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Solution to Crosswalks

Authors: Chieu Nguyen and Aaron Bader

This puzzle is a list of intersections in the city of Chicago, which has streets mostly laid out on a grid oriented with the cardinal directions. This grid is centered at State St and Madison St, which is the origin of the coordinate system, and all streets are named with a directional prefix (N/S, E/W) with respect to this origin. Furthermore, the addressing system for the entire city is based on this grid, so that any street address gives one of the two coordinates for that point on the grid. Every increase in 800 roughly corresponds to a mile in distance.

In this puzzle, each pair of coordinates indicates an intersection of two streets. In keeping with the theme of intersections, you solve the puzzle by treating each street name (not including the directional prefix or the street type (St, Rd, Ave, etc.)) as a set of letters and taking the intersection of the two sets. For all of the given street intersections, the corresponding letter intersection is a singleton set. Order these letters from north to south, and the letters spell out BULLS POINT GUARD ROSE, which clues the answer DERRICK, in reference to point guard Derrick Rose of the Chicago Bulls.

N/S coordinateE/W coordinateN-S streetE-W streetintersection letter
7500 N3100 WN ALBANY AveW BIRCHWOOD AveB
7200 N1700 WN PAULINA StW TOUHY AveU
7000 N7600 WN ORIOLE AveW LUNT AveL
5500 N1400 WN GLENWOOD AveW CATALPA AveL
5200 N1600 WN ASHLAND AveW FOSTER AveS
4100 N1400 WN SOUTHPORT AveW BELLE PLAINE AveP
3200 N6800 WN OAK PARK AveW BELMONT AveO
2600 N3400 WN KIMBALL AveW WRIGHTWOOD AveI
1600 N1700 WN PAULINA StW NORTH AveN
1300 N2400 WN WESTERN AveW POTOMAC AveT
1000 N5400 WN LONG AveW AUGUSTA BlvdG
700 N4000 WN PULASKI RdW HURON StU
200 N100 EN MICHIGAN AveE LAKE StA
100 S100 WS CLARK StW MONROE StR
200 S1800 WS WOOD StW ADAMS StD
400 S1300 WS THROOP StW VAN BUREN StR
800 S600 WS JEFFERSON StW POLK StO
1200 S50 ES WABASH AveE ROOSEVELT RdS
2200 S2100 WS HOYNE AveW CERMAK RdE