TAR S30 ep8: "It's Just a Million Dollars, No Pressure" (spoilers)

[Questor]

Warning: contains spoilers

The ultimate minimalist summary of the season finale of the most competitive
season ever of The Amazing Race.


Team Big Brother won.

[Questor]

for the crickets...

Warning: contains spoilers

The season finale begins with the usual recap and braggadocio from the remaining
teams.

In what is obviously a design feature of this season's race, teams head to Hong
Kong on the same flight. The result of these bunching points is that for every
leg there is no penalty except for last place and there is no reward except for
first place. Any effort to advance in the middle of the pack is wasted.

In Hong Kong, teams head to Victoria Peak where they must have a souvenir photo
taken in front of a sweeping nighttime view of the city's skyline. The racers
must wait for their pictures to be printed before they get the next clue. It is
here that the Yalies must complete their speed bump: properly lighting and
hanging forty lanterns.

Now it's back down the mountain to a cluebox near the waterfront and a Detour:
Hairy Crab or Grub Grab. In the first, teams must bind fifty live crabs with
cord while being subjected to a mock typhoon. In the second, teams must
correctly decipher and serve eight dinner orders given to them in Cantonese in a
noisy restaurant.

Next up is the Roadblock: Who Wants To Get Smashed? Teams create "rage art" by
smashing electronic equipment with a bat (hat tip: "Office Space"); two halves
of the clue are hidden somewhere inside them. While one racer is performing the
roadblock, the other has a locked briefcase chained to their wrist.

After the roadblock, teams are directed to Lan Kwai Fong, a busy nightlife
neighborhood with bars and cafes spilling out into the streets. They must
search this confusing scene for three signs that represent three legs of the
race. Those leg numbers are the digits of the briefcase combination, although
each team's briefcase uses them in a different order. Teams struggle to discern
between what is a race sign and what is not, and there is some ambiguity about
which legs are refered to by the symbols on the signs.

The clue in the briefcase leads racers to the next pit stop near the
intersection of Johnston and Wan Chai. After the first three teams check in,
Phil meets the Indy Racers, still struggling in Lan Kwai Fong, and informs them
they've been eliminated.


finish order:

1. Yalies
2. Big Brother
3. Pro skiers

4. Indy Racers -- eliminated


To begin the final leg, teams are all booked into comfortable business class
seats on a flight to San Francisco, where, perhaps in an effort to avoid the
terrible traffic congestion, the race is completed at night.

First they head to AT&T Park, home of the Giants baseball team. There they
paddle around McCovey Cove in the San Francisco Bay next to the stadium, looking
for three floating baseballs with the digits needed to form the number of home
runs hit by Willie Mays.

The next clue sends them on a boat ride to the center anchorage of the Western
span of the Bay Bridge and a Roadblock: the Ascension & the Abyss. One team
member must use Jumar ascenders to pull themselves over 200 feet up a rope
outside the anchorage. They then perform a free-fall into the gloom of the open
interior of this structure while wearing a suit decorated with rope lights.
("Take small steps to the edge of the platform... and step into space.")

After the roadblock, the racers return to the city and find the Golden Gate
Fortune Cookie Factory, where it's another Route Info task: making 102 fortune
cookies. They receive their penultimate clue inside a large fortune cookie,
which directs them across the Bay to the floating USS Hornet museum in Alameda.

At the Hornet, teams are faced with their final task. First they must search
through more than a thousand compartments over seven decks of the ship for
twelve pieces of a large toy/model airplane, each of which has two pictures
representing legs of the race. Then the racer who did not do the bridge
Roadblock must solve the puzzle, which is to assemble their airplane using the
correct six pieces so that each leg of the race is represented with one and only
one picture on the finished plane. They are then 'cleared for take-off' and can
"taxi" their plane to their partner, and then run to the finish line.

finish order:

1. Big Brother -- winners of the 30th season of the Amazing Race
2. Yalies
3. Pro skiers

[Loren Pechtel]

Post by Questor
At the Hornet, teams are faced with their final task. First they must search
through more than a thousand compartments over seven decks of the ship for
twelve pieces of a large toy/model airplane, each of which has two pictures
representing legs of the race. Then the racer who did not do the bridge
Roadblock must solve the puzzle, which is to assemble their airplane using the
correct six pieces so that each leg of the race is represented with one and only
one picture on the finished plane. They are then 'cleared for take-off' and can
"taxi" their plane to their partner, and then run to the finish line.

As far as I can tell every team went about this stupidly.

There are only 64 possible options and many can be elimiated becuase
of duplicate symbols. I can't see exhaustive search taking as long as
puzzling it out did.

[Questor]

Post by Loren Pechtel

Post by Questor
At the Hornet, teams are faced with their final task. First they must search
through more than a thousand compartments over seven decks of the ship for
twelve pieces of a large toy/model airplane, each of which has two pictures
representing legs of the race. Then the racer who did not do the bridge
Roadblock must solve the puzzle, which is to assemble their airplane using the
correct six pieces so that each leg of the race is represented with one and only
one picture on the finished plane. They are then 'cleared for take-off' and can
"taxi" their plane to their partner, and then run to the finish line.

As far as I can tell every team went about this stupidly.
There are only 64 possible options and many can be elimiated becuase
of duplicate symbols. I can't see exhaustive search taking as long as
puzzling it out did.

I think the difficulty was ambiguity about what some of the pictures were and
which leg they represented. Beyond that it's not clear how complicated the
puzzle was. I wonder if the pictures on all the pieces were shown to us, even
briefly, so that it would be possible for viewers to try the puzzle.

