alumni

Stanford Engineering Puzzle

May 2006

If last month's puzzle was Stanford Engineering's "twist" on Sudoku, then this month's edition is our "angle" on the popular game. Now, in addition to positioning just one of each tile in each row, column and region, you must also arrange one of each tile in the diagonal designated by the circles. There tiles represent the school's strategic priorities (Bioengineering, Environment and Energy, Information Technology, and Nanoscience and Nanotechnology) and institutes (the Institute for Computational and Mathematical Engineering and the Hasso Plattner Institute for Design).

Interestingly, there are only 11 possible combinations for the tiles in the diagonal, given the letters placed on the board at the start of the puzzle. Of course, once the puzzle is finished only one of those 11 possibilities still stands. Were no tiles placed on the board to begin with, there would be 720 possible combinations for the diagonal.

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. We'll post entry number 1, 11, 21, 31, 41, etc. up to 91.

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

"Winning" entries

  • 1) Rick Doherty (BS 1978, MS 1981 CEE)
  • 11) Angela Hyatt Hockman (BS Engineering: 1994 Product Design)
  • 21) Paul Fisher (BS, MS 1978 IE and MS 1988 OR)
  • 31) Eric Ross (MS 1991 ME)
  • 41) Joe Walsh (BS 1999 CS)
  • 51) Steve Keckler (BS 1990 EE)
  • 61) Allan Ronne (MS 1984 ME, MS Eng Mgmt 1990)
  • 71) Darrell Tinker (MS 1981 EE)
  • 81) Diane Palme (MS 2000 ME)
  • 91) Mary Schrot (MS 1978 EES)

Try your hand at previous puzzles in our puzzle archive.