Monday, April 4, 2011

CSI TREASURE HUNT - SEARCHING FOR THE PERFECT SWING

SUBANG JAYA, 26 Mar 2011: If you've gone to sleep for the last year and a half and have only just woke up, you'll soon realise that we have lost our consistency to compete for podium positions week after week. There are perfectly valid explanations why we've lost our place in the treasure hunt pecking order.

Our performance took a sharp dip after losing a dear member of our team to illness. His absence is greatly felt to this day, more so during the CSI Treasure Hunt. This was one of those hunts that required an extensive amount of Googling, an activity that Vincent thrived. Three quarter of the riddles from today's hunt had a cookie-cutter resemblance to Q6. Seek out the knowledge part of the riddle, google it then figure out its relation to the cryptic part and voila!

Q6: Ms Hill investigated with this to expose one of the bad boys.
Ans: ITW.

Now that Margaret has taken over the chief Googling role, on occasion I can see that she is struggling to juggle her time between journeying around cyber space and preparing ahead for the upcoming questions, which truly is her forte and an edge that we have benefited from so often in the past.

And clearly we have also lost our ability to adapt, another edge that we used to relish. Riddles like Q10 we never used to have problems accepting the actor over his character in the plot.

Q10: Only he can positively identify the Jackal.
Ans: Gere International.

These days though, we spend more time in the car arguing over the flaw and 'helping' the CoC conjure the perfect riddle that we forget that CoC themselves are mere mortals. It is not uncommon to find major flaws like Q4 in hunts, especially amongst the newer CoCs. Perhaps they were letting their creativity run wild or perhaps they have had bad role models. Whatever the reason, we used to have the uncanny ability to sniff out the flaws in the riddle and accept less than perfect answers without hesitation, a trait I used to be so proud of in the past.

Q4: A John Cena crime thriller, to complete series of tasks to save his love.
Ans: 12-A or 21-A.

Even the best of hunters would have struggled with Q4. The name of the crime movie in question is 12 Rounds. It is not 12-A. Neither is it 21-A. It is erroneous to 'play' on the name of the movie when clearly it is the name of the movie that was sought. John too would have been upset to learn that he was associated to 'movies' he had not played a role in.

And time and time again we have the uncanny misfortune of being victims of major blunders by the CoCs. On this occassion the blunder was in one of two challenges which teams had to complete on the day. The solution of the logic puzzle to figure out the position of a group of suspects in a police line-up based upon six clues provided should have been rather straightforward ...... had the all important clue of "from which view point" been included - a critical clue which obviously would influence the final solution!


Coincidentally in the golfing world, Tiger too has been struggling over the last year and a half. Being a fan of Tiger's, I most certainly would like to see him back at his best. I can only hope that neither of us will take too long to rediscover our 'perfect swing' and once again compete for honours in our respective sports!



CSI Treasure Hunt
Maximum Score: 120

1st: Sin Yoong Leong, Claire Chin, Goh Teck Koon, Julie Tan (118)
2nd: Alexander Hoh, Andre Teh, Rosemawarni Abd Rahman, Mohd Shahrin (118)
3rd: Ramesh Rajaratnam, Liew Kok Seng, Lim Kong Yew, Teoh Cheow Teong (118)
4th: Lim Ming Yang, Loo Wern Ching, Dao Sheng, Aik Chung (114)
5th: Peh Kok Hun, Loh Chee Kwan, Tommy Ng, Lim Say Chye (109)
6th: Anwar Jeffri, Tan Kok Cheeng, Chan Kah Seng, Wong Poh Wen (105)
7th: Hunter Qarun (102)
8th: Shandra Dass, Kumaran Nagappa, Nova, Michael Pang (102)
9th: Venkateswaran Nagappan, Buvanes Tharmalingam, Eeswaran Kanesalingam and team (101)
10th: Mohd Asri, Mazri Muda, Fazalena, Shazwani (101)

7 comments:

Anna said...

Yes..the challenge had cost us minus 12 points!! We argued in the car to answer from which perspective but the sentence leads us otherwise..

2 Romans 1 Impostor said...

Yes Anna, blunders by CoCs can be rather painful.

The right thing to do of course is to cancel the riddle upon realising the error (and from what I hear there were some enquiries made during the hunt). But sometimes of course this can be wishful thinking maybe because the ego is at stake!

Cornelius said...

I shall keep my promise to someone not to comment for nor against KL hunt questions/answers. But I'm curious to know what was the CoC's rationale in equating "12 Rounds" to "12-A"?

BTW, how did you solve the "Recent Comments" on your sidebar? Mine doesn't appear on my sidebar anymore.

CK Loh said...

ckoh,

Let's me explain on Q4, ok.

Q4: A John Cena crime thriller, to complete series of tasks to save his love.


i) A = A

2) John Cena crime thriller, to complete series of tasks to save his love = 12 rounds

->
A 12 rounds

= 12-A or 21-A

Answer of 12 and 21 are not accepted.


I agree with 2R1I view on this clue.

Cornelius said...

Thanks, CK Loh, for sharing.

Ramesh said...

Hi HRU

Yes indeed, the lament on swinging into form. (HR)U guys r not the only team that's struggling to regain form currently.

Sneakies, in my mind, are the undisputed king with the Machines back in form, hot on their trail after a year or so taking a breather (except for AH who still is a super-sub to any team). Nuts, HRU and the others - appear to be making up the numbers, at least in the current form. Speaking for the Nuts, at least we've improved a bit from our 2010 form, where really, we Dapat 4 the most number of times among the regulars. So far, we've managed to stay within earshot of the top 3.

I've also noticed the vastly improved Meeples, Venka and Vettai, now posing a welcome challenge to the 'old dogs'. Well done indeed.

Let's see how 2011 pans out.

Cheers!

2 Romans 1 Impostor said...

Guess we've all gone through phases of dominance and poor form over the years.

These days should one of us oldies thrive (over the youth), we ought to pop one of those bubbly bottles for that rare occassion, don't you think?

I'll be cheering for both of us this weekend!