There may have also been some minimum delay time imposed between checks.

Broadly speaking, many reality show contestants seem to do poorly at tasks that
involve some sort of analysis deeper than two levels or calculations requiring
more than two steps.

Similarly, I thought teams might have opened the briefcase more quickly by
using "brute force" -- systematically trying combinations until the right one is
found -- than by looking for the signs. With each racer working one of the
locks, my guess is they could have expected to open it in about half an hour,
on average, with a worst case of just under an hour.

[Loren Pechtel]

Post by Questor

Post by Loren Pechtel
There are only 64 possible options and many can be elimiated becuase
of duplicate symbols. I can't see exhaustive search taking as long as
puzzling it out did.

I think the difficulty was ambiguity about what some of the pictures were and
which leg they represented. Beyond that it's not clear how complicated the
puzzle was. I wonder if the pictures on all the pieces were shown to us, even
briefly, so that it would be possible for viewers to try the puzzle.

I think they understood some of them and were puzzled about others.
Each position had two options, thus every unknown increases the search
space 2x. They took over an hour--even a totally random search is
more than one minute per check.

Post by Questor
There may have also been some minimum delay time imposed between checks.

We have seen teams try all options when they had narrowed the search
space, it's been accepted. Occasionally there's a cost to checks
(travel to get the check, the Kafka one where you had to fill out the
form etc) but usually there doesn't seem to be anything more than the
time it takes.

Post by Questor
Broadly speaking, many reality show contestants seem to do poorly at tasks that
involve some sort of analysis deeper than two levels or calculations requiring
more than two steps.

Agreed. The Yale team should have thought of it, though.

Post by Questor
Similarly, I thought teams might have opened the briefcase more quickly by
using "brute force" -- systematically trying combinations until the right one is
found -- than by looking for the signs. With each racer working one of the
locks, my guess is they could have expected to open it in about half an hour,
on average, with a worst case of just under an hour.

Do we have any indication of how long they took looking for the signs?

However, I do agree--except you are being pessimistic!

If each takes half they have 500 numbers to test. An hour is 3,600
seconds--you're figuring 7 seconds per test. There's a briefcase
around here somewhere but I haven't seen it in years so I can't drag
it out to see how fast I can go through the numbers.

Note, also, that if they find even one sign the search space is
reduced to 150 numbers per person (although a little harder to keep
straight the divvying up) and with two signs it's 60 per person. Once
they found the easy ones--the bull and the hat looking for the third
did not make sense. (And I find that third one dirty--when they are
looking for things like that they're always in race colors! Except
that happy hour sign wasn't.)

[Questor]

Post by Loren Pechtel

Post by Questor

Post by Loren Pechtel
There are only 64 possible options and many can be elimiated becuase
of duplicate symbols. I can't see exhaustive search taking as long as
puzzling it out did.

I think the difficulty was ambiguity about what some of the pictures were and
which leg they represented. Beyond that it's not clear how complicated the
puzzle was. I wonder if the pictures on all the pieces were shown to us, even
briefly, so that it would be possible for viewers to try the puzzle.

I think they understood some of them and were puzzled about others.
Each position had two options, thus every unknown increases the search
space 2x. They took over an hour--even a totally random search is
more than one minute per check.

I think it was a little more complicated, in that changing one piece changes two
pictures, and in "fixing" one picture, another picture may be eliminated or
duplicated. I was trying to think of something with interlocking permutation
cycles from group theory, but I have the dumbs today and cannot brain.

Also, in addition to analysis and arithmetic, the average contestant also seems
to have problems generating and keeping track of combinations. That was also
the case most obviously in the original Kafka challange, where after getting the
five letters AFNRZ in the telephone room, they had to be re-arranged to spell
"FRANZ." There are only 120 possible combinations, and linguistic cues
eliminate large numbers of them, yet as I recall some teams struggled for hours
with this.

Post by Loren Pechtel

Post by Questor
There may have also been some minimum delay time imposed between checks.

We have seen teams try all options when they had narrowed the search
space, it's been accepted. Occasionally there's a cost to checks
(travel to get the check, the Kafka one where you had to fill out the
form etc) but usually there doesn't seem to be anything more than the
time it takes.

Post by Questor
Broadly speaking, many reality show contestants seem to do poorly at tasks that
involve some sort of analysis deeper than two levels or calculations requiring
more than two steps.

Agreed. The Yale team should have thought of it, though.

Post by Questor
Similarly, I thought teams might have opened the briefcase more quickly by
using "brute force" -- systematically trying combinations until the right one is
found -- than by looking for the signs. With each racer working one of the
locks, my guess is they could have expected to open it in about half an hour,
on average, with a worst case of just under an hour.

Do we have any indication of how long they took looking for the signs?
However, I do agree--except you are being pessimistic!
If each takes half they have 500 numbers to test. An hour is 3,600
seconds--you're figuring 7 seconds per test. There's a briefcase
around here somewhere but I haven't seen it in years so I can't drag
it out to see how fast I can go through the numbers.

I thought between six and ten per minute. People get tired, distracted,
want to shift position, take their hands off the briefcase, etc. But yes,
systematic trial-and-error wouldn't take that long. And they could have
started in the cab ride on the way to the nightclub district!

Post by Loren Pechtel
Note, also, that if they find even one sign the search space is
reduced to 150 numbers per person (although a little harder to keep
straight the divvying up) and with two signs it's 60 per person. Once
they found the easy ones--the bull and the hat looking for the third
did not make sense.

