Tuesday, July 27, 2010

Off-Day Puzzle #9: Solution

Last time you thought about Jeff Shaw - the answer to yesterday's puzzle - was when? I couldn't remember either.

The first step is to solve the Eric Gagne sliding unscramble puzzle in the 35 moves, as follows:

But looking at the result, the letters still make no sense. And what's the deal with the poem?

That's the second step. Taking the cue from the poem's line "Track his footsteps to the light," you must keep a record of the letters traversed in solving the unscramble puzzle:

SDZLKDZCDQHMRZUDRVGHKDJZQQNRZCNCFDQ

Then, from the poem's final line and using google and/or wikipedia to research the sequence of the alphabet, take "one last step to the right" by advancing each letter one (with 'Z' wrapping around to 'A'), and get:

TEAM LEADER IN SAVES WHILE KARROS A DODGER

The great Eric Karros' Dodger career spanned from 1991 to 2002. The Dodger closers' saves during that period stack up as follows:

Like a double-overtime NBA game, Jeff Shaw edges out Todd Worrell, 129-127.

Congratulations to UBragg, drewdez, Mr Customer, Jason, and Golem.

Updated rankings to be posted soon. Next puzzle Monday, Aug 9, 7am!

8 comments:

Nostradamus said...

Personally, I use the Oxford English Dictionary to research the order of the alphabet. It's so…tangible.

Nostradamus said...

In all seriousness, I found it much easier once I decided to do the letter shift first.

rbnlaw said...

I would've said Mc Dowell, so I was screwed from the start.

Fred's Brim said...

Jim Gott had 25 saves in 93? Man oh man we were stinky back then

Nostradamus said...

@FB

Compared to '92, '93 was bliss.

MR.F said...

That looks like a cool puzzle.

Fred's Brim said...

@Mr. C - no question

92 still doesn't make sense to me. I think there's a 50-50 chance that it never actually happened. I started college down south that fall and had to deal with all of the punkass Braves fans. Goddam Sid Bream

Neeebs (The Original) said...

You guys are are insane. And you have too much time on your hands.