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MIT Libraries Puzzle Challenge
Released April 25, 2008; deadline was May 5, 2008. Congratulations to the winner of the drawing, Peter Naimoli! The numbers at the top of the puzzle are ISBN numbers (unique numbers assigned to each book published). A quick google search could turn up what book each one refers to, but the grid format and numbering scheme should make it somewhat clear that what we're looking for is call numbers of the books. Those can be found easily using the ISBN search in Barton, the MIT Libraries catalog. The completed grid looks like this:
You may also notice that the first letters of the author of each book, in order, spell out "GERONIMO." That's a hint word to be used later in the puzzle. In any case, the eight grayed letters can be taken in order to complete the web address at the bottom of the puzzle, and you should go to: This takes you to a RefWorks shared folder. The first step should be to read the instructions which are provided to you in the first reference. They explain to you that each of the rest of the references either has cited or is cited by one of the other references; as such, you need to pair them accordingly. It also warns of the one reference which was thrown in to complicate things a little bit. This is where the hint "GERONIMO" comes in handy; the red herring reference was written by a Georgia Tech mathematics professor named Jeff Geronimo. Not only will this knowledge help you by eliminating the one reference which doesn't pair with any others, but it also includes a hint in the title (and a more blatant one added into the abstract) about what to do once the rest of the references are paired. Once you've paired all of the references, you'll notice that the article doing the citing in each pair has a Ref ID from 2 to 13; this is the ordering mechanism. Also, either you'll notice yourself or catch the hint from the Geronimo reference that each article being cited has a Ref ID which is divisible by the other Ref ID in the pair. It is this quotient which gives you the solution. The pairs of references, in order, with that quotient listed, are as follows:
Each quotient indexes into the alphabet to give the answer, Gregor Mendel.
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