Get ready for Bloomberg’s Summer of Puzzles 2022!
June 15, 2022
Welcome to Bloomberg’s Summer of Puzzles 2022! Starting on Friday, June 24, we will be posting a new puzzle every Friday at 12:00 PM EDT. The hunt will last 9 weeks. All puzzles are logic-based with no directions; they will take your creativity and ingenuity to solve. Solving the weekly puzzle will earn you points toward becoming the winner! Check this page each week to learn more about what inspired the creators!
If you miss a week, don’t worry! Puzzles from previous weeks will remain unlocked for you to solve at any time throughout the duration of the 9 weeks until the hunt closes on Friday, August 26. For the first three days that each puzzle is available, hints will be released every 12 hours. All released hints will remain available for the full 9 weeks.
Some important things to understand about how Summer of Puzzles works:
- If you solve a puzzle after all of the hints have been released, you can still earn the maximum number of points, but your ranking will be below those who completed the puzzle before you.
- There is no penalty for submitting an incorrect answer.
- Looking at hints does not impact your score.
Visit https://puzl.ink/summer today to register to participate in Bloomberg’s Summer of Puzzles. We encourage you to invite your friends to compete with you! Don’t forget to follow us on Twitter at @TechAtBloomberg (we might just drop a teaser or two there) or to tag your posts on social media with #SummerOfPuzzles and/or #BloombergBpuzzled.
Our first, second and third place winners will all receive a Bloomberg swag bag! Additionally, our first place winner will receive a Nintendo Switch and our second place winner will receive Apple AirPods.
And if you’ve ever wondered why software engineers love puzzles so much, Puzzle Team Member Alban Lefebvre, a software engineer on our PORT Equity Data Analytics team, shared some insight into why puzzles are fun and interesting:
“Since I was young, I’ve been interested in puzzles and treasure hunts, logic brain teasers, riddles, etc. So, finding a team of like-minded folks that enjoy spending time solving obscure puzzles with me has been an amazing experience. It has enabled me to meet an entirely new group of people outside of my direct team and work on vastly different topics than my day-to-day projects. For a few years now, I’ve also been able to help create puzzles for our Bloomberg puzzle hunts, and that has helped me get into the minds of the solvers and to consider new problems. For example, during the creation process, I’ve had to think about how strong of a hint we should give or how fun a puzzle is to solve. At the end, the most satisfying moment is having your own puzzle solved and seeing the solver’s face shine with a feeling of accomplishment!”
Happy Puzzling!
Meet our puzzle creators
Software Engineer Alban Lefebvre
Creator of Week 1 Puzzle: Set of Flags
You’ve been at Bloomberg for 10 years. What keeps you here?
There are two main reasons why I’ve been in the company for such a long time. The first is the skilled teammates I’ve had the chance to work with. Anytime I have a question about anything, I’m sure to be able to find someone who knows the answer. That’s one of the advantages of a large company, you’re sure to find someone who will have more expertise than you in most topics. And the second reason is the ability to work on lots of extracurricular activities. In my case, I’ve been able to get involved with creating puzzles for the company, helping in hiring, and being part of the company-wide Tech Representative program. All of these activities make it so that I don’t have any two days that are similar!
Why did you choose to design a puzzle with the theme of diversity and inclusion?
I’ve always been interested in helping to promote Bloomberg’s diverse workforce and inclusive workplace and I thought making a puzzle with this theme would do just that.
What’s one of the coolest / most interesting technologies you’ve had the opportunity to work with as an engineer at Bloomberg?
A few years ago, I had the opportunity to work with a set of new (at the time!) open source technologies, including Apache Storm, Apache Kafka, Apache Parquet, and Protocol Buffers (a.k.a. Protobuf), which has a codebase written mainly in Scala. It was super interesting to use all these technologies to solve a hard scalability challenge, and it worked great in the end!
What’s your favorite piece of Bloomberg swag?
The pajama pants, for sure.
Favorite spot in your office?
My favorite spot in the Lugano office where I work is the large meeting room called Ticino, which has a nice view of the Swiss Alps in the background.
