At the embedded hacking event in GBG yesterday I organized a small contest for the attendees. I’ve done something similar several times before, so I wanted to make it a bit different this time to spice things up a bit. A straight-forward N questions in a row and then a puzzle to get the final question was too easy. I wanted to create a maze or a play-field that you would need to traverse somehow in order to reach the final goal. But it is hard to create a maze that you don’t immediately spot the way through or that you can somehow “cheat” and find the way in other means rather than to actually answer the questions and do right by using your skills… Then I realized that with just a couple of things added, I could fulfill my goals and still get a fun contest. So, let me start by taking you through the first slide that details the rules:

Ok, so to make the rules be a bit clearer we take a look at a simplified example play field so that we understand what we’re about to play on:

A short summary:

1. start on a green box
2. follow the arrow in the direction that your answer to the question of the box leads you. There’s a compass rose there to help you remember the directions! 🙂
3. each box you visit has a word associated with it, collect the words along the path
4. when you reach the red box you’ve read the goal and you’re done
5. then you re-arrange all the box words you’ve collected and create a final question
6. answer that questions, the fastest to answer wins!

Everything clear? To help the participants, we had both the playfield and the associated questions printed out on two sheets of paper that we handed out together with a pen. The amount of data is just a bit too much to be able to show on a single screen and it may help to use a pen etc to remember the track you take and which words to remember etc. If you want to repeat the exact same situation, you do the same! I did a special black-and-white version of the playfield to make it more printer-friendly. You may want to fire this up in full resolution to get the best experience:

The question sheet looks like this, but click it for the full PDF:

I posted the answers and everything in a separate post!