Friday, November 19, 2010

New Search Challenge: Slinky

It was bound to happen.

Someone submitted a Search Challenge question to Answers.com and finally got a correct answer. Therefore, it's time to retire old Search Challenge #6, the Apollo 8 Toy Challenge.

I'd like to introduce its replacement; Search Challenge #102, the Slinky Challenge.

If you would, please test it; see if you can solve it. It could be classified as an intermediate challenge.

I designed this challenge to require careful reading of the question, the snippets that result from queries and the content of web pages that may hold an answer.  In addition to careful reading, an optimal strategy involves "deep web" searching. One of the best places to search is the NASA site. Relying solely on Google, the query is packed with keywords. On the NASA site, a query of only two words works quite well.

Go ahead and give me your feedback, but don't include the answer, because then this blog will become another source of the answer (and one that will work with a Google search).

1 comment:

Jenne said...

I got the correct answer within a minute, but it took another five minutes to figure out the exact right way to word the answer so the system would accept it.

Fun challenges, though!