Software Engineer Filip Simek
Creator of Week 2 Puzzle: Charts
You’ve been at Bloomberg for six years. What keeps you here?
It’s still fun! I combine my past experience with new learnings in order to make the codebase better, little by little, or even completely rebuild an application from the ground up. When I’ve had enough engineering and coding, there are so many other things to do – volunteering through the Best of Bloomberg (BOB) program, interviewing, and even creating puzzles.
What has changed in your impression of Bloomberg as a company over the years?
We’ve learned that working locally on your laptop is more productive than connecting to a remote datacenter, and that we can work from home just as well as from the office. Yet, it’s still nice to come to the office and meet people in person. We also have more than two datacenters now.
Why did you choose to design a puzzle with this theme?
Because of the <spoiler> between <spoiler> and <spoiler>.
What did you learn about Bloomberg from building this puzzle that you didn’t know before?
I found out how easy it is to draw charts on the Terminal (duh!).
What are some of the most interesting technologies you’ve had the opportunity to work with as a software engineer at Bloomberg?
I like being able to work on both the higher levels and lower levels of the programming stack. This gives me the opportunity to learn about both older and new technologies in the process. For example, I found it fascinating to read about the SPARC assembly language, the AIX object code format, and IBM MQ. Today, when I design new architecture using Apache Kafka and Apache Flink, I realize how much abstraction these modern tools give us.
What’s your favorite piece of Bloomberg swag?
I once got a Bloomberg branded pillow at a hackathon. It keeps me from banging my head on the table.
Favorite spot in your office?
In the Bloomberg London office, it has to be the lifts. You never know where they will take you…
Did you know?
Bloomberg uses a homegrown data visualization engine in many Terminal applications and on the web!
Software Engineer Chris Benedict
Creator of Week 3 Puzzle: Resistance Training
You’ve been at Bloomberg for nine years. What keeps you here?
First, Bloomberg’s open and collaborative culture. If you have a question or want some feedback, the norm is to go over to another engineer’s desk and ask them rather than work in your own bubble. Everyone is very approachable and receptive.
Second, Bloomberg is a great place for innovation. For example, my team holds a number of hackathons throughout the year, and several of the projects I’ve built during these events have gone on to become fully-fledged features and applications that I am very proud of.
But it doesn’t stop with technical projects. A bit more than seven years ago, I wanted to throw a puzzle competition for our interns, so I reached out to HR to see what they thought of the idea. They loved it and, as a result, I now have more than 80 engineers building puzzles, robots, games, art, movies, and more for these types of events.
Why did you choose to design a puzzle theme around training?
When you join Bloomberg as an entry-level engineer, you get to attend our training program. Of course, you will learn many things during these classes, but you will also get a chance to learn about and shadow different engineering teams. Near the end of the training program, you get a chance to rank which teams you would like to join. I wanted to create a puzzle that encapsulated this aspect of Bloomberg.
What did you learn about Bloomberg from building this puzzle that you didn’t know before?
While I was designing the puzzle, my original idea was to incorporate actual Bloomberg teams into the puzzle that you could join from training. I thought I knew at least something about most of the teams at Bloomberg at a very high level. However, I was way off; there are way more teams developing different products than even I was aware of!
What’s your favorite piece of Bloomberg swag?
Pajama pants!
Favorite spot in your office?
My favorite spot in our Global Headquarters in New York City is the terrace outside the 6th Floor pantry. During the summer, it’s a great place to eat lunch outdoors and enjoy the terrific weather.
Did you know?
Bloomberg’s Engineering Training Program enables new engineers to learn about the company’s technology stack, the Bloomberg Terminal, and fundamentals they need to succeed here. Each engineer is assigned a mentor and can shadow teams they want to learn more about as part of the team selection process. After ranking their top teams, our training team works on placing them in one of their top selections.
Software Engineering Team Lead Taigen O
Creator of Week 4 Puzzle: LIN<GO>
You’ve been at Bloomberg for 12 years. What keeps you here?
