26th Kiwanis Hunt—Crack-a-Pot 1

For many years now, the Kiwanis Hunt is unique for the kind of riddles known as the Crack-a-Pots. As far as I know, no other hunts in Malaysia offer the Crack-a-Pots. A typical Kiwanis Hunt has only 2 Crack-a-Pot questions. In previous years, these questions carried much lesser points when compared to the route and treasure questions. But this year, they carried the same score (3 points each) as the other questions, with a possible bonus of 1 point if both of them are solved.

A Crack-a-Pot is essentially a code-breaking exercise. The question usually consists of a clue to give a hint to the solver what the riddle is about; followed by a code which contains seemingly meaningless letters or numbers arranged in no particular order; and a "message" of which the deciphered code shall be used to derive the solution, which is usually a short phrase or tagline or theme. However, the setter has a reputation of deliberately replacing one of those letters in the intended solution so that the end result might seem like a misspelt word. For example, instead of KIWANIS, one might end up with SIWANIS.

The Crack-a-Pot questions have always been a feature of admiration among the hunters and they have always been one of the highlights of the Kiwanis Hunt. That is not surprising as the questions portray the beautifully-creative mind of the setter.

Regretfully, however, the Crack-a-Pots of the 26th Kiwanis Hunt were something of a disappointment. In spite of the time available to set the questions, the end results were flawed.

Crack-a-Pot 1:

Clue: Climate change linked to frogs & poms

Message:

5 = (15) = U = 258

86 = 30 = U = 303

And from the the above, the solver has to figure out what is the word (s) or phrase or tagline intended by the setter.

The idea of the riddle is beautiful. I say it's beautiful because it's simple and solvable by anybody. There is no requirement of long hunting experience to decipher it. In fact, I know for a fact that at least one relatively-new team solved it!

"Climate change" gives a hint to the solver that this has something to do with, well, climate change. In this case, it's about temperature change. When I realised this, I thought of the possible conversions between Fahrenheit-Celcius-Kelvin. I then asked my team mate to give me the conversion formulae. But unfortunately I uncharacteristically counted wrongly! I was therefore unable to establish the link. I don't know why I didn't try again, but anyway, the 2 lines of equations are simply conversions from Fahrenheit (F) to Celsius (C) to Kelvin (K). The only strange item in the equation is the letter U. What is that referring to?

Well, a rival team figured out the solution up to the F, C and K, but did not know what's the U all about. They then googled up and found that there is a French unit for temperature and it happened that the spelling starts with a U. So because the U in the clue is equated to the other numbers, they "solve" the value for U.

Actually, the setter had intended those Us simply as fillers. And this is where I think the otherwise beautiful question was flawed. The equal signs (=) before and after those Us suggest that the value of U is the same as its neighbours, but based on a different temperature unit. If the U is adopted only as a filler, then that letter does not equal to its neighbours. And if U does not equal to the value of its neighbours, why, then, it is wrong to put the equal signs there!

For this reason, I can understand why the rival team tried to "solve" the equation to find U.

Anyway, the setter, adopting the U only as a filler, had intended the solver to find:

FCUK (French Connection United Kingdom)

The "frogs and poms" refers to the French and British. A beautiful idea which is spoilt by the equal signs. Perhaps it is even better not to put the equal signs at all. Maybe if commas were used instead, that would have been better. In fact, if the setter had left just a gap between those figures (and Us), that would still have been better than the equal signs.