Whatever Happened to the Microsoft State Ordering Puzzle

Factual Questions
1

I couldn’t find any updates anywhere to learn the most recent states added.

Has somebody solved it? What was the solution?

2

http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=50956

Here’s a link so you know what I’m talking about.

3

It seems to have died on the vine. Perhaps the whole thing was a hoax. Here’s a Dope thread about it:

I believe the official puzzle site is States List Puzzle.

4

I doubt that it was a hoax. The originator seems to have stopped the list at 27, though. With the amount of publicity the puzzle got, if that was because someone in MS had won the damned thing, we’d have heard about it. So, either only 27 states qualify for the list[sup]1[/sup], or he decided to drop it.

I suspect it’s real enough, just so idiotically obscure that noone got it.

I would suggest to anyone trying this that the “eastern bias” in the list is significant. It’s striking in the animation - while not strictly an east to west phenomenon, the order seems geographically biased - other than a jump to AZ, the Rocky Mountain states and West Coast are left out. In fact, the western prairie states (the Dakotas, Nebraska, Kansas) are left out.

[sup]1[/sup] - “order something happened” was a clue. Perhaps the something only happened in those 27 states. Since it originated at Microsoft, it remains tantalizing that 27 states filed briefs supporting the DOJ lawsuit against Microsoft, but it’s the wrong 27.

5

Thanks. Yeah, I was starting to think it was a hoax. Well, maybe not a hoax, but something so obscure and/or personal to the puzzle author that it really wasn’t a fair puzzle.

6

FWIW, the puzzle creator worked (works?) in the sports games division at Microsoft. He claimed the answer to the puzzle is available on the Internet - i.e., it’s not something obscure and personal like “the order the puzzle creator visited the states during his childhood.”