Putting together an event like Spaceportland is a messy business. Puzzle ideas have to navigate a tricky path in order to make it to the final product. Many ideas don’t get far at all — some might be too hard to construct, others might be trivial to solve. I spent hours developing a crossword idea for Yoda that I thought had a lot of merit. I was wrong, and it got tossed.
Francis Heaney created a puzzle for Spock that really does have a lot of merit. It’s a very nice two-part logic puzzle. With a great deal of regret, however, I decided not to include it in the National Puzzlers’ League event. The NPL’s primary focus is word puzzles. Not that the group can’t handle math and logic, but I thought this puzzle might push the total solving time a little too high for a few too many teams. Considering that the last couple of teams were still at it after four hours, even without a two-part logic puzzle, that’s a decision I stand by.
But still, it’s a nice puzzle, darn it, and it should be seen, so here it is: It’s the puzzle extravaganza equivalent of a DVD extra! Download the alternate version of Spock right here.
In the comments, I’ll leave the instructions solvers would have found for this puzzle on the final page, “Saving The Day.” Don’t look until after you’ve solved the puzzle itself. (And if you haven’t solved Spaceportland at all, you might want to wait until you’ve done that, to avoid spoilers.)
In “Saving the Day,” you would see the following extra instructions for this puzzle: Arrange the pairs of recruits and ships in alphabetical order by name of recruit. For each pair, take either the recruit name or ship name, then delete every vowel except E to reveal Spock’s ideal gift.
Thanks for sharing! Very nice puzzle – I especially enjoyed the first part (the clue-and-matrix-based puzzle that I forget if it has a name besides “logic problem”)
Good choice, I think, on not using it at the convention. It’s a fine puzzle, which I enjoyed solving, but the logic wouldn’t be entirely easy to do on the spot (to say nothing of all that math!), and a final phrase where you break the “no outside references” rule seems a little weird to me. Glad you put it here, though!
The outside reference would have been available as a printout, had the puzzle been used.
My belated compliments on the puzzle as well. MILD SPOILER: it took me a little while to realize just how (helpfully) restrictive some of the logic clues were.