Yep, but see above about generating and tracking combinations, particularly
since they didn't know the order of the digits.

Post by Loren Pechtel
(And I find that third one dirty--when they are
looking for things like that they're always in race colors! Except
that happy hour sign wasn't.)

*tweeeeet* Foul!

I completely agree. We have seen examples in other seasons, particularly in
some Asian cities, of streets with so many signs that even with race colors it
can be difficult to find the ones that are clues. I'd guess this was a result
of their "most competitive season" reasoning.

[Brian Smith]

Post by Questor

Post by Loren Pechtel

Post by Questor

Post by Loren Pechtel
There are only 64 possible options and many can be elimiated becuase
of duplicate symbols. I can't see exhaustive search taking as long as
puzzling it out did.

I think the difficulty was ambiguity about what some of the pictures were and
which leg they represented. Beyond that it's not clear how complicated the
puzzle was. I wonder if the pictures on all the pieces were shown to us, even
briefly, so that it would be possible for viewers to try the puzzle.

I think they understood some of them and were puzzled about others.
Each position had two options, thus every unknown increases the search
space 2x. They took over an hour--even a totally random search is
more than one minute per check.

I think it was a little more complicated, in that changing one piece changes two
pictures, and in "fixing" one picture, another picture may be eliminated or
duplicated. I was trying to think of something with interlocking permutation
cycles from group theory, but I have the dumbs today and cannot brain.

Apparently it was a lot more complicated than that. Jen said that you had to put on one of the wings backwards in order to get the correct combination of images. She said she got hung up on the form and function of the plane and should have concentrated just on the images. Kristi said Jen took the clue literally thinking that the plane had to be together in a state that it could "fly." She thinks Henry probably didn't notice he had one wing on backwards and figures Jess was just guessing. This is why Jen finished at least an hour behind the other two teams despite her and Kristi arriving at the ship 20 minutes before Cody and Jess. Henry and Evan must have done great in that last task. Evan said they arrived noticeably later than the other teams and yet only lost by a few minutes.

--
Brian

[Questor]

Post by Brian Smith

Post by Questor

Post by Loren Pechtel

Post by Questor

Post by Loren Pechtel
There are only 64 possible options and many can be elimiated becuase
of duplicate symbols. I can't see exhaustive search taking as long as
puzzling it out did.

I think the difficulty was ambiguity about what some of the pictures were and
which leg they represented. Beyond that it's not clear how complicated the
puzzle was. I wonder if the pictures on all the pieces were shown to us, even
briefly, so that it would be possible for viewers to try the puzzle.

I think they understood some of them and were puzzled about others.
Each position had two options, thus every unknown increases the search
space 2x. They took over an hour--even a totally random search is
more than one minute per check.

I think it was a little more complicated, in that changing one piece changes two
pictures, and in "fixing" one picture, another picture may be eliminated or
duplicated. I was trying to think of something with interlocking permutation
cycles from group theory, but I have the dumbs today and cannot brain.

Apparently it was a lot more complicated than that. Jen said that you had to
put on one of the wings backwards in order to get the correct combination
of images. She said she got hung up on the form and function of the plane
and should have concentrated just on the images. Kristi said Jen took the clue
literally thinking that the plane had to be together in a state that it could "fly."
She thinks Henry probably didn't notice he had one wing on backwards and
figures Jess was just guessing. This is why Jen finished at least an hour behind
the other two teams despite her and Kristi arriving at the ship 20 minutes before
Cody and Jess. Henry and Evan must have done great in that last task. Evan
said they arrived noticeably later than the other teams and yet only lost by a
few minutes.

I think it was clear that Jess was only guessing at the end. I'm not sure how
having to put one wing on "backwards" makes any sense -- it will have the same
images -- unless she meant that two left wings had to be used, or something like
that. That goes counter to how the puzzle was explained as having to choose
the correct item from six pairs of pieces. Maybe Jen had pairs of left and
right wings mixed up, which certainly would complicate things.

At some future date I will be re-watching the series, and I will spend some time
freeze-framing this segment in an attempt to get all the information to
re-create the puzzle. I will also look closely at the completed planes for any
sign of backwards wings. I'll report any results here, but I caution that it
may be many months before this happens.

[Brian Smith]

Post by Questor

Post by Brian Smith

Post by Questor

Post by Loren Pechtel

Post by Questor

Post by Loren Pechtel
There are only 64 possible options and many can be elimiated becuase
of duplicate symbols. I can't see exhaustive search taking as long as
puzzling it out did.

I think the difficulty was ambiguity about what some of the pictures were and
which leg they represented. Beyond that it's not clear how complicated the
puzzle was. I wonder if the pictures on all the pieces were shown to us, even
briefly, so that it would be possible for viewers to try the puzzle.

I think they understood some of them and were puzzled about others.
Each position had two options, thus every unknown increases the search
space 2x. They took over an hour--even a totally random search is
more than one minute per check.

I think it was a little more complicated, in that changing one piece changes two
pictures, and in "fixing" one picture, another picture may be eliminated or
duplicated. I was trying to think of something with interlocking permutation
cycles from group theory, but I have the dumbs today and cannot brain.

Apparently it was a lot more complicated than that. Jen said that you had to
put on one of the wings backwards in order to get the correct combination
of images. She said she got hung up on the form and function of the plane
and should have concentrated just on the images. Kristi said Jen took the clue
literally thinking that the plane had to be together in a state that it could "fly."
She thinks Henry probably didn't notice he had one wing on backwards and
figures Jess was just guessing. This is why Jen finished at least an hour behind
the other two teams despite her and Kristi arriving at the ship 20 minutes before
Cody and Jess. Henry and Evan must have done great in that last task. Evan
said they arrived noticeably later than the other teams and yet only lost by a
few minutes.

