A Moose, Some Silly Putty ... And A Desperate Plea For Help [closed]

Question

Note: This event ended on Friday, December 22. This question is now closed to prevent submissions of new answers.

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Due to a rather unfortunate series of events that can be directly attributed to a surplus of egg nog, the company that provides our hat rentals has requested that we immediately return them without refund. We can't really get into the particulars of what went down, but we did our best to explain to them that I couldn't have known that a moose would react that way to silly putty.

Because of this, we need your help. We need to come up with approximately 20 - 30 more hat designs. Sounds pretty simple, right?

There is one tiny caveat (from an email I received earlier today from Jay Hanlon, VP of Holiday Cheer):

... because of holiday vacation schedules, we're short on people, so our kids are going to be doing most of the work on getting the new hats into the system. The designs will have to be done using crayon, construction paper, finger paints, water colors, popsicle sticks, paste & glue and other sorts of materials. Let them know that we don't recommend silly putty if they happen to be working near a moose.

That's right, you'll need to make hats that exist in the physical realm, from materials that aren't generally thought of as being choking hazards, suitable for developers ages 3 and above.

You'll need to provide at least one photograph of your creation as an answer to this question in order to qualify to win a box full o' swag containing a T-shirt and stickers and at least some of the following items:

• Nalgene water bottles
• Notebooks
• Sharpies & Other SE/SO branded office supplies
• Stickers from various SE sites
• Whatever else might be haunting our warehouse

The top voted hats may or may not be used as the basis of secret hats near the end of Winter Bash this year, or as totally new hats next year. We just can't say. We're talking silly putty and a moose here people, everything is up in the air at this point. I accept full responsibility for this.

Here are the rules:

1. You must come up with a creation that represents (in some way) a hat, consisting of artistic mediums that are not run as computer applications and suitable for children 3+ years of age. You can use Photoshop or Paint, but you'll have to print it and make it part of something else.

2. You must upload at least one picture of your creation, and provide any background or context needed for others to appreciate its brilliance. We suggest including only the hat in the image (though background 'noise' is fine), remember that all contributions are CC-BY-SA.

3. All submissions must be family friendly and adhere to our be nice policy.

4. Employees (former and current) may submit an entry, but won't be eligible to win swag. I MEAN HOW MUCH SWAG DO YOU GREEDY PEOPLE ACTUALLY NEED?!

5. Answers must maintain an aggregate positive score to qualify. All answers that have a net zero or positive score at the end of the contest will win.

6. Contents of prize packages may vary, depending on availability of items; every effort to ensure equal value of all packages will be made.

7. You are responsible for the creation and execution of your design. If you fancy lasers and explosions and things get out of hand, it's not our fault.

Contest begins today, Thursday, December 14, 2017 and ends on Friday, December 22, 2017 at 20:00:00 UTC.

Want to join in on the fun? Get your smock, grab some clay & finger paints and get to designing!

_{Note: We're not really giving back all of the hats, we're just pretending to so we can have some formerly age-appropriate fun}

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Update:

Thank you all for the amazing submissions! Not only did you help make the holiday a bit brighter for everyone, you've inspired quite a few of next year's hats!

Everyone that submitted a positively scored submission will receive a care package (even if it went in a tad after the ending); we'll be reaching out to you soon. However, we're no longer accepting submissions.

Happy holidays, everyone!

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You should have received an email by now :)

We've contacted everyone eligible to get something, if you didn't get something and think we might have missed you, make sure you check your spam folder and if nothing is there, contact us and let us know. Seriously, though, please check your spam folder - Hotmail and others are notorious about tossing stuff in the bin even from trusted contacts if the same email is sent to more than a few people using it.

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Status

Quoting the comment by animuson:

Anyone waiting for their swag, please keep an eye out here for updates.

Answer 1

See-through Mortarboard

Hit the reputation cap on a given Stack Exchange site for the first time.

Or:

Hit the reputation cap from upvotes on a single post (20 on a single answer or 40 on a single question in one day).

Materials used:

• bubble wrap
• transparent tape

Answer 2

Knight in Yarny Armour

Edit and answer a post that has a negative, zero, less than or equal to a -2 score, that turns into a positive score within 48 hours.

