GRiddles Series A: Puzzle 2

The second puzzle from G-Research is out! Let’s solve it!

Problem Statement

Gama cirques

Who was the softball champion?

Answer

The United States of America.

Solution 1: A Shortcut

It turns out we can answer this question without fully solving the puzzle. We will first describe the shortcut to the answer and then verify our answer by solving the entire puzzle.

Letters, Numbers, Colours

Both solutions require solving the alphanumeric codes inside the circles and the colours of the circles.

The Letters and Numbers

A bit of Google-fu should reveal that SHŌWA39 and REIWA2 are Japanese for years 1964 and 2020 respectively, and 12.17.15.2.19 in the ancient Mayan Calendar is October 12, 1968. These years correspond to Olympic Games held in their respective modern-day countries.

The Colours

Since we know the codes refer to Olympic games, the colours might correspond to the colours of the Olympic Rings. Indeed, yellow represents Asia and red represents the Americas which matches our decoding of Tokyo and Mexico City locations. Therefore, blue must represent Europe and green Oceania.

The shortcut

Softball does not have a long history in the Olympics. It has only been included for a handful of games. Since red represents games held in the Americas and the only games in the Americas where softball was included was Atlanta in 1996, the answer is: United States of America, who won gold in the 1996 Atlanta Summer Olympics.

Solution 2: Solving The Whole Puzzle

To confirm this was not a trick question, we will solve the actual puzzle. By the colours, we know the sole green ring must be the Sydney 2000 games. In addition to Tokyo, there were two games held in Asia: Beijing 2008 and Seoul 1988, so 4705 must be related to one of these. A bit more investigation would reveal that 4705 in the ancient Chinese calendar corresponds to 2008. Finally, we determine that 2713 in the ancient Roman calendar is 1960 and 695.4 is the ancient Greek calendar for 2004. All of these match the years of games held in Beijing, Rome and Athens.

The decoded board

We have decoded the calender puzzle to reveal the following board:

but still need to solve the last puzzle to fill in the rest. Again using the colours, we know the remaining spots must correspond to games that were located in Europe or the Americas. Since 1960, the remaining European games are Paris 2024, London 2012, Barcelona 1992, Moscow 1980, Munich 1972 and the remaining Americas games are Rio 2016, Atlanta 1996, Los Angeles 1984, Montreal 1976.

Our hypothesis is that each row and column must sum to the same value. Since we have a full second row, we can use the sum (1964+2008+1988+2000=7960) to complete the second column: (7960 - 2004 - 2008 - 1968 = 1980), which indeed matches Moscow 1980 and the correct colour region. By applying this rule, we can fill in the rest of the grid:

The final result matches both years of hosted games and their colour-coded regions.

The Answer

Atlanta 1996 corresponds to the cell with the question mark, confirming our shortcut answer that the softball champion is the United States of America who won gold at the Atlanta 1996 Summer Olympic games.