I think it was clear that Jess was only guessing at the end. I'm not sure how
having to put one wing on "backwards" makes any sense -- it will have the same
images -- unless she meant that two left wings had to be used, or something like
that. That goes counter to how the puzzle was explained as having to choose
the correct item from six pairs of pieces. Maybe Jen had pairs of left and
right wings mixed up, which certainly would complicate things.
At some future date I will be re-watching the series, and I will spend some time
freeze-framing this segment in an attempt to get all the information to
re-create the puzzle. I will also look closely at the completed planes for any
sign of backwards wings. I'll report any results here, but I caution that it
may be many months before this happens.

The explanation we hear on TV is only a small edited part of what they are actually given. One thing that I loved about BBOTT was that we got to see all of that kind of stuff. The instructions for comps were very detailed and they could ask the comp producer questions (no, they didn't get to see him). Production was very good at making sure everyone was clear on the rules, etc. before beginning the comp. I wonder if in this case if they didn't ask enough questions and just assumed it wouldn't be that hard because of the small number of pieces involved. Based on the edit I got the impression they thought the hard part of the task would be finding the pieces in that huge ship and that whoever found them first would win the race.

I just want to say that I found this season to be very enjoyable. There were some very strong teams and just enough conflict to add some drama. There were also some very likable teams which hasn't been the case for me for awhile. I can't imagine there were too many people who had any issues with Jen/Kristi or Henry/Evan. I thought Cody did great and lived up to what he claimed he could do in the BB house. Jess was Jess. I thought she was very hypocritical at times and a real bitch toward Evan at times. She was also damn lucky at the end. Any other season they likely would have finished third and not first.

--
Brian

[Loren Pechtel]

On Mon, 5 Mar 2018 23:58:33 -0800 (PST), Brian Smith

Post by Brian Smith

Post by Questor

Post by Loren Pechtel

Post by Questor

Post by Loren Pechtel
There are only 64 possible options and many can be elimiated becuase
of duplicate symbols. I can't see exhaustive search taking as long as
puzzling it out did.

I think the difficulty was ambiguity about what some of the pictures were and
which leg they represented. Beyond that it's not clear how complicated the
puzzle was. I wonder if the pictures on all the pieces were shown to us, even
briefly, so that it would be possible for viewers to try the puzzle.

I think they understood some of them and were puzzled about others.
Each position had two options, thus every unknown increases the search
space 2x. They took over an hour--even a totally random search is
more than one minute per check.

I think it was a little more complicated, in that changing one piece changes two
pictures, and in "fixing" one picture, another picture may be eliminated or
duplicated. I was trying to think of something with interlocking permutation
cycles from group theory, but I have the dumbs today and cannot brain.

Apparently it was a lot more complicated than that. Jen said that you had to put on one of the wings backwards in order to get the correct combination of images. She said she got hung up on the form and function of the plane and should have concentrated just on the images. Kristi said Jen took the clue literally thinking that the plane had to be together in a state that it could "fly." She thinks Henry probably didn't notice he had one wing on backwards and figures Jess was just guessing. This is why Jen finished at least an hour behind the other two teams despite her and Kristi arriving at the ship 20 minutes before Cody and Jess. Henry and Evan must have done great in that last task. Evan said they arrived noticeably later than the other teams and yet only lost by a few minutes.

If so I'm going to cry foul.

The rejection is that you're not cleared for takeoff. Given that I
would certainly assume I had to have a flyable plane.

[Brian Smith]

Post by Loren Pechtel
On Mon, 5 Mar 2018 23:58:33 -0800 (PST), Brian Smith

Post by Brian Smith

Post by Questor

Post by Loren Pechtel

Post by Questor

Post by Loren Pechtel
There are only 64 possible options and many can be elimiated becuase
of duplicate symbols. I can't see exhaustive search taking as long as
puzzling it out did.

I think the difficulty was ambiguity about what some of the pictures were and
which leg they represented. Beyond that it's not clear how complicated the
puzzle was. I wonder if the pictures on all the pieces were shown to us, even
briefly, so that it would be possible for viewers to try the puzzle.

I think they understood some of them and were puzzled about others.
Each position had two options, thus every unknown increases the search
space 2x. They took over an hour--even a totally random search is
more than one minute per check.

I think it was a little more complicated, in that changing one piece changes two
pictures, and in "fixing" one picture, another picture may be eliminated or
duplicated. I was trying to think of something with interlocking permutation
cycles from group theory, but I have the dumbs today and cannot brain.

Apparently it was a lot more complicated than that. Jen said that you had to put on one of the wings backwards in order to get the correct combination of images. She said she got hung up on the form and function of the plane and should have concentrated just on the images. Kristi said Jen took the clue literally thinking that the plane had to be together in a state that it could "fly." She thinks Henry probably didn't notice he had one wing on backwards and figures Jess was just guessing. This is why Jen finished at least an hour behind the other two teams despite her and Kristi arriving at the ship 20 minutes before Cody and Jess. Henry and Evan must have done great in that last task. Evan said they arrived noticeably later than the other teams and yet only lost by a few minutes.

If so I'm going to cry foul.
The rejection is that you're not cleared for takeoff. Given that I
would certainly assume I had to have a flyable plane.