Beyond the daily collaboration that happens across the company, I’ve gotten a lot of support from my colleagues throughout my career. Early on, as a new hire, I was able to grow as an engineer with the help of many other engineers. Later in my career, when I expressed the desire to become a team lead, I was mentored not only by my manager, but also other managers across the department. More recently, when I decided to switch to another team in order to lead our ESG Integration team, I had the full support of my managers, which made this transition incredibly smooth.
Why did you choose to design a puzzle with this theme?
Word puzzles have always been my favorite type of puzzles – crosswords, BANANAGRAMS, Scrabble, Boggle, you name it. As many people did during the pandemic, I became obsessed with Wordle. I’m also a huge fan of the other theme of my puzzle, which you will discover when you solve it. It only made sense to combine two of my interests!
What’s your favorite piece of Bloomberg swag?
The Bloomberg Engineering backpack is a must-have for my commute!
Favorite spot in your office?
In our Global Headquarters in New York City, the 29th floor pantry has an amazing view of the city. It’s a great place to take a quick tea break during the day.
Did you know?
Bloomberg makes its own keyboards for the more than 325,000 financial professionals worldwide who use the Bloomberg Terminal to access real-time data, news and analytics. The “Enter” button on Bloomberg keyboards says “GO.”
Software Engineer Alastair Stanley
Creator of Week 5 Puzzle: Forum
You’ve been at Bloomberg for 4½ years. What keeps you here?
The sense of pride I get when I see the results of my work out in the world. I build publishing tools for Bloomberg’s newsroom, so every news story has been shaped in some way by me and my team.
What has changed in your impression of Bloomberg as a company over the years?
When I saw how vibrant the company’s office culture was, it was difficult to believe that a work-from-home setup could ever compare. I was blown away by the support we were given during the pandemic and the way that a four-decade old tech company was able to adapt to such crazy circumstances.
Why did you choose to design a puzzle with this theme?
I didn’t know anything about the Bloomberg New Economy Forum until I started researching ideas for this puzzle. Once I discovered it, I wanted to share some of the things I’d learned about one of the most important global events the company hosts… in the form of a puzzle!
What’s one of the coolest / most interesting technologies you’ve had the opportunity to work with as an engineer at Bloomberg?
My team uses an internal “reverse search” application built on top of Luwak and Apache Lucene. Traditional search engines query a document set to find matches. Ours does the reverse: it lets you store queries and send documents, allowing for some very cool live-update features.
What’s your favorite piece of Bloomberg swag?
My Bloomberg Engineering hoodie, as I typically have a hard time finding sweatshirts that fit me.
Favorite spot in your office?
The spiral “ramp” staircase in the Bloomberg London building is an almost therapeutic journey from the pantry to my desk. I enjoy my daily walks through the lively layers of the Bloomberg world, seeing colleagues work on all manner of colorful and creative projects as I go past.
Did you know?
Bloomberg New Economy is committed to bringing together leaders from developed and emerging economies to transcend deepening divisions and enact real change aimed at building common prosperity. The community consists of 750+ of the world’s most influential CEOs, leaders, visionaries, scientists, entrepreneurs, and policymakers.
Software Engineering Team Manager Nico Aiello
Creator of Week 6 Puzzle: Dig Dug
You’ve been at Bloomberg for eight years. What keeps you here?
Here at Bloomberg, there are opportunities to grow and lead in any direction you choose. I started on the Multi-Asset Risk System (MARS) BVAL (Bloomberg Evaluated Pricing) team as a brand new engineer without a computer science degree and grew over the years to Team Lead and now Manager of this team. Outside of engineering, I missed teaching from my previous years in academia and am grateful for the opportunity to develop and lead Bloomberg’s Python Coding Bootcamp, a Python class for high school students. I also co-founded BProud Tech, an ‘in tech’ subcommunity of Bloomberg’s LGBTQ+ & Ally Community (BProud) focused around representation, visibility, and mentorship within engineering and other technical roles.
Why did you choose to design a puzzle with this theme?
I wanted to design a puzzle based loosely on the discovery of Roman artifacts during the construction of Bloomberg’s EMEA headquarters in London. During my last business trip, I got to see a selection of the 405 “Bloomberg Tablets” showcased at the London Mithraeum located in the Bloomberg London office.
