The Orlando Science Center’s  FTC Team 5070 N.U.T.S. (Nerds United for Technological Superiority) won our “Guess the Game” Game at the Florida FTC Kick-off on Saturday, with their remarkably spot on guess. Handwritten and submitted prior to the kick off by a team member, their entry read:

“This year’s game pieces are red and blue colored rings. Alliances will need to pick their rings and place them onto posts elevated above the field. Rings will need to be put into rows and columns of continuous color to score points. Teams will need to pick up their rings and carry them across the field to score. An IR beacon at the top of the field will help teams do so.”

For their PDC (Pretty Darn Close!) guess, N.U.T.S. earned a duct tape American flag, completely handcrafted by new TDT team member, Bennet.

Second place went to 4228, Lyman Robotics Team G.O.O.D. (Gears of Other Dimensions) , who guessed the game would involve lifting rings and placing them on platforms or in a certain pattern, like tic-tac-toe.

Our out-of-state winner is “Amanda the Ninja” with Team 5875 out of Atlanta, GA –    GENIUS (Girls Exploring New Ideas Using Science) a rookie FTC team, transitioning from a successful FLL program.  Amanda the Ninja shared a pretty well thought out and also PDC guess:

“There will be PVC poles in the middle of the field in a three by three pole spaced out square, like a tic-tac-toe board. Right outside the field, will be two PVC stands designed to be and L shape so they hang over the field. One contains blue rings and one has red. In two parallel corners of the field will be baskets, one for the red team and one for the blue. The robots will start in red and blue “home” zones, each with one gold ring.

“To score points robots can place their color rings on the tic tac toe board, attempting to score tic tac toe. If someone places their ring over yours your ring no longer counts. Gold rings are neutral, and can be used to score tic tac toe for either team, but scoring tic tac toe with a gold ring is more points. At the end of the game refs count the number of tic tac toes each team as at the time (three in a row that would be visible is looked at from an overhead view. Only the top ring on each pole counts.) The scoring would be something like ten points for each tic tac toe, twenty is it includes a gold ring.

“Another way of scoring points during a match is to place your rings in your teams basket, each ring will be scored (something like) two points per a ring, or five per a gold ring. These rings will be counted by the ref at the END of the round, during the round robots are allowed to remove rings from their basket if they want to. Putting another team’s ring in your basket will be a penalty, a even larger penalty would be if you took a ring out of the other team’s basket.”

Congratulations to our great winners, and many thanks for playing along with us.  We see some future GDC (Game Design Committee) members among the game guessers!

Now it’s time to get down to the serious business of game play – robot design.  Our first mega brainstorming session is this coming Saturday, but team members have a bunch of homework between now and then, from familiarizing themselves with the new game docs to reviewing the Ring it Up! game video a couple of more times.

Can’t wait to get started!