Comments (8)

1. It’s not that the challenge was too difficult, but the directions for the third and fourth challenges were not very clear. The directions that were given could have been intepreted several different ways.

   posted by Kath on 4-25-2008 at 10:49 pm

2. Agreed… for example, the state challenge yielded many more than ten answers if you considered all the letters from all five given states.

   posted by jeem on 4-25-2008 at 11:08 pm

3. I can’t get mp3s at work, so i was frowny from the start, but the graph thing shut me down, so i was just lost after that.

   We all loved your last one, Israel. Keep trying! How’s Jack, by the way?

   posted by Johnny Cat on 4-25-2008 at 11:49 pm

4. I couldn’t get the music files to open from the first day so I didn’t revisit it at all throughout the week. The challenge aside, it was a tough week.

   posted by Jim on 4-26-2008 at 5:29 am

5. This is my first 5-day trivia hunt and it was a little overwhelming. The only song I got was ‘Walk this way’ by Aerosmith and figured out the ‘Boston’ answer from that.

   For some reason, not all of the directions loaded and the Day 3 challenge, I only got 5 of 10 states.

   Also, I’m not a huge baseball fan but one of my co-workers is and together we managed to figure out ‘Ted Williams’ but I didn’t have all the work that led up to that point so I would have probably been disqualified.

   Oh well, better luck next month I suppose. :)

   posted by Henna on 4-26-2008 at 5:47 am

6. adam constable comes through again! darn, i was really hoping to step it up this time. my problem started on day one, because i just could not figure out songs 1 and 5. i must have listened to the cars a thousand times, even that song, and didn’t hear that particular part. here is my evaluation.

   1. the final puzzle was easy. i had the final puzzle done in less than 10 minutes. i spent another half hour trying to figure out the boston-based songs, but i finally had to throw in the towel and submit mine incomplete. i was hoping that no one else figured out those songs either!

   2. i don’t think the individual puzzles were too hard. i don’t know what was going on with day one; i had everyone i know listen to them, including cars and dropkick murphy fans, and no one figured it out. i resorted to song recognition software, but even that didn’t help.

   3.i loved that the final question was about baseball. the last two hdyk puzzles, i knew the the final answer topic earlier in the week. this week i had no idea, which made it more challenging.

   4. i didn’t think the directions were unclear on days three and four. those were actually my easiest days. day two was great because it sent me in the wrong direction; i actually was calling the diagram a matrix and thought the final puzzle might be about the movie.

   again, congrats bill and adam! i will not let name that tune hold me back next time!

   posted by marybeth on 4-26-2008 at 9:18 am

7. Bill was really eager to participate in the next HDYK, after I won the previous one. I feel very lucky to be part of winning 2 in a row. Below are my responses to your questions.

   1) Was the final puzzle too hard?

   I don’t think so, if you were able to get the answers for the previous 4 days, the information was easy to Google.

   2) Were the individual challenges too hard?

   Bill and I were lucky that a couple of them where right in our individual wheelhouse’s, so it would be hard for me to comment on the relative difficulty of the individaul challenges.

   Day1, He was able to determine Aerosmith, ‘Til Tuesday, and Drip Kick Murphys almost immediately thus giving us Boston as the common thread. New Kids on the Block took a little work (but it was only between them and New Edition), the cars…ugh…took us 3 days to get that, and it required the intervention of determined co-worker to dissuade us that it wasn’t the band Boston, but in fact the Cars. Once we finally listened to the end “Let the good times roll” we knew he was right, we had kept passing on it due to the fact the majority of that song sounds nothing like the ending clip selected. (Bravo on that by the way, Well known band, well known song and still elusive)

   Day2, I’m a wikipedia junkie and often follow link after link, oddly enough Magic Squares was something that I had recently (last 6 months) read about after doing a follow up a link from Digg.

   Arkansas was the key to the pattern on day 3 for Bill, the rest quickly followed.

   Day 4…all I can say is thank the lord for Universal Anagram Solvers.

   3) Did the final trivia category (baseball) turn you off?

   Nope…sports junkie here.

   4) Any other thoughts this time around?

   I tend to over think the challenges reading into your preceding comments looking for subtle clues (which after 3 HDYK’s doesn’t seem to help, but I find myself doing it anyway). And ultimately once the answers are determined the logic makes sense, nothing tricky or misleading. I like that fact that it is usually me making it more difficult that it needs to be.

   I was not confused by the directions, I think they need to be open to interpretation therefore allowing us to discover the correct method to use to solve them. Day 3 being a great example, if you came up with more than 10, that was not the correct method. You designed the challenges well allowing for only 1 correct answer.

   But on Day 3 and Day 4 you state “on the next page” or “after the jump” as the location of the graphic for the puzzle, when in fact the graphic is on the same page, this may have caused some confusion (it did make me pause looking for an additional link).

   posted by Adam Constble on 4-26-2008 at 12:50 pm

8. The final question was not too difficult and I liked the baseball theme. However, the instructions for the states challenge were too vague. I usually work with 2 others in my office and of the 3 of us we couldn’t find out just exactly how to get the remaining states. We weren’t sure if each state’s letters made up the missing one, or if we were using all of the letters from all 5 states to come up with more.

   However, once Friday came we knew exactly what the answer was but we weren’t sure we had come to it the right way.

   Songs 1 and 5 did us in too. Other than that we had everything completed for the final puzzle. Just didn’t want to submit it without everything b/c what’s the point?

   Last month’s was definitely easier and more clear all the way around. I’ll look forward to next month.

   posted by Andrea on 4-26-2008 at 2:44 pm

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