{"id":4205,"date":"2024-12-28T12:17:01","date_gmt":"2024-12-28T17:17:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/josmfs.net\/?p=4205"},"modified":"2025-09-10T21:40:11","modified_gmt":"2025-09-11T01:40:11","slug":"nsa-track-and-field-puzzle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/josmfs.net\/wordpress\/2024\/12\/28\/nsa-track-and-field-puzzle\/","title":{"rendered":"NSA Track and Field Puzzle"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft  wp-image-4557\" src=\"https:\/\/josmfs.net\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/NSA-Track-and-Field-Fig2a.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"200\" height=\"181\" srcset=\"https:\/\/josmfs.net\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/NSA-Track-and-Field-Fig2a.jpg 400w, https:\/\/josmfs.net\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/NSA-Track-and-Field-Fig2a-300x272.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 200px) 100vw, 200px\" \/>This is a puzzle from <a href=\"https:\/\/www.futilitycloset.com\/2024\/04\/29\/javelin\/\">Futility Closet<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cA puzzle by Steven T., a systems engineer at the National Security Agency, from the NSA\u2019s September 2016 Puzzle Periodical:<\/p>\n<p>Three athletes (and only three athletes) participate in a series of track and field events. Points are awarded for 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place in each event (the same points for each event, i.e. 1st always gets \u201cx\u201d points, 2nd always gets \u201cy\u201d points, 3rd always gets \u201cz\u201d points), with x &gt; y &gt; z &gt; 0, and all point values being integers.<\/p>\n<p>The athletes are named Adam, Bob, and Charlie.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Adam finished first overall with 22 points.<\/li>\n<li>Bob won the Javelin event and finished with 9 points overall.<\/li>\n<li>Charlie also finished with 9 points overall.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Question: Who finished second in the 100-meter dash (and why)?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I thought this puzzle impossible at first.\u00a0 There didn\u2019t seem to be enough information to solve it.\u00a0 But a bit of trial-and-error opened a path.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/josmfs.net\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/NSA-Track-and-Field-answer.jpg\">Answer<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>See <a href=\"https:\/\/josmfs.net\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/NSA-Track-and-Field-Puzzle-240501a.pdf\">NSA Track and Field Puzzle<\/a> for solutions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This is a puzzle from Futility Closet. \u201cA puzzle by Steven T., a systems engineer at the National Security Agency, from the NSA\u2019s September 2016 Puzzle Periodical: Three athletes (and only three athletes) participate in a series of track and field events. Points are awarded for 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place in each event (the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[16,174],"class_list":["post-4205","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-puzzles-and-problems","tag-futility-closet","tag-logic"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/josmfs.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4205","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/josmfs.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/josmfs.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/josmfs.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/josmfs.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4205"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/josmfs.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4205\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4559,"href":"https:\/\/josmfs.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4205\/revisions\/4559"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/josmfs.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4205"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/josmfs.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4205"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/josmfs.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4205"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}