Here's a long statement Kristi posted on her Instagram account about this. Hopefully it explains things a more clearly. It definitely explains why Jen got so frustrated. I have a feeling that if Cody had done that part of the task that he would have done the same as Jen did. It really worked out well for him that it was Jess doing it because I doubt like hell she even in factored in such details.
____

Over the last few days I’ve been asked in person and through social media if we may have had a better chance of winning had “I” done the final challenge. The answer is an unequivocal NO. I stand by my partner 100%. She did not fail or choke, in fact, she did exactly what I would have done. She paid attention to detail and tried solve the question that she was asked. The clue read to build your plane with all 12 symbols representing race legs facing up and once you thought your plane was “properly assembled” to ask the Captain to “clear your plane for takeoff.” Jen reasonably interpreted this as a two part challenge to both properly assemble a plane and solve the puzzle.

There is no way to prepare for The Amazing Race you just have to hope that the skills you’ve built throughout your life will be varied enough to carry you through. It was those life skills that brought us this far, and it was those same skills that cost us in the end. Jen and I both have quite mechanical minds, so her immediate instinct was to start by dividing the pieces to build a functional plane. If one was thinking mechanically they would have noticed that the wings actually had dimension. The front of the wings was thicker than the back just like it would be on a real plane. Jen noticed right away that she had two left wings and two right wings and quite reasonably came to the conclusion that it had to be one of two on either side. This was the fatal error, not her puzzle solving skills. You see, in the end it was just a puzzle and in order to solve it you had forget the planes proper assembly. To get the final answer you had to put one wing on forwards and one on backwards. Two left wings on a plane that was to be “cleared for takeoff.” The frustration she exhibited was actually when she had decided the challenge was unsolvable. We have no regrets. There is nothing we could have done differently that would have changed the outcome. No amount of preparation would have changed how we interpreted the clue. We are very happy for Jess and Cody. The Race was an opportunity of a lifetime and we feel so fortunate to have had the opportunity.

Source: https://www.instagram.com/p/Bfq5it6hYXJ/?taken-by=kristileskinen

--
Brian

[Loren Pechtel]

On Wed, 7 Mar 2018 13:14:12 -0800 (PST), Brian Smith

Post by Brian Smith

Post by Loren Pechtel
On Mon, 5 Mar 2018 23:58:33 -0800 (PST), Brian Smith

Post by Brian Smith

Post by Questor

Post by Loren Pechtel

Post by Questor

Post by Loren Pechtel
There are only 64 possible options and many can be elimiated becuase
of duplicate symbols. I can't see exhaustive search taking as long as
puzzling it out did.

I think the difficulty was ambiguity about what some of the pictures were and
which leg they represented. Beyond that it's not clear how complicated the
puzzle was. I wonder if the pictures on all the pieces were shown to us, even
briefly, so that it would be possible for viewers to try the puzzle.

I think they understood some of them and were puzzled about others.
Each position had two options, thus every unknown increases the search
space 2x. They took over an hour--even a totally random search is
more than one minute per check.

I think it was a little more complicated, in that changing one piece changes two
pictures, and in "fixing" one picture, another picture may be eliminated or
duplicated. I was trying to think of something with interlocking permutation
cycles from group theory, but I have the dumbs today and cannot brain.

Apparently it was a lot more complicated than that. Jen said that you had to put on one of the wings backwards in order to get the correct combination of images. She said she got hung up on the form and function of the plane and should have concentrated just on the images. Kristi said Jen took the clue literally thinking that the plane had to be together in a state that it could "fly." She thinks Henry probably didn't notice he had one wing on backwards and figures Jess was just guessing. This is why Jen finished at least an hour behind the other two teams despite her and Kristi arriving at the ship 20 minutes before Cody and Jess. Henry and Evan must have done great in that last task. Evan said they arrived noticeably later than the other teams and yet only lost by a few minutes.

If so I'm going to cry foul.
The rejection is that you're not cleared for takeoff. Given that I
would certainly assume I had to have a flyable plane.

Here's a long statement Kristi posted on her Instagram account about this. Hopefully it explains things a more clearly. It definitely explains why Jen got so frustrated. I have a feeling that if Cody had done that part of the task that he would have done the same as Jen did. It really worked out well for him that it was Jess doing it because I doubt like hell she even in factored in such details.
____
Over the last few days I’ve been asked in person and through social media if we may have had a better chance of winning had “I” done the final challenge. The answer is an unequivocal NO. I stand by my partner 100%. She did not fail or choke, in fact, she did exactly what I would have done. She paid attention to detail and tried solve the question that she was asked. The clue read to build your plane with all 12 symbols representing race legs facing up and once you thought your plane was “properly assembled” to ask the Captain to “clear your plane for takeoff.” Jen reasonably interpreted this as a two part challenge to both properly assemble a plane and solve the puzzle.
There is no way to prepare for The Amazing Race you just have to hope that the skills you’ve built throughout your life will be varied enough to carry you through. It was those life skills that brought us this far, and it was those same skills that cost us in the end. Jen and I both have quite mechanical minds, so her immediate instinct was to start by dividing the pieces to build a functional plane. If one was thinking mechanically they would have noticed that the wings actually had dimension. The front of the wings was thicker than the back just like it would be on a real plane. Jen noticed right away that she had two left wings and two right wings and quite reasonably came to the conclusion that it had to be one of two on either side. This was the fatal error, not her puzzle solving skills. You see, in the end it was just a puzzle and in order to solve it you had forget the planes proper assembly. To get the final answer you had to put one wing on forwards and one on backwards.
Two left wings on a plane that was to be “cleared for takeoff.” The frustration she exhibited was actually when she had decided the challenge was unsolvable. We have no regrets. There is nothing we could have done differently that would have changed the outcome. No amount of preparation would have changed how we interpreted the clue. We are very happy for Jess and Cody. The Race was an opportunity of a lifetime and we feel so fortunate to have had the opportunity.
Source: https://www.instagram.com/p/Bfq5it6hYXJ/?taken-by=kristileskinen

Ok, I'm definitely crying foul. A plane with two left wings is going
to crash immediately, you shouldn't take off in it.

