alumni

Stanford Engineering Puzzle

September 2007

The Stanford Racing Team got great news on Aug. 9. The team made the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's cut and will continue to the National Qualification Event in Victorville, Calif., at the end of October. There the team's car Junior will compete against 35 others to win one of 20 spots for the Urban Challenge Nov. 3.

Junior is a 2006 Volkswagen Passat wagon modified with a whole lot of lasers and sensors arrayed all around its body, and computers in the trunk. Junior is also loaded with artificial intelligence software that allows it to make smart decisions about how to drive in traffic.

Directions for puzzle

In this puzzle your job is to act as Junior, passing all the checkpoints in order and in as few moves as possible. Safety first: You may not hit any of the other cars, which move as you do. For fun we will post (below) the names of every ten alumni who successfully complete the puzzle and e-mail the secret word in the subject line to staff member Marge Kastner. She'll post entry number 1, 11, 21, 31, 41, etc.

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

Congratulations to all our solvers and especially to those who came in at the right time to get their name on the Web. We'll keep putting the solvers' names up on this page as the solutions come in until it is time for the next PUZZLE. So, keep sending in the solution!

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 this year please see the Puzzology page.

"Winning" entries

  • 1) Michael Connors
  • 2) Rick Doherty
  • 3) John Paff
  • 4) Jasna Ristic-Djurovic
  • 5) Jack Lin
  • 6) Archanna Srinivasan
  • 7) Paul Fisher
  • 8) Jeff Blohm
  • 9) Robert Ellgas
  • 10) Javier Lozano
  • 20) Oscar Brooks
  • 30) Daniel Davalos
  • 40) Ryan Hinton
  • 50) Michele Lambe
  • 60) Shaun McKinlay
  • 70) Rusty Schweickarat
  • 80) Jason Wolfe
  • 90) Vonnie Lopez
  • 100) Alex Smith
  • 110) David Raymond
  • 120) Nicholas Reeck
  • 130) Jupe Hale
  • 140) Christine Jacobs
  • 150) Wah Kwok
  • 160) Kenneth Taurnay

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