What’s one of the coolest / most interesting technologies you’ve had the opportunity to work with as an engineer at Bloomberg?
I got to work with one of our previous interns on an Apache Airflow project. It actually paved the way for a rewrite of our team’s entire core infrastructure!
What’s your favorite piece of Bloomberg swag?
It’s a tie between my Bloomberg umbrella and MARS hoodie! The umbrella was designed by artist Maya Lin and was inspired by different endangered species. The hoodie is super comfortable and was designed by a fellow Bloomberg puzzler who is also on one of the MARS teams.
Favorite spot in your office?
There’s a conference room on the 29th floor of the main Bloomberg office in New York where my team used to hold monthly “enhancement days” before the pandemic. We’d spend the entire day together working on small enhancements, listening to music, ordering in lunch, and enjoying the spectacular view. These were some of my favorite days with the team and I can’t wait to start them again!
Did you know?
Bloomberg’s European headquarters in London also houses London Mithraeum Bloomberg SPACE, a free cultural destination that showcases the ancient Roman Temple of Mithras, a selection of the remarkable Roman artefacts found during the excavations prior to the building’s construction, and a series of contemporary art commissions responding to the history of one of the UK’s most significant archaeological sites.
Software Engineer Dan Padawer
Creator of Week 7 Puzzle: Ready…Go!
You’ve been at Bloomberg for eight years. What keeps you here?
Getting to work on cool projects. Besides Puzzles, I work on Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery (CI/CD). That means I get to make tools that help engineers across the company, while being exposed to all sorts of new tech as people experiment with it.
What has changed in your impression of Bloomberg as a company over the years?
I’ve moved between a few teams over the years and worked with multiple groups. It’s been interesting to see how different teams do things and to occasionally cross-pollinate ideas.
Why did you choose to design a puzzle with this theme?
I’ve been puzzling for seven years now, so a puzzle about puzzle hunts is about as meta as I could get without actually making a meta (though I also helped on the meta, so, you know…)
What’s one of the most interesting things about working as an engineer at Bloomberg?
It’s the scale of things we have to work at. We’ve got 7,000+ engineers and tens of thousands of software libraries, which all have to not just build, but build together. That makes for some interesting challenges.
What’s your favorite piece of Bloomberg swag?
The various pins I’ve collected over the years. We make some of them for our internal puzzle hunts, plus our various Guilds give them out at times. My lanyard is getting rather full.
Favorite spot in your office?
The 29th floor pantry – it’s got a great view of New York City. And, during the summer, when we get the occasional mid-day thunderstorm, I can sit there and watch the storm go by.
Did you know?
Bloomberg’s Summer Intern Puzzle Challenge is our largest and most anticipated summer intern event. Teams of interns work to solve a series of logic puzzles created by Bloomberg engineers. Over 200 interns participated in the 2022 Summer Intern Puzzle Challenge.
Software Engineer Roseanna McMahon
Creator of Week 8 Puzzle: Square Mile
You’ve been at Bloomberg for three years. What keeps you here?
The people. Everyone I’ve met at work has been genuinely friendly and so happy to help out with any project.
What has changed in your impression of Bloomberg as a company over the years?
The longer I’m here the more I realize how much more I have to learn! There’s so much I still don’t know about the various technologies in use at Bloomberg.
Why did you choose to design a puzzle with this theme?
As with all the puzzles, I think it’s cool to be reminded of all the different locations we have offices in around the world!
What’s one of the coolest / most interesting technologies you’ve had the opportunity to work with as an engineer at Bloomberg?
I recently gave an internal presentation on the way our team does Business-driven Development (BDD) testing. Preparing for this talk made me realize how exciting this project is.
What’s your favorite piece of Bloomberg swag?
The Bloomberg umbrellas ☂️ – because I live in London!
Favorite spot in your office?
There are two meeting rooms on the first floor of the south building of the Bloomberg London building, which have huge windows that overlook the neighbouring pub. We use these rooms for choir rehearsals on Tuesdays after work and, in the spring, the sunshine is absolutely gorgeous!