[Loren Pechtel]

Post by Questor

Post by Loren Pechtel
I think they understood some of them and were puzzled about others.
Each position had two options, thus every unknown increases the search
space 2x. They took over an hour--even a totally random search is
more than one minute per check.

I think it was a little more complicated, in that changing one piece changes two
pictures, and in "fixing" one picture, another picture may be eliminated or
duplicated. I was trying to think of something with interlocking permutation
cycles from group theory, but I have the dumbs today and cannot brain.

There are only 64 combinations by exhaustive search. Try them in
order, if you don't see a problem then you ask for a check.

Post by Questor
Also, in addition to analysis and arithmetic, the average contestant also seems
to have problems generating and keeping track of combinations. That was also
the case most obviously in the original Kafka challange, where after getting the
five letters AFNRZ in the telephone room, they had to be re-arranged to spell
"FRANZ." There are only 120 possible combinations, and linguistic cues
eliminate large numbers of them, yet as I recall some teams struggled for hours
with this.

I don't believe anyone tried exhaustive search. Rather, they kept
trying to come up with the right answer and so lost track of what had
been rejected and what hadn't.

Post by Questor

Post by Loren Pechtel
Note, also, that if they find even one sign the search space is
reduced to 150 numbers per person (although a little harder to keep
straight the divvying up) and with two signs it's 60 per person. Once
they found the easy ones--the bull and the hat looking for the third
did not make sense.

Yep, but see above about generating and tracking combinations, particularly
since they didn't know the order of the digits.

I was figuring all the possible combinations of digit order.

Post by Questor

Post by Loren Pechtel
(And I find that third one dirty--when they are
looking for things like that they're always in race colors! Except
that happy hour sign wasn't.)

*tweeeeet* Foul!
I completely agree. We have seen examples in other seasons, particularly in
some Asian cities, of streets with so many signs that even with race colors it
can be difficult to find the ones that are clues. I'd guess this was a result
of their "most competitive season" reasoning.

In the past it's been rare for a clue not to be clearly a clue once it
was spotted. That happy hour sign was nasty, though!

[Questor]

Post by Loren Pechtel

Post by Questor

Post by Loren Pechtel
Note, also, that if they find even one sign the search space is
reduced to 150 numbers per person (although a little harder to keep
straight the divvying up) and with two signs it's 60 per person. Once
they found the easy ones--the bull and the hat looking for the third
did not make sense.

Yep, but see above about generating and tracking combinations, particularly
since they didn't know the order of the digits.

I was figuring all the possible combinations of digit order.

I'm not questioning your numbers, which are correct. My point is the average
racer is apparently unable to systematically generate all the combinations
unless it's very simple to do so. Generating all the combinations from 000 to
999 is easy (but daunting); generating all the permutations of 3, 5, and a third
unknown digit confuses a lot of people because they have little to no experience
with that kind of symbol manipulation. That being said, the Yalies should have
thought of this shortcut. I wonder if the musicians would have?

[Loren Pechtel]

Post by Questor

Post by Loren Pechtel

Post by Questor

Post by Loren Pechtel
Note, also, that if they find even one sign the search space is
reduced to 150 numbers per person (although a little harder to keep
straight the divvying up) and with two signs it's 60 per person. Once
they found the easy ones--the bull and the hat looking for the third
did not make sense.

Yep, but see above about generating and tracking combinations, particularly
since they didn't know the order of the digits.

I was figuring all the possible combinations of digit order.

I'm not questioning your numbers, which are correct. My point is the average
racer is apparently unable to systematically generate all the combinations
unless it's very simple to do so. Generating all the combinations from 000 to
999 is easy (but daunting); generating all the permutations of 3, 5, and a third
unknown digit confuses a lot of people because they have little to no experience
with that kind of symbol manipulation. That being said, the Yalies should have
thought of this shortcut. I wonder if the musicians would have?

Yeah, anyone who goes to Yale should know enough to do it.

However, from the other discussion in this thread about the wings it
appears the 64 answers on the planes was wrong, exhaustive search was
not a viable answer.

On the other hand, I would have been stumped by it--you don't take off
in a plane that can't fly, two left wings on the plane does not meet
the requirements in my book.

[Brian Smith]

Post by Questor

Post by Loren Pechtel

Post by Questor
At the Hornet, teams are faced with their final task. First they must search
through more than a thousand compartments over seven decks of the ship for
twelve pieces of a large toy/model airplane, each of which has two pictures
representing legs of the race. Then the racer who did not do the bridge
Roadblock must solve the puzzle, which is to assemble their airplane using the
correct six pieces so that each leg of the race is represented with one and only
one picture on the finished plane. They are then 'cleared for take-off' and can
"taxi" their plane to their partner, and then run to the finish line.

As far as I can tell every team went about this stupidly.
There are only 64 possible options and many can be elimiated becuase
of duplicate symbols. I can't see exhaustive search taking as long as
puzzling it out did.

