You’ve mentioned how GDS requires a lot of setup and infrastructure to do. I don’t really know very much about the last two, would you mind explaining what kinds of things went into it, and also what it was?

You could enter if you were 18 or older and capable of working in the U.S. To make it to each next step, you had to qualify.Step 1 - Answer 10 essay questions (3000 words total).Step 2 - Take a multiple choice test on Magic knowledge.Step 3 - Do a design test.Top 8 compete in a competition that resembles a reality show that tests a skill (think Project Runway or Top Chef). Each week there is a design challenge. Judges review all the entries and give public notes. The person doing the worst overall is eliminated. The top three get flown to Wizards for a day of interviews and other tests.The winner gets a 6 month internship in R&D. The top three of each of the three Great Designer Searches, as well as a few others, were eventually hired full time by Wizards (although not all in R&D).Top 3 Finalists:GDS1 Alexis Jansen - winnerKen Nagle - runner-upGraeme Hopkins - thirdGDS2 Ethan Fleischer - winner Shawn Main - runner-upScott Van Essen - thirdGDS3Ari Nieh - winner Jeremy Geist - runner-up Chris Mooney - third

RE: The new standard for multicolor cards. Is this policy new within the last year or so? I'm asking because I remember the big debate about what multicolor combination Serra Angel would be due to one of the multiple choice questions in GDS3. Thanks for your time!

It got established as we were making Guilds of Ravnica and Ravnica Allegiance. Note that the GDS Question was about seeing if the test takers could find an answer within the given constraint.

Why is the essay part of GDS before the multiple choice? The essays seem like they would take a while to read while the multiple choice is graded automatically.

We only get to have about 100 people take the design test. I want to make sure those people are very invested in the opportunity, so having the 3000 words of essays be first makes sure the people taking the multiverse choice test are serious about the opportunity.

You wanted roughly 100 GDS3 candidates from the multiple choice test, so getting 90-ish by cutting to 73 was pretty good. What would you have done if - say - cutting to 74 give you 25, but cutting to 73 gave you 250?

I would have started by looking at the 25 and see if I could have a good Top 8 out of that pool. If not, I would have had to figure a way to quickly narrow the 250 down to review.

You're looking for new blood which will bring new skills and new ways of thinking. Given that, say a GDS3 contestant got perfect scores on the multiple choice test AND for the design test submitted elegant, novel designs that your current designers have already made before, AND you agree with every answer the contestant gave in the essay test. Do you eliminate that contestant for being too close to what you guys already have, in spite of their design skills and intuition?

I would not eliminate a good candidate for that reason.

Were there any questions on the gds multiple choice test that everybody got right? Were there any that everybody got wrong?

There were questions that 98% got right, I believe.

If you're allowed to talk about it, what was the lowest score somebody got on the GDS3 multiple choice test and passed? Or, to put it another way, would a 65 have been good enough? :P

You needed a 73/75 to advance to the third trial.

I'm not sure if this would help, but what if there was a series of smaller multiple choice tests over the course of 1 week? So, 25 "easy" questions, cutting off the bottom 50%, 25 medium questions, cutting off another 25%, and then finally the last 25 difficult questions, bringing it down to the 100. I think a lot of the backlash is coming from the high threshold, so by artificially lowering it, the cutoff doesn't seem as steep, despite being the same. It would be a logistical nightmare, though.

The same number of people fail to advance. Would having to do it through three tests rather than one make people happier?

Were you surprised at the cutoff point for the multiple choice test being that high? It’s a pretty big shift from the last two, but there were a lot more applicants after all.

We increased the test by 50%. Perhaps it needed to be even harder.

For the GDS3, do our essays factor into this cut (with our multiple choice scores) or the next one (with our design test)?

The next one. The multiple-choice cut is solely how you did on trial 2.