Solution to EAsT camPUS
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Answer: RANDOM LUMBER GENERATOR
by Anderson Wang, Ben Yang, Cami Ramirez-Arau, Azalea Weisblat and Lewis Chen
We are presented with a binary tree where some nodes have letters. When going up the tree, all the edges to the left are brown, and all edges to the right are black.
Reading all the letters from left to right (or, equivalently, doing an in-order tree traversal) gives the message BE QUICK DO THIS GO SEE THE WEST PARALLEL CHECK OUT ITS NORTHERNMOST SECTION READ NAME GOOD JOB GO OFF BACK TO ANSWERS. MIT's East Campus dormitory consists of two parallels, west and east, and the northernmost section of the west parallel is called “Wood” (this can be seen on Google Maps or by going there in person).
The “WOOD” message, combined with the weird capitalization in the East Campus logo (which spells out
“EAT PUS” and
“scam”) hints at the main aha: each answer can be unwoven into two words, one of which is an object made
of wood.
For example,
Now that we have split the answers, we can return to the tree. Going left along the tree where the next letter of the word is wooden (along a brown edge), and going right where the next letter is not wooden (along a black edge), we find that each answer passes through exactly three letters. The paths and letters are listed below:
Answer | Wood word | Other word | L/R sequence (L=wood, R=non-wood) | Result of following the L/R sequence in the tree |
---|---|---|---|---|
BITE MARK | BARK | ITEM | L R R R R L L L | _ _ _ K I _ U _ |
BOAT RIDE | BOARD | TIE | L L L R L R L R | _ _ B _ Q _ D _ |
CALANTHE | LATH | CANE | R R L L R L L R | _ _ G R _ _ _ N |
LA DODGERS | LOG | ADDERS | L R R L R L R R R | _ _ _ E _ _ P L _ |
POUND STERLING | POST | UNDERLING | L L R R R L L R R R R R R | _ _ H O _ _ S _ _ _ _ _ _ |
SEA BREAM | BEAM | SEAR | R R R L R L L L | _ _ _ J A _ _ F |
STOWING | TWIG | SON | R L R L L R L | _ _ T _ _ C M |
(The L=
When we've done this for enough of the answers, we notice that the letters are all unique and go from A to U, using each of those 21 letters once. We can take the letter of the answer corresponding to the A extracted from the tree, then the letter corresponding to the B, and so on (for example, A corresponds to the 5th letter in SEA BREAM, which is R):
Letter in tree | Corresponding letter in answer |
---|---|
A | R |
B | A |
C | N |
D | D |
E | O |
F | M |
G | L |
H | U |
I | M |
J | B |
K | E |
L | R |
M | G |
N | E |
O | N |
P | E |
Q | R |
R | A |
S | T |
T | O |
U | R |
East Campus needs a RANDOM LUMBER GENERATOR to keep its fire burning!