I think the difficulty was ambiguity about what some of the pictures were and
which leg they represented. Beyond that it's not clear how complicated the
puzzle was. I wonder if the pictures on all the pieces were shown to us, even
briefly, so that it would be possible for viewers to try the puzzle.

Henry, Jen and Jess have all said the icons were ambiguous and it wasn't always clear which leg they represented.

Post by Questor
There may have also been some minimum delay time imposed between checks.
Broadly speaking, many reality show contestants seem to do poorly at tasks that
involve some sort of analysis deeper than two levels or calculations requiring
more than two steps.

I don't know if that was the case at the end but you need to remember this was at the end of the race and a long leg. In an interview Henry said the last task took place at around 3AM.

--
Brian

[Questor]

Post by Brian Smith
I don't know if that was the case at the end but you need to remember this was at the end of the race and a long leg.
In an interview Henry said the last task took place at around 3AM.

More importantly, what time was it on their internal body clocks, and how much
rest did they get on the flight from Hong Kong?

[Brian Smith]

Post by Questor

Post by Brian Smith
I don't know if that was the case at the end but you need to remember this was at the end of the race and a long leg.
In an interview Henry said the last task took place at around 3AM.

More importantly, what time was it on their internal body clocks, and how much
rest did they get on the flight from Hong Kong?

It wouldn't be hard to find out how much rest they got on the plane. They're all active on social media and seem willing to answer questions. I imagine their body clocks were really screwed up.

Here's another tidbit of info for you that I don't think was mentioned in the episode. Henry had been to the fortune cookie place before. The last city being San Francisco was perfect for him and if it wasn't for not realizing he had actually solved the puzzle he and Evan would have won. I thought Phil might have told him that he had actually solved it but he and Jen said he didn't find out until the episode aired. I would have loved to have seen Evan's reaction at that moment.

--
Brian

[Loren Pechtel]

On Mon, 5 Mar 2018 23:29:34 -0800 (PST), Brian Smith

Post by Brian Smith

Post by Questor

Post by Loren Pechtel

Post by Questor
At the Hornet, teams are faced with their final task. First they must search
through more than a thousand compartments over seven decks of the ship for
twelve pieces of a large toy/model airplane, each of which has two pictures
representing legs of the race. Then the racer who did not do the bridge
Roadblock must solve the puzzle, which is to assemble their airplane using the
correct six pieces so that each leg of the race is represented with one and only
one picture on the finished plane. They are then 'cleared for take-off' and can
"taxi" their plane to their partner, and then run to the finish line.

As far as I can tell every team went about this stupidly.
There are only 64 possible options and many can be elimiated becuase
of duplicate symbols. I can't see exhaustive search taking as long as
puzzling it out did.

I think the difficulty was ambiguity about what some of the pictures were and
which leg they represented. Beyond that it's not clear how complicated the
puzzle was. I wonder if the pictures on all the pieces were shown to us, even
briefly, so that it would be possible for viewers to try the puzzle.

Henry, Jen and Jess have all said the icons were ambiguous and it wasn't always clear which leg they represented.

Which is completely irrelevant if they do an exhaustive search.

[Brian Smith]

Post by Loren Pechtel
On Mon, 5 Mar 2018 23:29:34 -0800 (PST), Brian Smith

Post by Brian Smith

Post by Questor

Post by Loren Pechtel

Post by Questor
At the Hornet, teams are faced with their final task. First they must search
through more than a thousand compartments over seven decks of the ship for
twelve pieces of a large toy/model airplane, each of which has two pictures
representing legs of the race. Then the racer who did not do the bridge
Roadblock must solve the puzzle, which is to assemble their airplane using the
correct six pieces so that each leg of the race is represented with one and only
one picture on the finished plane. They are then 'cleared for take-off' and can
"taxi" their plane to their partner, and then run to the finish line.

As far as I can tell every team went about this stupidly.
There are only 64 possible options and many can be elimiated becuase
of duplicate symbols. I can't see exhaustive search taking as long as
puzzling it out did.

I think the difficulty was ambiguity about what some of the pictures were and
which leg they represented. Beyond that it's not clear how complicated the
puzzle was. I wonder if the pictures on all the pieces were shown to us, even
briefly, so that it would be possible for viewers to try the puzzle.

Henry, Jen and Jess have all said the icons were ambiguous and it wasn't always clear which leg they represented.

Which is completely irrelevant if they do an exhaustive search.

Too hard to keep track off when you're under that much pressure not to mention dead tired and probably not thinking as clearly as you would if you were properly rested.

Can you explain where you're getting the 64 combinations from? How are you arriving at that number mathematically?

--
Brian

[Questor]

Post by Brian Smith
Can you explain where you're getting the 64 combinations from? How are you arriving at that number mathematically?

There are two choices for each of the six pieces. 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 = 2^6 =
64.

[Brian Smith]

Post by Questor

Post by Brian Smith
Can you explain where you're getting the 64 combinations from? How are you arriving at that number mathematically?

There are two choices for each of the six pieces. 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 = 2^6 =
64.

But if you factor in forwards/backwards it gets a lot more complex which is why I asked how he was calculating the number. I'm familiar with nCk, etc.

--
Brian

[Questor]

Post by Brian Smith

Post by Questor

Post by Brian Smith
Can you explain where you're getting the 64 combinations from? How are you arriving at that number mathematically?

There are two choices for each of the six pieces. 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 = 2^6 =
64.

But if you factor in forwards/backwards it gets a lot more complex which is why I asked how he was calculating the number. I'm familiar with nCk, etc.

I think this forwards/backwards talk can be explained by Jen being confused and
grouping right and a left wings together instead of a pair of lefts and a pair
of rights. Otherwise there is more to the puzzle than was explained.

[Bob Lumbert]

Post by Questor

Post by Brian Smith

Post by Questor

Post by Brian Smith
Can you explain where you're getting the 64 combinations from? How are you arriving at that number mathematically?

There are two choices for each of the six pieces. 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 = 2^6 =
64.

But if you factor in forwards/backwards it gets a lot more complex which is why I asked how he was calculating the number. I'm familiar with nCk, etc.

I think this forwards/backwards talk can be explained by Jen being confused and
grouping right and a left wings together instead of a pair of lefts and a pair
of rights. Otherwise there is more to the puzzle than was explained.

The 64 is a first approximation, but the actual answer depends on the way the symbols were arranged on the pieces.
Let's say the 12 symbols were the letters from A to L, and that the 12 pieces had the pairs AB, BC, CD, DE, EF, FG, GH, HI, IJ, JK, kl, LA. In this case, if you decide the piece with AB is good, you can't have the pieces BC or LA because they duplicate a symbol. That means you have to have CD (only other piece with a C) and KL. This eventually tells you that the six pieces are AB, CD, EF, GH, IJ, KL. On the other hand if piece AB is not good, similar reasoning shows that the six pieces are BC, DE, FG, HI, JK, LA. So there are only two choices. For the real puzzle obviously things won't be that simple.
I suspect this type of analysis is the best way to go about solving the puzzle. Initially just ignore the fact that you need six different parts of the plane. See how you can choose six pieces with the 12 different symbols, and then find a choice which uses six different plane parts. This would not be easy working with the physical pieces they had, even without taking into account tiredness.

Bob

[Loren Pechtel]

On Thu, 8 Mar 2018 14:48:55 -0800 (PST), Bob Lumbert

Post by Bob Lumbert

Post by Questor

Post by Brian Smith

Post by Questor

Post by Brian Smith
Can you explain where you're getting the 64 combinations from? How are you arriving at that number mathematically?

There are two choices for each of the six pieces. 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 = 2^6 =
64.

But if you factor in forwards/backwards it gets a lot more complex which is why I asked how he was calculating the number. I'm familiar with nCk, etc.

I think this forwards/backwards talk can be explained by Jen being confused and
grouping right and a left wings together instead of a pair of lefts and a pair
of rights. Otherwise there is more to the puzzle than was explained.

The 64 is a first approximation, but the actual answer depends on the way the symbols were arranged on the pieces.
Let's say the 12 symbols were the letters from A to L, and that the 12 pieces had the pairs AB, BC, CD, DE, EF, FG, GH, HI, IJ, JK, kl, LA. In this case, if you decide the piece with AB is good, you can't have the pieces BC or LA because they duplicate a symbol. That means you have to have CD (only other piece with a C) and KL. This eventually tells you that the six pieces are AB, CD, EF, GH, IJ, KL. On the other hand if piece AB is not good, similar reasoning shows that the six pieces are BC, DE, FG, HI, JK, LA. So there are only two choices. For the real puzzle obviously things won't be that simple.
I suspect this type of analysis is the best way to go about solving the puzzle. Initially just ignore the fact that you need six different parts of the plane. See how you can choose six pieces with the 12 different symbols, and then find a choice which uses six different plane parts. This would not be easy working with the physical pieces they had, even without taking into account tiredness.

There are 64 possible combinations. Some of them will have a
duplicated symbol and can be rejected without calling for a check.

You make 6 piles **in a line**. Treat it as a 6-digit binary number
and simply count it up.

[Brian Smith]

Post by Questor

Post by Brian Smith

Post by Questor

Post by Brian Smith
Can you explain where you're getting the 64 combinations from? How are you arriving at that number mathematically?

There are two choices for each of the six pieces. 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 = 2^6 =
64.

But if you factor in forwards/backwards it gets a lot more complex which is why I asked how he was calculating the number. I'm familiar with nCk, etc.

I think this forwards/backwards talk can be explained by Jen being confused and
grouping right and a left wings together instead of a pair of lefts and a pair
of rights. Otherwise there is more to the puzzle than was explained.

There's often much more to these tasks than were told on TV. I can recall seeing some bonus clips in past seasons where teams were reading out instructions and/or showing them and they would be a full page of text or even two pages.

Anyway, back to Jen. She wasn't confused. Listen to Rob's exit interviews with the F4. He asks Jen about this and she and Kristi give some more info. In particular Jen will give you something to reference in the episode.

http://robhasawebsite.com/amazing-race-30-final-4-exit-interviews/

Go to about the 32:00 minute mark for where he asks about the plane assembly. It's worth listening to all of the interviews as there's a few things covered/mentioned that I haven't seen elsewhere.

--
Brian

[Loren Pechtel]

On Wed, 7 Mar 2018 12:55:31 -0800 (PST), Brian Smith

Post by Brian Smith

Post by Loren Pechtel
Which is completely irrelevant if they do an exhaustive search.

Too hard to keep track off when you're under that much pressure not to mention dead tired and probably not thinking as clearly as you would if you were properly rested.
Can you explain where you're getting the 64 combinations from? How are you arriving at that number mathematically?

6 positions, two choicese for each--thats 2^6 = 64.

However, from our other discussion the plane was built wrong, the
search space was worse.