A message calls for help via text.

What could it be that has them vexed?

MidKnight coders come to the rescue far from sight,

yet their deeds travel at the speed of light

^{B. Agel}

It's a knight helmet with a functioning visor, crocheted from yarn! It is also really warm in the winter!

Answer 3

Our site is a hat. We want our hat-site hat.

a.k.a. "all teh physics!"

Suppose you had a Hatters Stack Exchange. Then Winter Bash would be like a national holiday on steroids, no? Now suppose you had a Stack Exchange whose logo is, already, a hat. Then you'd expect the Winter Bash to show the physics some love and throw in a Mexican-hat-potential-logo-styled hat into the mix. But so far, no joy.

So, without further ado:

Materials: white paper, scissors, stapler, green whiteboard marker. (If you're feeling particularly into things, you might even plump in a plush Higgs boson (or some other such representation) on the outer rim of the hat, much like its fundamental-particle's natural home.) In terms of graphical assets, you have them already:

The physical representation might look, to an untrained eye, to be of relatively low accuracy. If that is bugging you, then you might not have grasped just how loose of an attachment to accuracy we physicists can quite easily lapse into when we say "yeah, this is definitely not a harmonic oscillator ( / quadratic potential) but let's pretend it is anyway".

As for triggering behaviours... oh, golly, how about just visiting Physics Stack Exchange on some important physics date? Or posting or other nontrivial participation? If you want to up the bar on the participation requirements, then it might also be nice to extend the opportunity to, say, the physics and mathematical-physics tags on Math SE and indeed any tag on any site that includes the string 'physics'.

Anyways, back to the loud protesting:

Our site is a hat. We want our hat-site hat.

Answer 4

Oh Noes! Hope I'm not late for the game!

I want a crown, it is still a hat, right? There is an ongoing shortage of 3 years old engineers in my country so I get help from my 10 years old engineer who even helped me to solder the LEDs.

Answer 5

I give you the Amped Up hat. Remember from last year?

Not that is was my favorite hat, but it was the one that fit the color construction paper I had. :)

Answer 6

Cruise Reviver / Hairboat

Note: Although it cannot be seen very well on the image, the ship actually has some supports so that it can be worn on the head fairly easily.

Possible use: Award a bounty to an answer which then gets at least 3 upvotes.

Answer 7

Why have a hat when you can have a tiara?

So I decided to make a tiara, Eco-friendly to be specific:

Ingredients:

1. Green chilies: (when you go Eco-friendly, you surely need some green:

2. Thread: (white worked fine for me)

3. Knotting skills:

4. Test subject:

My dotted head friend got so excited that his eyes started glowing:

Spicy Tiara: for a post which became controversial and got both upvotes and downvotes, at least three of each.

Answer 8

@Catija I think we'll pretty much accept anything someone could conceivably put on their head without wearing a monitor in the process. - Tim Post ♦ 2 days ago

But... what if someone wants to wear a monitor on their head?!

(mod hat not required)

Materials

• One laptop

• One mod hat

Suggested triggers

Keyboard wear-out - write 8 answers in one day, all scoring 2 or above.

Answer 9

My Play-Doh says it is safe for ages 2 and up:

It also is created with the artistry and skill of a 2 year old (although I assure you I am older than that).

This should be for questions or answers that get at least 2 votes in 2 minutes, asked or answered by someone who has been a member for at least 2 years. And then they say "D'oh!" and make a minor edit.

Answer 10

Simply because we tend to have smart, lazy 3 year olds (and toddlers tend to cover things given the chance), and I think adorableness can often make up for a lack of skills (cause many of these hats are excellent) ...

I present...

Khajit has answer if you have coin!

And since I'm not a cat person, the Khajit is played by SU's favourite Canine, Ash.

Possible Use: Post an upvoted answer for a question with a bounty.

Answer 11

Future FPV Hat - awarded for committing to the Drones proposal on Area51 (hint hint!)

Answer 12

Love online shopping? Then this hat is for you. All you need is:

• A small box that fits on your head.
• Air packets if you want to make horns out of them :)
• Tape to stick air packets to box.

This is how you can use them:

Suggestions

• Link only flags.

