Round 1 of the Red Bull Mind Gamers challenge is complete. Congrats to Mark O for collecting the most votes and earning a spot at Red Bull’s Discovery Lab this May. And thanks to everyone who voted for me- I got the second most votes!
I’m loving this competition Red Bull put together. Strategy is completed. Visual is currently being shortlisted for the finalists for which to vote. Logic is still open for submissions. It’s great feeling inundated with so many thought challenges, and the stakes are pretty high, with a trip to MIT on the line.
I read all three entries, and the other two contestants put a great deal of thought and creativity into their entries, as well. Though I didn’t get the most votes, I feel pretty good about my chances if I’m a finalist in a later round.
My Visual entry is a little bit sad- I think the fundamental concept is decent, but I’ve absolutely failed at the artistic presentation of it. Red Bull provided an image of a square formed of various shapes and asked users to move the shapes to make something other than a square.
I had a wonderful idea to draw something out on a Boogie Board, then fit the shapes into the outline, then erase the trace, to make it easy to draw something neat. The problem is, I lack the artistic merit to draw something cool-looking on the Boogie Board, so I had to fall back to freehand the shapes into something fun, like the T-Rex above.
The Logic round was more fitting to my skill set. Design a way out of a locked room? I’m having to resist the temptation to submit 50 entries for this one!
There is one added caveat this time; Red Bull implemented a 500 word limit (likely due to the number of novella-length entries in the Strategy round, including each of the three finalists). That forced me to adjust my submission quite a bit (I can share the original and revised versions once the submission window closes), but I’m still feeling very happy with what I pulled together, and I’m crossing my fingers that I’ll be asking for votes once again in about a month and a half when the Logic finalists are selected.
Here’s a link to the Strategy results page.
Also, as I mentioned before, anyone who loves puzzles, mental challenges, and as Red Bull calls them, “mind games” should consider submitting entries to these contests of their own and keeping tabs on what else Red Bull creates after these contests are over.
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