A yeti-like photo of this year's lego luge contraption
The Winter Pentathanerd games wrapped up this week with three exciting events; Anna Grahams, Lego Luge and a clever variation on The Price is Right as the final round. Below are the detailed accounts of each event as written by Mark Seemann, the founder and organizer of the Pentathanerd games…
Wednesday – Anna Graham
“For the Anna Grahams event, contestants had to unscramble words or phrases to guess the original word or phrase based on the selected category. In groups of three, teams had to get four correct to move on to the final round of three. The categories were:
Steel Men (Elements)
Hip Cretaceous Stirrer (Prehistoric Creatures)
See Ample Money (Employee Names)
Creates Niches (Earth Sciences)
In the first round after choosing Earth Sciences, WYSIWYG blasted to a quick victory against Teh Awsumbs and QWERTY, leaving them with nothing on the board. In the second round, The Nerderlands’ knowledge of Elements gave them an easy path to victory over Teh Newbs and Nausea, with each of the others scoring a single point. In the third round, Chicago’s team RAGE! phoned
in and managed to get a point in the category Prehistoric Creatures; Don’t Blink came close with three, but We Are Not Cheaters pulled away with the win.
In the final round, We Are Not Cheaters’ Annette J took a quick lead with her knowledge of Employee Names, but WYSIWYG’s Sean Hickey and The Nerderlands’ Jim Barrett kept the scores close. Easily the most entertaining category, among the anagrams were “dimmest hick” and “cranky urea.” After a number of unanswered anagrams, a snap *snap* judgement had to be made to continue, after running out of anagrams in the category; we resumed the round with the remaining unsolved Elements anagrams.
The score quickly tied up, three points for each team. The final clue – “tiny moan” – was solved by The Nerderlands.
Try your hand at unscrambling the same clues as the challengers here: http://pentathanerd.com/ag/“
Thursday – Lego Luge
“A record crowd braved the chilly 76-degree weather in the Nerditorium to witness the first ever indoors Lego Luge event of the Pentathanerd. Thanks to the tireless efforts of Eric Myers, the indoor track made for a spectacle of its own, as competitors waited their turn to try out their luge designs in “the series of tubes.”
Participants were expected to bring their Lego vehicle – complete with rider – to the event for approval from the Head Judge (Kai Esbensen). Then, the competitors handed their luge to the Primary Luge Launch Technician (Mark Seemann, standing on a ladder), who placed the luge carefully in the pre-calibrated “Flusher.” Once docked in the “Flusher,” a member from the team pulled on the release mechanism, occasionally needing to jiggle the handle, to begin the luge’s descent toward the luge track. Based on the results, the following points were awarded:
300 pts – Clearing the flusher earned 300 points
500 pts – Making it into the luge track (not as easy as it sounds!)
700 pts – Getting caught in the “lint trap”
800 pts – Getting into the garbage can
900-1200 pts – Clearing the entire luge track, depending where the Lego rider ended up on a field of points
Three teams managed to propel their craft all the way down the luge track; WYSIWYG, Nerderlanders, and Ridin’ QWERTY. WYSIWYG missed the scoring field of points, earning 900 points. The Nerderlanders landered [sic] on the board, but just outside a colored scoring area, earning 1000 points. QWERTY made a solid showing in this event, also landing on the board but outside bonus points areas, tying for first place.”
Friday – Price is Right
“The Friday event was Teh Price Is Right. The game, as was revealed right at the start of the event, was to guess how Jansen Price would answer questions (hence, [Jansen] Price Is Right). There were eight warm-up questions, worth 100 points for the first four and 200 points for the second four, leading up to the wager-style bet-it-all final question.
Most teams got a few questions right, here and there. We Are Not Cheaters struggled to get on the board, while Don’t Blink and Teh Newbs were guessing pretty well what Jansen would respond. A few of the warm-up questions were: “What… is your favorite color?”, “In what language do you, Jansen, prefer to code?”, and “How many Pentathanerds have you participated in?”
The final question was preceded with a wager. No hint was given as to the category of the question. Most teams wagered it all. The final question was: “Where do you work?” Only on team answered correctly, as judged by Kai E – Don’t Blink. Their score doubled. Another team only wagered 350 points, WYSIWYG, and stayed in the race with 4381 points. However, We Are Not Cheaters, who asked for a clarification on the rules, noted that “any amount up to your current total may be wagered” did not in fact exclude negative numbers. Having gotten the answer wrong – they drew a table-flipping character – they lost -10,000 points, giving them a total of 14176 points, taking first. Kai E ruled that their wager did comply with the rules, and allowed the victory.
Going into the finale event, Tech Price Is Right, were WYSIWYG, Don’t Blink, and We Are Not Cheaters. This event was much more like one would expect – the representatives from each team were called down to “contestant’s row” and asked to provide bids on the prices of technology items at the dollar value they had at the point of release. For example, the first item up for bid was an iPod Shuffle from 2005, with 512MB of storage (which was sold for $99). After winning the bid, contestants played pricing games like Squeeze Play – find which number does not belong in the price of an Apple ][e from 1983, or The Clock Game, to name the price of the first car phone, the Motorola DynaTAC 8000X from 1983.
After four games, We Are Not Cheaters were in second behind WYSIWYG for prize money “won” – leaving Don’t Blink to enjoy their lovely parting gifts.
The Showcase Showdown featured computers through history, including the first commercially successful computer, the PDP-8 from 1965, and another showcase of music players, including the classic Casio VL-1 from 1980.
We Are Not Cheaters came within about $7,000 of their showcase value, and WYSIWYG’s bid was OVER – the Cheaters won!
(Yes, yes, “We Are Not Cheaters” won.)
All participants received oversized chess pieces as commemoration for playing in the games. The winners received gold-plated (by “plated” I mean spray-painted) pieces, and the second place team got silver-plated (painted) pieces.”
