In the post entitled "Handicap Treasure Hunters", I mentioned that I found some of the past questions by Hunters "R" Us were not very fair to the solvers. I had expected some of them to surface in The Hunters Challenge. And true enough, there were a few, but perhaps there is not much value to discuss them all at length here, since the major problem with this hunt lies in the other aspects such as the time restrictions, handicap issues, hardly any questions for new hunters, speedy presentation etc. However, for the sake of entertainment, I'd like to share with my audience, especially those who were unable to make it for this hunt, just one of the questions which were not meant to be solved.
Treasure 4:
Collectively the below products hold the key,
To identify which one from the five you need to get me,
Sort out the clue and bring back what is due.
And the above lines are followed by 5 pictures:
First picture:
A wafer chocolate named TIMEOUT, I believe by Cadbury.
Second picture:
A box of cereal named HONEY STARS, by Nestle.
Third picture:
A packet of TWISTIES snacks/crackers.
Fourth picture:
A packet of bathing soap named IMPERIAL LEATHER.
Fifth picture:
A packet of chocolates named MILO NUGGETS, by Nestle.
And this was how the the solution was explained by the CoC:
"Collectively the below products hold the key"
"Collectively" means all those pictures (or rather those products shown in the pictures) taken together (collectively).
"hold the key" means, in cryptic way, contain something (key) which can help to derive the solution. In this case, it may be a letter or letters found within the names of those products.
"To identify which one from the five you need to get me"
Tells the solver that those letter (s) found within the names of those products are needed to identify which one of the five items to submit as treasure.
"Sort out the clue and bring back what is due."
Means all those loose letter (s) which were extracted from the names of the products are to be sorted out, literally, to form a sentence; and that resulting sentence in turn is the instruction for which item is the required one.
You follow so far? Capital! We shall now proceed to the next step.
Now let's deal with the first picture—TIMEOUT. From this name, we need to extract (products hold the key) only 2 letters, i.e. ME.
Second picture—HONEY STARS. From this name, we need to extract only 3 letters, i.e. ONE.
Third picture—TWISTIES. From this name, we need to extract only 3 letters, i.e. IST.
Fourth picture—IMPERIAL LEATHER. From this name, we need to extract only 3 letters, i.e. THE.
Fifth picture—MILO NUGGETS. From this name, we need to extract only 3 letters, i.e. GET.
Fine, we have now extracted the required "key" for the riddle:
ME—ONE—IST—THE—GET
But that is still not the end of the story. We now need to sort out these 5 words in the correct order to form a valid sentence, i.e. GET ME THE IST (first) ONE. And so, we simply need to bring in the TIMEOUT chocolate (which is the item shown in the first picture) for the 5 points. voila!
The solution makes perfect sense, you see. And it is extremely hard to find any holes in the explanation. However, when this riddle was conjured up, the setter forgot to look at it from the solver's point of view.
Now let's look at the riddle from the solver's point of view (assuming that he does not know the intended answer).
This first question we must ask ourselves is whether it's reasonable to expect the solver to realise that he needs to extract some letters from the names of the products? Here, the answer should be "yes". I think an average solver would know the significance of "products hold the key".
Treasure 4:
Collectively the below products hold the key,
To identify which one from the five you need to get me,
Sort out the clue and bring back what is due.
And the above lines are followed by 5 pictures:
First picture:
A wafer chocolate named TIMEOUT, I believe by Cadbury.
Second picture:
A box of cereal named HONEY STARS, by Nestle.
Third picture:
A packet of TWISTIES snacks/crackers.
Fourth picture:
A packet of bathing soap named IMPERIAL LEATHER.
Fifth picture:
A packet of chocolates named MILO NUGGETS, by Nestle.
And this was how the the solution was explained by the CoC:
"Collectively the below products hold the key"
"Collectively" means all those pictures (or rather those products shown in the pictures) taken together (collectively).
"hold the key" means, in cryptic way, contain something (key) which can help to derive the solution. In this case, it may be a letter or letters found within the names of those products.
"To identify which one from the five you need to get me"
Tells the solver that those letter (s) found within the names of those products are needed to identify which one of the five items to submit as treasure.
