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Solution to Best of Five

Author: Jason Juang

The puzzle presents a tennis tournament where 5 sets are played in every match, but strangely, not every set is played to 6 games. The key is that the five set scores belonging to a given player actually form a Yahtzee roll. The blank "points" column in the puzzle is determined by finding how many points the player scored in his Yahtzee game.

First, fill in the missing set scores, using the information about the number of games won and lost by each player in the 5th sets of their matches. There are 12 highlighted boxes, one belonging to each player. Indexing into the player names, and reading in the order in which the players are listed in the statistics table, gives the phrase "ROLL THE BONES"; in addition to being a pretty sweet Rush song, "roll the bones" is a clue that dice are involved.

For each player, take the player's 13 match scores—11 round robin, plus 2 playoff—and find the optimal Yahtzee score achievable with those rolls. The last two digits of each score fall between 01 and 26. Again using the order given in the statistics table, convert the Yahtzee point totals to letters to find the answer STRAIGHT SETS.

Match Results

Solved round robin

Yahtzee Scores

These are the maximum attainable Yahtzee scores for each player. There is more than one way of achieving the maximum score.

TypeMURRAYGAUDIOTILDENLARNEDRAFTERHEWITTEDBERGBECKERCOOPERMARTINMUSTERAGASSI
Aces (Ones)361511311451216314314311146514314161046442252141311451311561211664112546
Twos665222662252422664442521466225632252422664424525622642665222654222665222
Threes9635339633633126431213333933136636311042664125333366311393563312336331233335
Fours164434412244434142658214641644244124412416444241241445124414641641616444431244164
Fives1551545155514554126510251521551355105523106226415153551535155101155615252551522555
Sixes186622618236661262163186612618266361221661182466618612661266115182166612663311264162
Three of a Kind26646462346454223455514165112566436172265224624660424622146443236641623654442245535
Four of a Kind22446442154444026325175333322444461863333224444602344202632318444240214422244644
Full House256633325616162522555254424225335550521410642240346232516611251155125626222555222
Small Straight3041635303453230252433015634305433603411104622401642505153330143650236423041263
Large Straight404215303523540243564015423404325604142206242406422106611440214530636124032645
Yahtzee5044444031336503333303215150444440531120626420432340165220421335033333032463
Chance246363623453562123664203533619344262346643246462622641651921655196622324464642235365
Upper half bonus35350035003500350
Total319 (S)220 (T)218 (R)201 (A)309 (I)107 (G)108 (H)120 (T)119 (S)205 (E)220 (T)219 (S)