A few of the answers consist of a link only, where the user just puts a link which provides reference to the other online sources, just like online shopping.

Answer 13

Behold, it's time for the

Unicorn Hat!

We know that we all love unicorns, right?, so let's make one unicorn hat.

That's with the ears folded. When I informed the hat that it'll be featured on MSE, it got excited and raised it's ears in awe

It also fits perfectly on the head

We know that unicorns will lead you to your "pot of gold", so the trigger can be to post something which might earn you a gold badge.

Answer 14

As The Guy with The Hat, I feel obligated to post The Hat:

Originally a Christmas present when I was 10 or so, The Hat was made by my Aunt's friend. I now wear The Hat throughout the winter—and sometimes in the summer too!

NOTICE ME!
Place a bounty on a question of yours that has 0 score.

Answer 15

Cherry on Top

This is my attempt at sticking a cherry on my head. Whether it worked or not is up to the voter.

Materials:

• 1 towel
• 1 stick
• 1 rubber band

I took some of my hair in the back, took the rubber band, and tied the stick in my hair so that it would stick up. I then wrapped the towel around my head, turban-style. What resulted is above.

Suggested trigger:

Cherry on Top - post a second answer to a question that already has one answer, with your answer scoring at least 4, and the first answer having a score of at least 3.

Answer 16

The designs will have to be done using crayon, construction paper, finger paints, water colors, popsicle sticks, paste & glue and other sorts of materials.

Ans: Check., uses paper and glue (or cello-tape) and some crayons / sketch pens.

[...] a hat, consisting of artistic mediums that are not run as computer applications and suitable for children 3+ years of age

Ans: Check. (I sat with my 4yo niece [nickname: "Titli", meaning, a small butterfly] to jointly come up with the "design", she gets as much credit as me, if not more).

You must upload at least one picture of your creation, and provide any background or context needed for others to appreciate its brilliance. We suggest including only the hat in the image (though background 'noise' is fine), remember that all contributions are CC-BY-SA.

Ans: Check. (Though not very high quality)

All submissions must be family friendly and adhere to our be nice policy.

Ans: Check.

You are responsible for the creation and execution of your design.

Ans: Check. (Already feeling the heat, total responsibility, I now have 20+ orders for Christmas party for her schoolmates)

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Hat Name: Upside-down (An Origami hat!!)

Feature: You can wear the hat whichever way you like,

• top-down or (Photo 1, 3)
• bottom down. (Photo 2, 4)

Criteria:

Possible Trigger: Use both 10 Upvote and 10 Downvotes on a single UTC day.

Photo 1:

Photo 2:

Photo 3:

Photo 4:

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How-To:

1. Take a square paper sheet (or make it square by cutting off the extra part)
2. Fold each corner to the center equally.
3. Reverse it, and fold again.
4. Reverse it, and fold again (third time, not a typo)
5. Reverse it, unfold the top and the bottom flap.
6. Hold both the other opposite ends, and pull out gently.
7. Refold to the other side.
8. Finally, fold the entire piece in half.

There you have one building block, get (at least) three more, and join them. Add sticky notes, colors to your wish!!

The steps:

The final building block:

Note: Images from internet, not owned by me.

Answer 17

T-Shirt Ninja

Answer a question when no one is looking

Answer a question with less than 20 views and receive at least one upvote

Steps to reproduce

1. Find a black T-Shirt
2. Turn it inside out
3. Put your face through the head hole
4. Tie the arms behind your head
5. Pull the bottom of the shirt up to cover your face
6. Tie that behind the head to secure
7. Impart Knowledge

Answer 18

Barry Commoner once said:

The proper use of science is not to conquer nature but to live in it.

With the same thought in mind, I'm presenting:

"Go Green - Say No To Plastic" Hat

same bag with some craftsmanship :D

This hat is created by using just an inverted paper bag. Simple, right? But it has a huge meaning to save the world. In this Winter Bash, we may spread the word to world for saving our mother earth.

Possible Triggers:

• Since this hat is created to spread "Go Green" word to the world, we may award it to someone who shares a link to the post which is later visited by 3 different ip addresses.

• Go green also means making the environment clean. We may award it to someone who flags 10 comments as 'no longer needed' and moderator marks them as useful.

