Author: Ray Jones
This is a Go puzzle. The sequences of moves are from Shusaku's castle
games (famous because he went 19-0).
R18 P18 H13 F13 B11 game 61
H12 K8 R2 F15 E15 game 70
H11 O13 Q13 G11 N14 game 25
P13 N10 S11 S12 T11 game 68
G14 G15 J15 F12 O17 game 80
E19 E1 F1 D1 *** game 75 - There is no U. these are the last
moves of the game
Q3 R3 S13 S12 T14 game 37
J19 G19 J18 P7 O6 game 62
B10 C9 A9 B3 F7 game 36
K6 J6 K8 J7 S8 game 76
Q12 N10 R10 J14 H15 game 24
J14 N12 K16 L16 A13 game 74
P10 R9 Q10 O5 P6 game 63
Q18 G17 F17 D18 E9 game 79
Note the overuse of "go", and the reference to Othello, the most
painful comparison a Go player can hear.
A solver would have to:
a) figure out that it's Go that's being talked about.
b) notice the title, and connect that with shusaku (easy enough,
search for "+game-of-go +invincible")
c) figure out that the games are from Shusaku's castle game record.
This should also be easy enough, since that's what Shusaku is famous
for, and the mention of "Castle" in the blurb.
d-0.5) find the main Go site. Kiran had trouble with this, thinking
that the name/password were for one of the Go servers.
d) find the records (the main Go site has them, they can take the
name/password from the blurb).
http://www.cwi.nl/people/jansteen/go/
e) search the records for the matching plays. (mostly just work)
Good hint words: Honinbo, "the title is important", JanSteen, "An
addictive game"
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Another thing:
The games are in algebraic notation, which skips 'I'. This isn't too
hard to figure out, if they use any of the usual Go clients to solve
the puzzle. The way game records are stored online, however, is as
letter pairs, and 'i' is used in them. This could be a source of some
confusion, but I'm not sure if it's worth worrying about.
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Post hunt note:
This puzzle used to look like this:
R18 P18 H13 F13 _11 1857
H12 K8 R2 F15 _15 1857
H11 O13 Q13 G11 _14 1849
P13 N10 S11 S12 _11 1857
G14 G15 J15 F12 _17 1861
E19 E1 F1 D1 ___ 1859
Q3 R3 S13 S12 _14 1852
J19 G19 J18 P7 _6 1853
B10 C9 A9 B3 _7 1852
K6 J6 K8 J7 _8 1860
Q12 N10 R10 J14 _15 1849
J14 N12 K16 L16 _13 1859
P10 R9 Q10 O5 _6 1854
Q18 G17 F17 D18 _9 1861
The years are for when the games were played. I removed them just
before the hunt to make the searching through the records harder.
Unfortunately, this had the effect of making the puzzle much harder.
A) Without the years, the moves look like a long string of moves, so
people tend to get sidetracked into actually playing them. The
name/password in the blurb should have kept people from getting too
far down this path.
B) It's significantly harder to figure out who the clues are talking
about without the years.
The changes made it much harder, and only a couple teams solved the
puzzle. The take-away lesson is that I shouldn't have changed the
puzzle after test solving.