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I believe the national tournament used junior googleplex. It involves sixteen squares in a four by four pattern, with... random squiggles on them. There are also four pawns that are placed on top of the pieces.

googlyfrog wrote:I've never seen or practiced with googolplex. I just looked it up on google images, but the pictures are really tiny. From what I see, they are a bunch of black squiggles. Can anyone who has used it elaborate?

I did WIDI at Nationals three years ago when it was googolplex. My memory on the subject is a bit hazy, but if I recall correctly, there were thin cylindrical sticks about 5cm in length, with a small tab sticking out perpendicular halfway down; there were flat polygonal pieces (squares, triangles, pentagons, etc) that somehow connected to those sticks; there may have been other pieces as well, but that was a while ago, so...

There is a picture of a bucket of them on the Write It Do It Wiki. Unfortunately, you can't see any individual pieces, but maybe you can make out some vague outlines... That's the best I can do as far as pictures; they seem to have pretty well disappeared from the Internet.

The pictures of a board with black squiggles are, as far as I can tell, unrelated to the googolplex building toy that has been used at Nationals.

I wish that they were possible to find somewhere. At least they are fairly regular and shouldn't be too hard. Plus, if we are expecting them, we might not be so confused. Thanks for the description, Phenylethylamine.

Gemma W wrote:I wish that they were possible to find somewhere. At least they are fairly regular and shouldn't be too hard. Plus, if we are expecting them, we might not be so confused. Thanks for the description, Phenylethylamine.

It's actually preferable when nobody has seen the material before; it makes for a much more level playing field. A good Writer can write instructions even if they don't have prior experience with the material; a good Doer can follow instructions even if they're not familiar with the specific pieces.

That being said, yes, of course it's a good idea to practice with the actual materials as much as possible. But the next best thing is nobody practicing with the materials.

True. I hope it won't be too hard. At least a similar strategy can be used for most building toys in each of about three categories.

To all who participated at nationals: what was the material you were given?

B was a bunch of random stuff; a rubber glove, a plastic cup, index cards, pipe cleaners, safety pins, etc.

personasaurus rex wrote:To all who participated at nationals: what was the material you were given?

I didn't actually participate myself, but from my team's WIDI competitors, apparently C was a mixture of K'nex and random materials (e.g., bendy straws, index cards, etc).

The WIDI was hard to write in the time given (B Div), and I ended up rushing a lot of things I shouldn't have. But basically it was just random junk like a cup, binder clip, domino, index cards, paperclip, toilet paper roll, weird hook thing, rubber glove, rubber band, pipe cleaner, and a ribbon which was VERY hard to describe. It was twisted and looped and knotted and I had no clue how to describe it.

I finished just before time was called. I think it was a good model, because it provided variation so there wouldn't be ties. The ribbon wasn't too bad, although it was somewhat difficult and you needed to be specific. The only main problem was that it was difficult to see some parts of the structure. Also, there was only one Popsicle stick in the structure, but builders got two different sizes, so unless you specified the size they wouldn't know. There is nothing wrong about it, it was just kind of annoying, especially because I thought about specifying but didn't.