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What’s the problem with plastic bags?

In response to the problem of using plastic bags and accepting negative impacts on our environment, more and more countries are banning and regulating the use of plastic bags in supermarkets and retail outlets. The efforts of governments and retailers will be wasted if we do not help reduce the consumption of plastic bags.

In this Winterbash, we can spread this awareness to SE/SO community and can try to make our world a better place.

Here are some interesting facts about plastic bags that you probably didn’t know:

• 5 trillion plastic bags are produced yearly. Side by side, they can encircle the world 7 times.
• The Great Pacific Garbage Patch, which is a floating landfill of garbage in the Pacific twice the size of Texas, is mostly composed of plastic.
• In 2008, a sperm whale was found beached in California. It died due to the more than 22 kilos of plastic found in its stomach.
• Plastic will only start degrading after 700 years and will only fully degrade in 1000 years. This means that all the plastic that has ever been produced has not degraded yet.
• Plastic bags remain toxic even after it breaks down. It doesn’t biodegrade, it photo-degrades. It means that after it degrades, it breaks down into smaller and smaller toxic bits of itself – and bleeds and contaminates the environment.
• In the North Pacific Ocean, there are 6x more plastic debris than plankton.
• Plastic bags are produced using petroleum, natural gas and other chemicals. Its production is toxic to the environment.

Here's one of the well-known quote from A Sand County Almanac (1949) written by Aldo Leopold who was a famous wildlife biologist and conservationist:

"We abuse land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us. When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect."

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Edit: Here's the noise free version of the hat.

Disclaimer: The bag I used is the random paper bag which was available at my home. By usage of it, I am not promoting any brand, or any product belonging to that brand.

Answer 19

The Meta-Moose hat

Design a hat to be used during a winter bash

Inspired by this post, this hat involves:

• a moose
• a putty knife (perhaps plastic would be safest for small children)
• 2 rubber bands

Answer 20

The Ha(t)mmer ⁽¹⁾

Possible achievement: earn it by downvoting / VTC'ing / deleting any Q/A before it reaches -5 (with a minimum of 25 per day / 30 consecutive days).

Easy to use: just nod your head to hit the delete button/key :)

-> Specially designed! One size fits all, with adjustable length of the grip through the top hole.

WARNING: beware of fingers on keyboard (ouch, that hurts ^^) when using it!

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Material: 2 recycled paper sheets / 1 recycled paperboard folder / scissors / tape / glue.

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CAN YOU REALLY WEAR IT AT WORK? YOU BET! ⁽²⁾

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^{- (1) Intended for (but not only): Mjöllnir's fans / Diamonds - Mods / 10k+ users}

^{- (2) Easier when you're in your own office, and when your colleagues know how wacky and geek you can be sometimes ^^}

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DISCLAIMER: too much use of this power-hammer can lead to the dark side, don't be the next hat vader...

Answer 21

Powered Up

• Earn a new privilege

This hat consists of a 15 foot extension cord carefully wound into a shape that will fit on one's head as a hat. In theory it seemed like a good idea, in practice it was harder than I had hoped. To be honest, without a frame or structure, making a cord have a shape took some time.

Answer 22

A crown made out of popsicle sticks and glue, as requested! I ran out of glue, so I had to cut the project short (I was going to have five logos surrounding the pentagon, but two will have to do.) and tie up the ring with ropes. (Carving holes in them in the right regions for the stand-up poles and for the ropes were hard.)

Equipment involved: Carving knifes, popsicle sticks and glue amounting to a budget of $0.5

(p.s. I'd be ecstatic if anyone wants to sponsor a dollar or two for more glue and art)

Answer 23

Garbage Collector hat

Update: Refinement 1 !!!

I printed some logos and some "logo"s and glued one onto my "hat". It looks more like a GC now!

If you like it, you can grab the logo here and print it (Dimensions: 790x332).

