We now join the Winter Pentathanerd in full swing, this week at The Nerdery! The Pentathanerd, as you all remember, is the twice-yearly competition that pits nerds against nerds across five different events testing their nerdy skillz. After two of these lunchtime events – “Biathlon: Revolutions” and “Rubik’s Cube with a Twist” – team WYSIWYG is in the lead with The Nerderlands, We Are Not Cheaters and Don’t Blink in hot pursuit. Here are the full scores as of yesterday…
1. WYSIWYG: 2243
2. The Nerderlands: 1958
3. We Are Not Cheaters: 1888
4. Don’t Blink: 1872
5. Teh Awsumbs: 1672
6. Teh Newbs: 1422
7. RAGE!: 1372
8. Nausea: 958
9. QWERTY: 300
The Nerdery’s very own boy reporter Mark Seemann has the scoop on the action:
“Biathalon: Revolutions was based on the concept of “run-and-shoot.” The competitors used nerf guns (their own or one made available for use) to shoot at high-tech paper-plate targets. The course was set up to have two competitors go head-to-head, almost literally. From opposite ends of the same table, competitors shot from “bases” at a series of targets. There were targets for each competitor facing each base. After two (2) shots, the competitor switched to the other base, even if those targets have been knocked down. If a competitor knocks down a target for the other competitor, it still counts as knocked down.
Thus concluded the first event of the Winter 2012 Pentathanerd Games
The winner (with a record time of 19 seconds) is The Nerderlands.
In second place, We Are Not Cheaters, followed by a tie for third between WYSIWYG and Teh Newbs.
Rubik’s with a Twist was a speed-solving competition, but “with a twist” that was revealed in the final round of competition.
The event started off with a massively multi-player (offline) round of speed solving (MMPORoSS) wherein the teams were seeded into a direct elimination table of the top eight. (Team Nausea obliged to make it easy to eliminate the ninth team by not showing up.)
WYSIWYG’s Sean Hickey eliminated QWERTY in the fasted recorded time of the day, solving in 33 seconds. Also making it out of the top 8 were Teh Awsumbs (1:18), [We Are Not] Cheaters (2:30), and D
on’t Blink (1:50).
WYSIWYG blasted Teh Awsumbs out of the games with another fast 49-second speed-solve. Then Don’t Blink’s Sean Kladek struggled against Justin Hendrickson from [We Are Not] Cheaters, who seemed to be taking his time. After an opening piece of hijinx where Justin unsuccessfully locked Sean’s cube in a filing cabinet, Sean never figured out that Justin had also swapped his cube for another cube with 10 red stickers instead of 9. Team [We Are Not] Cheaters was disqualified for the dishonest shenanigans.
WYSIWYG faced Don’t Blink in the final round and the “Twist” was revealed. Instead of unscrambling the competitor’s cubes (following trends from earlier rounds), they instead had to unscramble mirror-block cubes!
These all-silver-faced cubes have different-sized faces instead of colors to tell them apart. The two contestants looked a bit out of their element as they previewed their challenge.
After a back-and-forth, frustrating, nail-biting nine minutes and thirteen seconds, Sean Hickey was able to throw down an unscrambled cube, winning the event for WYSIWYG!”
