Tembak Series 1—Return Of The Terrifying Question

Whenever I set a hunt, I would try to give a good mix of easy and tough questions to cater for the wide range of hunters' skills and abilities. If possible, I'd like to allow the weak teams to achieve at least 40% to 50% of the score; while at the same time disallow the top teams to achieve the perfect score.

Dealing with the weak teams is much easier—I can play with the questions at will and the performances of the weak teams are very predictable. The same, however, can't be said of the top teams. They have seen most, if not all, of the tricks in the book, and no matter how you turn and twist your riddles, they're bound to find their ways to the solutions. For this reason, being a CoC, the challenge is to set something which the top hunters can't solve somehow, but at the same time giving them sufficient opportunities to actually solve those questions. In a way, the thrill is to bring them very close to the answers, yet not allowing them to actually see the solutions!

These are the type of questions which I have described as “reserved for the CoC”, meaning that it’s very far-fetched to expect the hunters to be able to solve them. Nonetheless, in spite of the “reserved for the CoC” I’m always guided by the principle of fairness—there is no point to set a question which is impossible to solve. What I really want is to allow the prudent hunter who analyses my question methodically and systematically, and with a bit of patience and lateral thinking, he has a good shot of arriving at the answer.

I have written about the “terrifying question” of last year’s Kiwanis Hunt, of which I considered unfair, though perhaps some teams might have solved that question anyway. In the Tembak Series 1, we had another terrifying question, of which Dr Liaw objected to when the answer was revealed. No one solved that question. It’s like this:

QC5) PUT ON FIRST TO GET READY.

The answer for the above question was to be found within the City Mall sector. In the case of my team, it meant during the dying minutes of the hunt, and under the scorching sun. And upon reading the question, I immediately saw the “terrifying question” of the Kiwanis in my mind. I saw the question for what it was—a mere equation comprising variables with no known value.

Looking at the question, one can quickly figure out the intention of the CoC. He wants the synonym of “PUT ON” which is to come first, i.e. before something which is found on the board (the answer); and when those two elements are combined together, we can get the synonym of “READY”.

Thus the equation which we can construct from the question is like this:

[Synonym of PUT ON] + [the ANSWER (found within sector)] => [Synonym of READY]

All 3 elements of the equation have no known value. In mathematical sense, it is something like trying to solve the equation:

X + Y = Z

In other words, what’s really required from the hunter is for him to stretch his mind to guess at least one of the unknown elements above, and then start on trial and error therefrom to solve the equation somehow. Flipping through a good Thesaurus, one is able to find quite a lot of words which can fit “PUT ON”, for example. Perhaps the word “WEAR” might come to mind. And if you looked up for “WEAR” in the Thesaurus, you can find quite a daunting amount of possible synonyms.

This, however, should not be surprising, because the trend of “searching for a needle in a haystack” is quite commonly seen in most hunts these days.

Anyway, if one had plenty of time to do the trial-and-error thing, he might be able to decide—for certain—on the word “DON” for “PUT ON”. He then comes up with the following equation:

DON + [ANSWER] = [Synonym of READY]

And then flipping through the Thesaurus again, he is able to find "DONE", which is a synonym of the word “READY”. Therefore, he is able to simplify the equation further to become:

DON + [ANSWER] = DONE

And so, he is able to find the required answer:

A) E @ column of building

But of course, when looking at the solution from the direction of answer -> question, the whole thing appears to be very easy and solvable. Nevertheless it absolutely whitewashed the entire field in the Tembak Series 1. If I had only found "DON" during those dying minutes, I might have been able to solve this question. But, y'know, I'm just not such a lucky person.

Interestingly, when Dr Liaw objected, the CoC had a foolproof response which was not to be gainsaid:

Just consider like every team had 39 questions today—and not 40 questions.

I must remember that line; I could use it one of these days. (Smile)