Background

In Chinese, because of the (in)famous "National Matriculation Examination" (Chinese: 高考), students in Senior Middle Grade 3 (= United States Grade 12) always have a lot of assignments, most of which are printed papers (instead of well-stamped, published books). Due to the burdening load, assignments on these papers are rarely finished before they ever had a second chance to be reviewed again. This creates a tremendous amount of paper waste, despite the fact that almost every single school uses recycled paper for pointing these materials (white papers are only used to print formal documents). Besides directly throwing away, school guys have various ways to entertain with and utilize these wasted paper, one of which is folding them into paper planes. Well, that's still a waste if they're thown from 6/F and not picked up later. A better way to utilize it is to fold it into throwaway bins, as illustrated by Image #3 above. If you invert it, you get a hat instead :) Very eco-friendly, isn't it?

What about developing?

^{Feel free to correct any mistakes in this section. I'm not a professional IT worker, just an ordinary student who started learning programming on his own since Winter 2010 (Age 10).}

Garbage collector is an important part of many interpreted languages and OOP languages, including C#, Java, Python, Perl, English, Spanish, Arabic and Russian. It keeps the process' usage of memory in a reasonable amount by freeing objects that are not used anymore and finding lost keys for Tim Post. Without GC, a simple iterative program can eat up to 8GB of waffles in six to eight weeks. If that ever happens, you should totally drop the program and use jQuery. It's fast and simple.

Possible way to obtain this "hat"

Garbage Collector I: Raise 5 helpful flags on posts that are later deleted in a single day.

Garbage Collector II (2k): Delete a post from the Low Quality Posts review queue in 5 consecutive days.

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Míscéllánéóús

If anyone is interested in my handwriting, here's a look:

Profile for iBug on $tack Overflow

Answer 24

The Crown Hat

Possible awarded for

Win a bounty on a question

or

Answer a question with 10 or more score

Materials Required

1. Paper
2. Tape

Answer 25

The hat of last minute deployments

Just as my luck is, it was the end of the year, and I was so busy I only saw this post 40 minutes before the deadline. But with still a few minutes left let's try to do something:

This is my nice little gingerbread hat with a stack overflow logo on it:

It's now going into the oven, and let's see if it will be ready to put on a gingerbread man until 8pm!

Materials:

• Flour
• Egg
• Sugar
• Honey
• Spices (mainly ginger, cloves and cinnamon)

Aand it's ready, while still 3 minutes to go. It is also delicious:

And you obtain the hat by doing something at the very-very-very end of the Winter Bash!

Answer 26

Chocolate Hat

The same construction process as I did for The Sweet 2018 Hat.

Bike Hat

How to get it:

Edit a question into shape and be the first to answer it with a score of 2+.

Other chocolate hats: The Piggy Hat and the Hunter Hat

The Piggy Hat

Awarded for:

Leaving 10 comments, each upvoted 5+ times.

(Piggies are messy, like leaving a lot of comments, but chocolate is good, as are upvoted/useful comments)

The Hunter Hat

Awarded for:

Winning at least one bounty by the end of the year.

Answer 27

Fidgety Some Kind of Spin Thingy

Materials:

• A shipping box that is a little too big for your head
• Another box to cut the spinner from
• Kiddy scissors (so you don't cut yourself)
• Craft glue
• Foil
• Masking tape

Suggested triggers:

• Answering 3 or more questions in 30min, all of them getting a positive score.
• Start writing an answer to a question, leave, come back to the draft and finish the answer. The answer gets accepted.

_{Attribution: Thanks to this hat for the name idea}

Answer 28

Mother of Work In Progress

Earn 200 reputation on 5 Stack Exchanges with no designs

To make this hat:

Make 15 work in progress hats

Staple then all together in a huge mess.

Cry over the amount of time you just spent for a random internet website

Answer 29

You're the Chief

This is a turban that usually chief of rural area used to wear in old times in Rajasthan. Chief are supposed to solve problems of residents and give judgement about the certain disputes.

Materials:

• A 1 or 2 meter long piece of cloth. The cloth can be of one or multiple colors to give a shiny look.

• some clips to keep it tied.

I wrapped it around my brother's head since I didn't have a mannequin and used clips to keep it tied. And the final product is above.

Suggested trigger:

Post a meta answer with +3 votes.

Answer 30

Ninja Turtle

This is the secret Ninja Turtle hat! To get the Ninja Turtle hat, you must find the hidden Chicken.

Here's me wearing it in all its glory: