, suggest that they look at data they had just finished collecting

• If they aren't aware that the 2 parts are connected to each other, hint that they should count how many rows on each part and perhaps should notice each part has the same number of rows.

• If they aren't sure how to order the counties with this sheet, tell them that the girl and her bear probably took the trip in the order their sheet had them go around (which is alphabetically)

• If teams aren't sure what the use of the third column is, tell them that the girl told them the bear had made a message for her on there, so it must be somewhere on this page.

• If teams are lost on how to relate the first and second to the third column, suggest that they first read the message Mr. Beary left and ask how that could clue them. A larger hint would then be to tell them that the words offset and sum pop out as important words

• If teams aren't sure what to do with the letters as numbers, tell them they should try to find a way to get it to letters

Data:

Part 1 sheet with complete answers:

Part 2 sheet: