Puzzling So Hard

I only remember one thing from the Robert E. Lee Science Club, and that is a guest speaker saying that the best thing you can do for yourself as a scientist is to work crossword puzzles or word puzzles of any sort. According to him, I am on my way to being a right fine scientist after Saturday, when I learned of the existence of, entered, and competed in the Microsoft College Puzzle Challenge. It's ten hours of puzzles. Ten. You bunker down with your team in a sequestered area and expend all of your collective brain power on mind games and logic and the occasional guess out of left field. You get emails from puzzle central telling you when to come pick up new puzzles and pizza. You raucously high five after each and every correct submission. It's unbelievably cool.

The Green Jacket ended up 9th out of 22 Georgia Tech teams, which is not too shabby considering our day-of registration and nonexistent prior knowledge of the whole deal. If you want to try your hand at a few, the puzzles can be found here, as well as puzzles from past years. My favorite is The Hunger Games.

Let's hear it for puzzles!