alumni

Stanford Engineering Puzzle

January 2006

Stanford Engineering Puzzle - Happy New Year!

This month's puzzle is a nifty variation on last month's somewhat fanciful take on the theme of the Global Positioning System (GPS), in that now one must triangulate in on the positions of two bicycles lost on campus. Aeronautics and astronautics Professor Emeritus Bradford Parkinson led the development of GPS in the 1970s and now he, AA Professor Per Enge and other faculty are working on enhancing positioning technologies in the newly formed Stanford Center for Position, Navigation, and Time. We'll post a brand new puzzle next month.

Directions for Puzzle:

In this version, your task is now to use five distance-measuring beacons to infer the locations of bicycles lost on campus.

Upon successful completion, a "secret word" will be revealed. For fun we will post (below) the names of ten alumni who successfully complete the puzzle and e-mail the secret word in the subject line to staff member David Orenstein. Rather than posting the first 10 to respond, we'll post number 1, 11, 21, 31, 41, etc. up to 91. This way there are more chances to be listed throughout the day the E-news goes out.

Incidentally, there was a "trick" to solving last month's puzzle that also works quite well in this variation. For those who already know the trick, it might be a different kind of fun to explore whether it is foolproof in this variation and if not, why not.

You must have Flash installed to run this puzzle, which was designed by Scott Kim of Shufflebrain and programmed by Larry Doyle of Cyberiandesign.

The winners circle

  • 1) Kristi (Barnes) Wood (BS 1991 ME, MS 1992 ME)
  • 11) Denis Baylor (BS 1988 EE , MS 1989 EE)
  • 21) Justin Deng (BS 1998 EE)
  • 31) John Trent (MS 2002 ME)
  • 41) Nathan Nutter (BS 1999 ME)
  • 51) Leonard Kho (MS 1999 ME)
  • 61) John Paff (BS 1987 ME)
  • 71) Lisa Hill (BS 2004 CEE)
  • 81) Brad Hochberg (BS 1992 CS)
  • 91) Sigrid Pfendler (BS 1999 CEE, MS 2001 CEM)

Do you want to try your hand at past puzzles? Go to our Archive page.