Ginter Code Solution Part 1

Have you seen this man? Pat Neshek of the Minnesota Twins played a key role in this year's Ginter Code contest. So is Pat Neskek the answer? Yes and no. This card is a vital part of the Ginter Code, but not the solution. We'll get to that.

So welcome to the solving of the 2009 Ginter Code. We (Mike Gellner from JDs Wild Cardz and Nick Jacoby from Cardboard Overload) have created this blog to lead you step-by-step through how we solved the code. There are a lot of puzzles involved, and some parts can be a bit difficult to explain, so feel free to leave comments or email us with any questions that you might have.


Before we start, we just wanted to give a little background on how we ended up partnering on this project to begin with.

Mike: Earlier in the week I made it my goal to go online and download as many Ginter Code card images as possible, thanks to our friends at Ebay. A lot of images were missing, but I downloaded as many as I could find.

On Saturday, I received an email from Nick Jacoby (same name as my son...fate??) mentioning that he saw I was looking to combine efforts and that he felt he had a few good leads. We sent a few "feeler" emails out, careful not reveal too much to each other, and discovered that we were pretty much to the same point, had discovered something special with the "L" cards, and decided to start discussing on the phone. It was pretty much downhill from there and within the next 72 hours we officially submitted our response to Topps and the wait began.


I just want to say that it was without a doubt the epitome of a team effort. Nick and I helped each other out right up to the final code answer, and there is no way either one of us could have done it without the other, so I just want to thank Nick for being part of a really great experience!

Nick: I bought my boxes on Friday and knew I wanted to work on solving the code because I've always been great at puzzles and the like (yes this is me). I busted my boxes and noticed the "L" cards as well (more detailed explanation in the next step), but wanted to see if someone wanted to team up on the code rather than try to tackle it by myself. I Google searched for anyone discussing cracking the Ginter Code, and Mike was the only blog I could find. I emailed him as discussed above, and the rest is history. I want to thanks Mike as well for the experience.


Just a few quick notes about the code

• It DOES take all 100 cards to solve the puzzle (although we actually solved it without a few of the cards...more to come on this).
  




• The backs of the card WERE NOT important since these were parallels and no different from the regular cards.




• You should be able to order code cards from Ebay for MUCH cheaper now! Take it to the man!

On to the solution!