Did you know?
The Bloomberg Square Mile Relay is an immersive, inclusive, and purpose-driven experience that takes place in heart of 12 of the most vibrant financial cities across the globe. As the only global corporate relay running race of its kind that places team building, employee well-being, and local community support at the heart of the event, it uses the power of sport and physical activity to address social challenges in each race city, with projects that deliver lasting positive social impact.
Our first eight puzzles have dropped. At 12:00 PM EDT tomorrow (Friday, August 19, 2022), our Meta Puzzle will open! If you got stuck on one or two of our previous puzzles, don’t worry – every puzzle is unlocked already and all their hints are available too! The answers to the earlier puzzles will feed directly into the Meta Puzzle.
Our Summer of Puzzles winner will be the first person to Crack the Safe!
Senior Software Engineer Lesley Lai
2022 Summer of Puzzles Design Team Leader
You’ve been at Bloomberg for 11 years. What keeps you here?
There are so many special things that keep me working here! Knowing that my creations are being used and getting both positive and constructive feedback from users really has helped me realize the importance of my work and the impact it has. The company’s open culture helps bring out honest and creative conversations and makes my daily communication with others very pleasant and refreshing. The people here come from diverse backgrounds, allowing me to learn from their unique perspectives, while also giving me the opportunity to share my own views with them. In addition, being part of a community like the puzzle team lets me exercise a very different creative energy (design and illustration) than programming!
How did you contribute to this year’s Summer of Puzzles?
I am part of the puzzle design team that was responsible for all of the art assets – from the background to the individual icons – seen on the website! We sometimes also help our puzzle creators design and illustrate some of the assets they need in their puzzles.
For this year’s “40th Anniversary” theme, the design team held a few brainstorming sessions, taking inspirations from celebratory events, swag, office decorations, etc., in addition to considering the theme of each week’s puzzle. We decided the background would be a view of an employee’s desk, looking into the beautiful celebratory fireworks, with items on the desk representing each of the puzzles. In reality, every one of our desk areas is just as personalized – some have a very clean, minimalist look, while others (like mine) are packed with fun toys, swag, and tokens representing some personal memory.
What’s one of the coolest / most interesting technologies you’ve had the opportunity to work with as an engineer at Bloomberg?
TypeScript! As someone who started working with JavaScript as a full-stack developer 11 years ago, it is refreshing to see the evolution of TypeScript and how it has matured over time. Having type definitions has made JavaScript, which is already a pretty popular language, even more powerful, while still retaining the flexibility of vanilla JavaScript.
Optional typing enabled us to convert our more than 50 millions lines of JavaScript code module by module, instead of trying to overhaul everything at once. Plus, with the added readability and maintainability benefits from IntelliSense,, we also got huge improvements in our TypeScript code base. I am very proud that Bloomberg is an active participant in the TypeScript community, where our colleagues are making some key feature contributions to make this language even more powerful 🙂
What’s your favorite piece of Bloomberg swag?
I have to give a biased answer. The puzzle design team also designs swag for every year’s Intern Puzzle Challenge, and those items are absolutely my favorites!
Some memorable ones include:
- The lenticular newspaper we made for a “Harry Potter”-themed hunt one year, where the image on the newspaper moves as you change the viewing angle.
- The enamel pins for a superhero-themed puzzle hunt another year. I am a big enamel pin collector, so being able to design and make pins based on our hunts is a very special memory for me.
- The “flip book” notebook we made for the television cooking show, where the corner of each page includes one frame of an animation, where flipping through the pages reveals the full scene!
Bloomberg’s Summer of Puzzles 2022 has ended; thank you to the thousands who participated!
Congratulations to software engineer Darren Lee, who graduated with electrical engineering and computer science degrees from UC Berkeley in 2019! As the first person to solve the meta puzzle, he won a Nintendo Switch and Bloomberg swag bag.
Bryce Cai, who graduated with a mathematics degree from Stanford University on 2020, came in second and won a pair of Apple AirPods and a Bloomberg swag bag.
We hope you enjoyed solving our puzzles this summer!