FIRST RES-Q and Game Hints Revealed!

Have you slept since Kickoff, FTC community? Or have you been lying awake replaying the Kickoff video and mentally designing a robot to compete in the game? It’s going to be a season of challenges, but we know that you are ready and able!

Each Kickoff, we are so excited to share the new Game Challenge with you, and this year there were over 15,000 people at more than 70 Kickoff events around the world learning about the new game at 12 noon on Saturday – really exciting!

Truly, the important question is, what do you think of FIRST RES-Q^sm?  So far the word on the street is that this is an awesome game with lots of opportunities to explore on the field and in designing your robot. Of course, huge thanks to the Game Design committee for all the work they put into creating this game over the past two years, and remember everything you need to know about the game is on the FTC Game Page.

As always, we had a lot of fun with game hints this summer, and now we get to reveal them to you.

The mountain and climbingelement was a key focus of our hinting, as you can tell from the following:

• Ramp up the fun (Blog 6/19/15 – Summer Happenings and Game Hints)
• Obstacles… ramps… rough terrain… (Blog 7/23/15 – Achievement Starts with Belief)
• Rise to the challenge (Blog 8/25/15 - Challenge Accepted!)
• Posted a song by the band "Mountain" (Twitter 8/28/15)
• Picture of stairs (Twitter 9/2/15)
•  2015-2016 FTC Kickoff Sneak Peak Video!! (alluding to climbing, mountain goats) (Facebook and Twitter 9/11/15)

Of course, the zip line will prove to be an interesting element to work with, so we worked a few of those in:

•  #TBT That time Dr. Woodie Flowers built a zip line for the ice bucket challenge! (Facebook
  
  7/23/15)
• Picture of a goat with a zipline (Twitter 9/12/15)

There are lots of buckets and debris to put in the buckets on the field this year, so we hinted about that:

• Have you been catching all of our awesome blog posts this summer? They sure are a bucket of fun! Check them out if you missed any!  (Facebook 7/22/15)
• #TBT That time Dr. Woodie Flowers built a zip line for the ice bucket challenge! (Facebook 7/23/15)

 We also alluded to the name and theme “Res-Q several times:

•  Handy… (Blog 6/29/15 Alumni! We Want You!)
• Rescue mesong: #TBT stickin' with the classics! You know it's gonna be stuck in your head all day! http://bit.ly/1HB99aL (Twitter 8/21/15)
•  #triviatuesday What movie is Ben Whishaw most famous for? #omgftc (Q from James Bond) (Twitter 8/26/15)
• Pic of “rescue dogs” waiting for kickoff (Twitter 9/9/15)

Of course, we had fun with those pesky red herrings, including these carefully placed diversions:

• Gotta love those classics! (Ring of fire by Johnny Cash) (Twitter 7/30/15)
• Red Herring: This is a cool 3D printed summer project! You just have to print an endless cycle of rings! (Facebook 8/5/15)
• We would jump at the chance to have one of these at our wedding or birthday! http://mentalfloss.com/…/65020/check-out-lego-themed-weddin… (Facebook 8/13/15)
• #FIRSTparody deadline is Nov 30 but we're currently accepting! Can't wait to see what ideas grow from ur imagination! (Twitter 8/24/15)
• 5 minutes until our New Component Overview - Dive into the New Tech Google Hangout! (Facebook 9/1/15)
• 8 Days until.................................#FTCKickoff2015!! (fake season pic) (Twitter 9/4/15)

Thank you to everyone who looked for game hints and made guesses. We especially enjoyed all the ideas on the Reddit thread. As always, a few folks were pretty close to getting it right!

So as you get to designing and building your robots to meet the Game Challenge, don't forget to check out all of the information, tools, and tips on the FTC TeamResources web page. Good luck this season, teams!