Damn. It’s not elevations!
This is driving me nuts!!!
USA Today put up a census site in March '01 (when this contest started). I have been banging on it to no avail:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/census/front.htm
A possible long-shot is a concert tour. Tours tend to hit clusters of states before hopping to a completely different part of the country. I am just not sure how many tours actually hit all 48/50 states. I wouldn’t think WY gets many concerts.
I’ve also googled all kinds of combos of states names and abbreviations.
Trust me, Hawaii doesn’t get a whole lot of concerts either - maybe half a dozen per year, at best.
If you want to go the concert route, you may want to use Hawaii as one of your first basis elimination. (Alaska would probably be even better.) Of course, you then run into the “what the heck did they mean by 48 or 50 states?” issue.
Can no one figure out this thing??? I can’t sleep!!!
I think someone already did…
This link was in the Pit:
http://www.thenewrepublic.com/doc.mhtml?i=20020819&s=chait081902
Um, not exactly. Do you have the order of the states? The link is another good lead to explore (implying that Delaware might have the highest tolls per mile/receives the most money from tolls/etc.), but hardly the answer. Is it the highest per mile? Most money taken in total? Largest number of toll booths? Greatest percentage of state population employed as toll collectors? State that receives the most quarters per day …?
For the record, I already saw that article and poked around looking for toll road statistics. This site claims that Connecticut and Arkansas both have no toll roads or bridges:
http://www.rvtechstop.com/tolls.htm
There is a “Connecticut Turnpike”, but if you look at the account here, you will discover that the toll was removed in 1985:
http://www.contrib.andrew.cmu.edu/~mn2n/tollroads.html
There might be something there, as the list includes some states with notorious toll roads, but I didn’t pursue it any further.
I think it HAS to be a word puzzle. Something that combines the word-forms themselves (ending with consonant/vowel and number of letters seem the most likely) with the region of the country, maybe.
hmm, could it be the most amount of businesses. I know that there is a tax advantage to set up a corporation in Delaware and a lot of people do.
Since my brother wrote that article, I can authoritatively state that he has no idea about this puzzle or the solution. Note in fact that I discovered this puzzle before he wrote his Delaware piece.
We can crack this one, guys! C’mon, we’re the SDMB!
It could be anything. Alphabetical by name of state flower, or state bird, or state motto, or governor’s name, or governor’s first born child’s name, etc. Or reverse alphabetical by any of those. Maybe some ordering based on the numerilogical value of the state name, or the value of the lt. governer’s name. Maybe it’s ordered by the state’s richest citizen’s shoe size. How about number of cats per capita? Number of members of the state senate whose middle names start with “Q”?
It could be ANYTHING.
Well, technically true but unlikely.
One of the clues is that the list was published. Therefore, I conclude that it is an ordered list of some actual attribute of the state rather than something like the numerical value of someone’s name.
I think it’s the order of states to solve the May 33rd puzzle.
I think we’re being misled a bit by the word “puzzle.” It’s technically a puzzle, since we don’t know the answer, but the set-up makes it sound more like trivia than a logical/word/etc. “puzzle.” I think the doofus who set up this contest saw some chart or graph in a magazine or newspaper that listed the states in some order based on some real attribute (i.e., not some obscure bit of wordplay, etc., unless this was taken from a games magazine), and decided to make a contest out of it.
Since there’s so much dough involved, I have a sneaking suspicion that the answer will teach his co-workers some sort of lesson (say, about their target demographic, about sports, etc.).
It was also created by a Microsoft manager. One idle thought I’ve had is that it has something to do with the litigation against Microsoft in the various states, or something else which should be of particular interest at Microsoft. In which case, the manager is probably annoyed that his employees haven’t gotten it.
Another “litigation” thought is tobacco suits.
Keep in mind that if the list is of 48 or 50 states, it would mean that all those states would have to have that attribute. For example, it wouldn’t be the date of litigation against Microsoft since many states haven’t sued Microsoft, so they would be impossible to put in order.
Well, JayLa has been kind (sadistic?) enough to send me a site that has “Microsoft” puzzles on it (apparently they have puzzle solving competitions), and if this is anything like those, which are wickedly complex, this puzzle should be more clever than just a random bit of trivia.
OTOH, it does sound an awful like a random bit of trivia question, so I guess it boils down to whether or not this really is supposed to be a puzzle or not.
And I’m way the heck tired, so I’m sorry if the above didn’t make any sense.
Oh sure, KK, drag me back into it. 
(By the way, we still have room on this year’s team …) The guy who set up the puzzle has not, as far as I can tell, ever competed in one of those puzzle-solving competitions so it’s probably less wickedly complex than you think. I think it was initially set up as more of a random-bit-of-trivia question than a puzzle.
Another friend has confirmed for me what optional nos. 49 and 50 are. And yes, they are the obvious ones.
Does this friend also have the answers??? LOLOL!!