Do you know the Brain Twister puzzle? It is composed of four puzzle pieces with varying shapes that are arranged in a way to match a certain pattern. During high school, brain twister is one of the games being held during math-science month from our freshman to sophomore years.
The competition is a team game which started with a five-man team in our 1st year then changed to a three-man team in 2nd year. I joined in both years but didn’t got lucky in the first year. The 2nd time I joined is a different story. Our team, myself together with Aarjaye and Rogan, swept through the elimination round. Then came the final round where we faced the defending champs composed of a bunch of 4th year students. We were the first people to arrive in the venue, which was really messy with all the chairs scattered around. We decided that we should clean and arrange the room first before everybody arrives. When some people came and asked why we were cleaning, we just answered “no pain, no glory” and we finished our work.
The game goes like this. One set of brain twister is provided to each team. The brain twisters are placed in a table a couple of feet away from the contestants’ line. Each turn in the game requires one representative of each team to run to the table then copy the pattern that was shown at the start of the turn. Whoever can copy the pattern first wins a point.
The game started and I was the first in line to solve the puzzle. I breezed through the puzzle and won the point. I can still remember the reaction from the opposite team’s representative at that turn, “paspasa oi,” which means “too fast.” I just smiled and I knew Rogan and Aarjaye can do the same performance. In the difficult round of the game, a different set of patterns were used. These patterns were just created by the organizers which means none of us in the room have an stored knowledge of solving them. We were leading by two points and just needed another point to win the game. It was Aarjaye’s turn and it was taking a record-breaking number of minutes to finish. I’m sure it’s more than five minutes or even ten minutes. In the end, he was able to solve it and we won the game.
It’s one of the best wins I had in high school because we really prepared and planned for the game. No pain, no glory.
Nostalgia Express 