"Sort out the clue and bring back what is due."
Means all those loose letter (s) which were extracted from the names of the products are to be sorted out, literally, to form a sentence; and that resulting sentence in turn is the instruction for which item is the required one.
You follow so far? Capital! We shall now proceed to the next step.
Now let's deal with the first picture—TIMEOUT. From this name, we need to extract (products hold the key) only 2 letters, i.e. ME.
Second picture—HONEY STARS. From this name, we need to extract only 3 letters, i.e. ONE.
Third picture—TWISTIES. From this name, we need to extract only 3 letters, i.e. IST.
Fourth picture—IMPERIAL LEATHER. From this name, we need to extract only 3 letters, i.e. THE.
Fifth picture—MILO NUGGETS. From this name, we need to extract only 3 letters, i.e. GET.
Fine, we have now extracted the required "key" for the riddle:
ME—ONE—IST—THE—GET
But that is still not the end of the story. We now need to sort out these 5 words in the correct order to form a valid sentence, i.e. GET ME THE IST (first) ONE. And so, we simply need to bring in the TIMEOUT chocolate (which is the item shown in the first picture) for the 5 points. voila!
The solution makes perfect sense, you see. And it is extremely hard to find any holes in the explanation. However, when this riddle was conjured up, the setter forgot to look at it from the solver's point of view.
Now let's look at the riddle from the solver's point of view (assuming that he does not know the intended answer).
This first question we must ask ourselves is whether it's reasonable to expect the solver to realise that he needs to extract some letters from the names of the products? Here, the answer should be "yes". I think an average solver would know the significance of "products hold the key".
Next question—is it reasonable to expect the solver to know how many letters to extract from each word (s)? The answer is "no", since there is absolutely nothing in the clue that would suggest anything about the number of letters to extract.
Next question—is it reasonable to expect the solver to know that he needs to sort out the results of those extractions to form a sentence? Again the answer is "no". He might have to sort out those loose letters to form a single word or words, for example, that would give a hint—indirectly—on which item to bring in.
So with this in mind, how would the solver know that he has to extract only ME from TIMEOUT?; how would he know that he has to extract only ONE from HONEY STARS?; how would he know that he has to extract only THE from IMPERIAL LEATHER?; how would he know that he has to extract only IST from TWISTIES? The universal answer for these questions is: by guessing through the process of trial and error.
If the solver had the luxury of time during the hunt, then I might have a different opinion about this riddle. He can then invest those precious minutes to try out the letters one at a time, and then try to form the all-important sentence for the ultimate solution by trial and error. However, under the circumstances of the hunt, that was not really possible.
It follows then that this riddle was not intended to be solved. If anything, it was a mere guessing exercise of choosing one in five. Mathematically speaking, that works out to be about 20% (choosing 1 from 5 possibilities) to strike the correct item. Therefore, it shouldn't be surprising that the percentage of strike for this treasure was also about 20%. Check out the statistics in A Hunter's Tale. It's a bit difficult to see, but one should be able to spot T4 on the graph.
I suppose guessing is OK too, but it takes away the satisfaction of actually solving the riddle. Of course, that is my personal opinion. I'm sure some of you might have guessed correctly and will not lose sleep on how you arrived at the solution.
9 comments:
I forgot to say that my team submitted the HONEY STARS, i.e. item no. 2.
This has nothing to do with wanting so much to win the hunt. My team is just too far away from the 78 points. But just out of curiosity, I'd like to know if the CoC would accept the HONEY STARS if I can explain the choice?
Still adopting the same analysis, I choose the following letters from those items in the pictures:
1) TIMEOUT: I choose MEO
2) HONEY STAR: I choose T
3) TWISTIES: I choose WI
4) IMPERIAL LEATHER: I choose T
5) MILO NUGGETS: I choose ON
The letters so extracted would therefore be:
MEO,T,WI,T,ON
Now using the "Sort out" from the last line in the clue as the anagram indicator, I can combine those letters to become:
ITEM NO TWO
Would that be good enough to qualify for the 5 points?
Bro, re: "item no two" very good one there.
I'm sure if others put in some time they too can come out with another combo. This one not as good as yours " Time from time out" ON from Honey Star and i , i , i from Twisties, Imperial Leather and Milo Nuggets respectively.
