Alcatraz: Great Engineering Challenge

This was one of the events in Kurukshetra in which I was a part of the organizing team. It was an event to find the ultimate engineer - one who was both theoretically and practically set to be an all-round engineer. The event was to have three rounds. In the first round the participants' basic theoretical knowledge in most of the disciplines of engineering had to be tested. The second round was a hands-on round in which the selected ten teams were given items to design or assemble on the spot. To be frank, the first two rounds were just perfunctory ones, to filter out three teams for the final showdown. Our entire event was focussed on the final round.

The participants, three teams of three, would be put in three identical prison-like environments and they must escape within two hours. The prison would have a cot, a table, a chair and some posters on the walls. Nothing more. Of course, the prisons had to be classrooms in Science and Humanities block which limited our choice of devising a dramatic escape route. Hiding the key in the room and making the participants find it would be too cliche. We weren't satisfied with that. First we thought of hiding a screwdriver and making them remove the window grills(which we would have loosened before) to escape. But there would be an obvious opposition from the authorities. To find out what we did, read on...

Kurukshetra, Day one:

First round, 10:00 a.m. -

Two months of sweat and blood. The judgement day had finally arrived. The moment of truth. It was the first event in Kurukshetra and was to be the major crowd-puller. All the rooms in the Science and Humanities block second floor were flooded with the most energetic participants (fresh bloods without the strain of the battle yet). The prelims was for an hour. Written. The 30 questions were of excellent standard as was accepted by all the participants who wrote. There were questions from day-to-day life which we would have never given a second thought to(like why was the sky blue and not violet according to Rayleigh's scattering law, why are the containers in water lorries ellipsoidal instead of cylidrical etc.), questions from basic engineering designs(like designing mechanical equivalent of logic gates, gear trains etc.), questions from physics(on half-life period, relative velocity etc.) and many more, each of which left the participants thinking, "Why have we not thought about this before?" Feedback from one of the teams, "Our paper is full of intelligent questions but stupid answers." Our day was made.

Second round, 2:30 p.m. -

Ten teams were selected from the 400 odd teams that participated in the first round. The second round was design round. There were three problem statements. One, a dismantled alarm clock was given which was to be reassembled from the first gear and screw and made to work. Two, an intact cycle bell had to be opened and its working had to be explained with suggestions on improving its efficiency. Three, a tensegrity tower had to be constructed from sticks and rubber bands. It was interesting to see the teams working on their problem statements. Hope it was as interesting and educative to the teams.

Kurukshetra, Day two:

Third round, 1:00 p.m.

The participants were put in three rooms on the first floor of Science and Humanities block. Identical. When the participants entered the first thing they would notice is the diary of the previous prisoner. The only prisoner to have escaped the Alcatraz - "Where you realise hell is better". I came up with that and wrote the quote on the blackboard of the 3 rooms. So, the escaped prisoner has left some clues for these guys to escape, but wants to ensure that only the deserving, would escape. The teams find out from the diary that the prisoner has a habit of solving sudokus and crosswords in the newspaper everyday. They search for any newspaper in the room and find one under the bedspread. The sudoku has some unsolved numbers circled, with an arrow pointing down or towards the right. After solving those numbers, their corresponding solutions the prisoner has scribbled in the crossword( the number along with down or across) is verified and the words "next step board" is found.

The blackboard is searched for the next clue and the writing "dangling spinner y in this room" is found under the rim of the board. The dangling spinner refers to the fans. The fans are ensured to be off. We switched off the power supply. The blades of the fan contained pieces of jigsaw puzzles, which the teams had to get using the chair and table. The pieces of the jigsaw when arranged had a maze with letters. The correct path would have the words "if cities were stars, trace the prisoners escape route on the map." The diary had the cities that the prisoner planned to follow after he escaped. When the cities were joined on the India map on the wall, the shape of Libra constellation was obtained. There was a Zodiac chart stuck on the wall, with an unrelated picture for every sign. The sign of Libra had the picture of the chair. When the chair was searched, inside its hollow leg a sheet of cryptic code was obtained, with the number 1.618.. on the top which denoted fibonacci number. When the letters in the code were decoded by taking fibonacci numbered letter in the table, the words "Second word in schedule" was found. There was a prison schedule stuck on the wall. The first letters of the second words in the schedule spelt "Take times as flags".

Next taking the times as semaphore flags, with the decoding sheet hidden in the back cover of the diary, the words "Morse codes wanted" was obtained. There were wanted posters on the wall with the pictures of the three prisoners (team members). The pictures were stuck on the wall using staplers and bell pins on the ends. The staplers denoted _ and bell pins denoted . of the morse code. Decoding those words using the sheet, they got the words "shout aloud lumos". When they shout "lumos", one of us organisers, who is inside filming the entire event, throws an invisible ink reader to them. Using the reader on the pages of the diary, they find one of the pages has a picture of the top view of the room with a chain a saw and a cross on the door, written in invisible ink. When they search the door, they find that it is actually chained from the outside and can be pushed open from the inside. But the chain would open enough to let them out. Upon searching the top of the door, they find the blade of a saw outside the top grill of the door. They use the saw to break the chain and get out.

All these clues were designed with the idea that they wouldnt seem obvious before they knew what to do. Two teams went through it all and escaped. One team knew that there was something in everything in the room, but couldnt figure out what and gave up. But on the whole all the 3 teams enjoyed the entire event thoroughly and couldnt stop talking about it for some days whenever they saw us. Our only regret is that only the 3 teams and few others knew about it and appreciated it. Had the video of the entire thing been properly edited and displayed as a movie, it would have been the biggest event of Kurukshetra. But on the whole it was an wonderful experience conducting it.