Yes, friends, we've come to the end of another semester of puzzletude, and that means it is time to wrap up The Wright Challenge: Crouching Puzzle, Hidden Answer.

Our third place winners are the people with Doc E's fave team name: The Big Whopping ChickenZ! Their $20 should go a long way toward providing them with fresh straw, chicken food, and all the other stimuli that are pleasing to Big Whopping Chicken Kind. (In real life, these glorious fowl are Nick Brady, Brian Brookhart, Lindsey Diggelmann, Cissy Huang, Tanner Minot, Chris Roberts, John Sackett, and Allison Smith)

And, Ladies and Gentlemen, we have a tie for first place. Two entities have acheived perfect scores in what some have said is the hardest Wright Challenge yet! Their achievement was outstanding, their smartness was superlative, and their skill was... um.... skillful. Let us now give these problem-solving puppies their due.

Let all of this year's participants shout "Wey Wey Hep-A-Ho Ding Dong Yeah Yeah!" to Team Spartans from Sheffield Iowa! In exchange for their wonderful perfection, they should insist on special, home-cooked meals tonight, birthday cake three times a week, and generally excellent treatment from their families and their fans. And, while spending their $50 prize, Angie, Toby, Eric, and Timo should probably buy a card for the gifted Sonja Goetz, their wonderful teacher who is not a stranger to the Wright Challenge winner's circle.

And who is our other first place winner? None other than Peter Behroozi, a long-time participant of this contest, who is graduating this year and going off to parts unknown, and (more importantly) ineligible for future Wright Challenge prize money. When not doing his important work of solving Wright Challenge problems, Peter dabbles on the fiddle, and plays around multiplying numbers by three, adding one to them, and dividing them by two, in hopes of somehow getting a major corporation to give him a scholarship for said activity. In all seriousness, Doctor E wishes Peter the best, and is truly proud to call him a friend.

Hearty pats-on-the-back also go to Paula Olson's South Page Geometry Class, Team Sentral, and The Mighty Mathematicians. This was a VERY close one, gang, a squeaker. As always, Doctor E. would like to thank the University of Northern Iowa math department for supplying the prizes, and Michele Smith at the Northern Iowan for donating space to the contest. Michele has been supportive and encouraging since the very beginning of this contest, and deserves niceness.

If you are not living in Cedar Falls, and yet still know about the contest, you probably have Nan Sash or the UNI Department of Public Relations to blame. Maybe someday, the latter will stop editing the phrase "ruggedly handsome" out of the press release. One can only hope. Doctor E also owes a hearty thank you to Doug Shaw and Adrienne Stanley, although he refuses to admit why. He's like that after a few mixed drinks charged to his voluminous UNI expense account.

...And a special thank you goes to Nashua-Plainfield Team #2 for trying to bluff that the name of the cartoon character was Uncle Pappy. Hee hee hee "Uncle Pappy" hee hee hee.

So, we have said a lot of thanks. But not our BIGGEST thanks. "Why?" you may ask "are you not delivering your biggest thanks? Can there possibly be someone who deserves a BIGGER thanks than the people who came up with 'Uncle Pappy?' " Well, yes. The BIGGEST THANKS go to YOU, the participants in this contest, who make it all possible. Tell your friends about it gang, because next semester, we are doing it again!

Oh yes,
Next Semester:
If you thought that THIS challenge was tough,
If you thought you had fun before,
If you thought that you knew what a puzzle contest could be,
Then you thought incorrectly,
For you haven't yet seen..

The Wright Challenge VII: Planet of the Puzzle Apes

See you next semester!

Click here to visit The Wright Challenge, Fall 1999
Click here to visit The Wright Challenge: Doctor E's Revenge, Spring 2000
Click here to visit The Wright Challenge: Doctor E Strikes Back, Fall 2000
Click here to visit The Wright Challenge: Doctor E Returns, Spring 2001
Click here to visit The Wright Challenge: Beyond the Puzzledome, Fall 2001

Web Page design: Doug Shaw