Stanford Engineering Puzzle

May 2008

This is it as far as the wonderful run we've had with Scott Kim's flash puzzles. Thanks again, Scott.

We are committed to keeping the puzzle feature going, but we are very open to your suggestions (dare I say submissions?). Send us your puzzlers, brainteasers, conundrums and riddles to David Orenstein. We'll share the best of them with your fellow alumni to enjoy (with proper credit, of course).

As with last month , this antenna-based puzzle is dedicated to all the hard working students, faculty and staff who work on wireless communications. These include folks such as electrical engineering Professors Donald Cox, Andrea Goldsmith, Arogyaswami Paulraj, and Balaji Prabhakar. Check out their research by clicking on their names.

Directions for puzzle

In this puzzle, your job is to infer the location of three wireless transmitters on the campus by placing detectors on the map. This is somewhat like sniffing for wi-fi networks, or testing for cell phone signal strength (can you hear me now?). For fun we will post (below) the names of alumni who successfully e-mail the secret word to staff member Marge Kastner. She'll post the first 10 correct responders and every tenth right answerer after that.

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

All entries, listed here or not, will be entered in the "Alumni Permanent Record" and count towards Honorary Degrees in Puzzology next June. To check out the degree earners for June 2007 please see the Puzzology page. Every 10th solver will be listed until the last weekend of the month, when the final entries will be awarded the "Weekend of Fame" before the next puzzle page is posted. So keep your solutions coming in.

"Winning" entries

1) Michael Tung
2) Wah Kwok
3) Viren Bhanot
4) Mark Gundersen
5) Rock Doherty
6) Mark Kahn
7) Philip James
8) Archanna Srivivasan
9) Michael Connors
10) Jasna Ristic Djurovic
20) John Paff
30) Jupe Hale
40) Nicholas Reeck
50) Arturo Garcia Jr.
60) Terry Rassieur
70) Michael Burgart
80) Wolfgang Polak
90) Timothy Phillips
100) Michael Bax
110) Kai Yu
120) Anthony Vitale
130) Carol Paymer
140) Carl Farrell
150) Patrick Sullivan
160) Misty Davies
170) Kristin Granlund

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