Time No i i i = Item No iii
boleh?
Ah! talk about time, delurk!
Yes, ITEM NO III looks good too. However, strictly from the technical point of view, it's not quite appropriate to extract TIME from TIMEOUT in this case, since it's probably debatable if "hold" is a container indicator, so we can extract whatever's held inside TIMEOUT, but not the Ts at both ends.
Nonetheless, it is of no consequence, because we can get the T from within the other products.
For example:
IME from TIMEOUT
ON from HONEY STARS
TI from TWISTIES
and the I+I from IMPERIAL LEATHER & MILO NUGGETS respectively.
Then anagram those letters to arrive at the same solution:
ITEM NO III
guys,
I think i can come up with one more direct:
ME from Timeout
S from Honeystar
WISTIE from Twisties
T from Imperial Leather
GET from Milo Nuggets
Sort Out S+Wistie+T plus GET ME...tada
Get Me Twisties.
Easy peasy isnt it. hahaha
Ah! Adrian!... that's a more direct and therefore much better answer than the intended answer! Perhaps all future questions should come with a small space for "explanation", huh? Then the CoCs will spend the whole day to mark the answers. HAHAHA!
So, folks, this is a good lesson for all of us. Never ever underestimate the power of the anagram!
Corny,
Was wondering why have your team chosen Honey Stars, of all the items.
Tembak? Ee-ni-mi-ni-mo?
5pics-4members-Each pick one-Brought the odd one back? Or the reason you stated in Comment 1.
peter,
To be quite honest, we tembak-ed HONEY STARS. There was hardly any time to actually work on the many riddles in this hunt.
For this particular riddle, I merely glanced through it and immediately saw the meaning of "products hold the key". I'm sure all the other elite hunters must have figured that out too. Unfortunately, I also saw the limitless possible combinations that could arise from the letters found in the names of those products. I have always advocated that whenever the solvers have to choose from several possibilities, those possible choices must not be limitless like what we have here. Let them choose from a few choices - OK, perhaps a bit more than "a few". But not open-ended up to the point where all 5 choices may be correct if the solver works hard enough on them!
Maybe if I had at least half an hour to work on this riddle, and with nothing else to disturb me, I could have come up with something like ITEM NO TWO or GET ME TWISTIES or even the CoC's intended GET ME THE 1ST ONE. And I'm sure the other masters could have done that too. But as I said, this riddle was not meant to be solvable considering the time window available to the hunters. I saw this riddle for what it was meant to be - a guessing exercise.
The purpose of this discussion is to demostrate:
1) How an otherwise beautiful trick can go awfully wrong if the setter fails to look at the riddle from the solver's point of view; and
2) That if the setter fails to protect himself (by adding restrictive words in the clue), he may find it very hard to exclude alternative solutions; and
3) As a reminder to all CoCs, including myself, to be on their toes; that if CoCs can be imaginative and creative, so can the hunters.
"2) That if the setter fails to protect himself (by adding restrictive words in the clue), he may find it very hard to exclude alternative solutions"
...hence the setter should leave no garmin for error :-)
Exactly, Alex - the general preference is to keep the clues short and precise. Extra words which have no role to play in the clues are to be excluded. For as long as I can, I would always follow that general rule. But! there are exceptions to that rule.
It's good that you brought the GARMIN example up. I had planned to bring it up myself.
Those of you who missed that particular post, please check it out here.
And here is an extract of the relevant paragraph from that post:
Q12) This is not a financial institution but margin trading is available here.
A12) GARMIN
"GARMIN is the result of the rearrangement of the letters found in MARGIN by means of the anagram indicator, TRADING. In other words, it is possible to find the answer by just "Margin trading is available here". However, in this particular case, I concur with the CoC—that there is an important purpose for "This is not a financial institution" because it blocks the possible literal meaning of the question, i.e. perhaps some solvers might give some banks found within that sector as the answers. Therefore, "This is not a financial institution" are necessary words in the question."
That's what the CoC of Hunters Challenge should do here. He should add something into the clue to somehow limit the scope possible answers so that Item 2, for example, can't be accepted.
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