With the news that Puerto Rico has voted in favor of statehood, great portions of the Internet have turned their attention to what a 51-star flag would look like. Math nerds probably have an edge–they’re good at patterns, after all–so the most attractive options are being offered up by folks like Ed Pegg of mathpuzzle.org.
But my personal favorite, found on a Reddit thread by Laughing Squid, is this one:
Have you ever been jonesing for a puzzly challenge, but your phone’s dead and you don’t have any puzzle books with you and nobody wants to play 20 Questions or Hangman?
What is a desperate, puzzle-hungry person to do in a situation like this?
Well, if you’ve got a chessboard and a knight (or just some graph paper and a pencil, if you want to go bare-bones with it), you’ve got a puzzle waiting to happen.
It’s called a knight’s tour, and the challenge is to place the knight anywhere on the board and, moving the piece as you would in a regular game of chess, you hit every square on the board once.
It’s tougher than you’d think, and if you desire an even greater challenge, you could go for a closed tour, where the knight touches every square just once AND returns to the starting square.
Knight’s tours are common mathematical problems for computer science and programming students to this day, with the endgame being to write an algorithm that will find a knight’s tour for a given grid.
A variation on the knight’s tour is the uncrossed knight’s tour, where the goal is the same but you’ve got the added wrinkle of not being able to cross your knight’s path at any point.
But you don’t have to stick to an 8×8 grid by any means. Any square or rectangular grid can offer a suitable challenge to the aspiring knight’s tour hunter.
There’s nothing quite like a DIY brain teaser to keep your wits sharp. So no matter where you are, remember to keep calm and puzzle on. I’ll catch you next time.
This logic puzzle has been making the rounds lately, and it’s quite nifty:
Shown above are four men buried up to their necks in the ground. They cannot move, so they can only look forward. Between A and B is a brick wall which cannot be seen through.
They all know that between them they are wearing four hats–two black and two white–but they do not know what color they are wearing. Each of them know where the other three men are buried.
In order to avoid being shot, one of them must call out to the executioner the color of their hat. If they get it wrong, everyone will be shot. They are not allowed to talk to each other and have 10 minutes to fathom it out.
After one minute, one of them calls out.
Question: Which one of them calls out? Why is he 100% certain of the color of his hat?
The answer can be found here.
(Via Boing Boing.)
Every time I read one of these articles about secret puzzle boxes, I have to be physically restrained from emptying out my wallet and sending all the money to a site like Cleverwood.
Greetings, fellow puzzle solvers and enigma enthusiasts! Happy Halloween to you and yours!
I had a lot of fun a few weeks ago scouring the Internet for pictures of puzzle-centric tattoos, and with today being the most costume-y of holidays (unless you dress up for Bastille Day or the Fourth of July or something), I thought I’d wander back out into the wilds of the Internet and see what kind of puzzly costumes are out there.
Naturally, I would be remiss if I didn’t post at least one picture of the most famous of the puzzly supervillains from pop culture, so here is your prescribed dose of Batman villain The Riddler, nabbed from deviantart.com’s Dubya87.
Now, when you’re doing any sort of puzzle-focused image searching on the Internet, you’re bound to get jigsaws as well as pen-and-paper puzzles.
There were numerous examples of couples, pairs, and groups going as interlocking jigsaw puzzle pieces, but that’s not really the sort of puzzle costume I was going for. Nonetheless, this jigsaw puzzle costume rendition of Van Gogh’s Starry Night is really impressive, so I’ll share it with the puzzle world at large anyway.
But let’s get down to business. Puzzle costume business, which I daresay is the best kind of business, outside of being paid to eat ice cream.
Astonishingly, there’s simply not a lot of crossword-themed costume play going on. I know! I was surprised too! I did, however, find these crossword grid-patterned pajamas, which could easily double as a costume, or examwear for a tardy college student.
From crosswords, it’s a quick hop to Scrabble costumes, which seem to be much more popular!
This was my favorite of the “replicating the board” costumes I found.
And, naturally, there’s an awkward mass-produced costume along the same lines, which looks both uncomfortable and a bit too pillowy for my tastes.
From there, we get into the more creative interpretations. This woman seems inordinately proud of her Scrabble board dress.
This homemade dress is absolutely adorable. I only wish I’d been able to find a better picture.
And, as above, there’s a “sassy” mass-produced version of the Scrabble dress.
(There’s a more scandalous variation on that costume as well, but for propriety’s sake, let’s ignore that and move onward.)
Sudoku! While not as popular a costume choice as Scrabble, I still had little trouble tracking down several choice examples of sudokuriffic costumes. (Though I really doubt that’s a puzzle of three-star difficulty.)
I’m not sure how racially sensitive this guy’s Sudoku accoutrements are, but it certainly adds some flair to his interactive Sudoku board.
And then there’s this guy! Kudos on finding an appropriately-scaled giant pencil for your Sudoku board. (In case you’re trying to solve his costume, as far as I can tell his forehead is 8, and his mouth 4 or 5. Good luck!)
And, as before, here’s the weird mass-produced costume version for Sudoku. I respect that they kept it to a 4×4 grid, but I still can’t imagine anyone wearing it.
Now, when it comes to puzzles and puzzly games, it’s hard to imagine a more visual one than the Rubik’s Cube. Simple shape, great colors, and instantly recognizable. Somewhere, there are photos of my oldest sister in a Rubik’s Cube costume. (Had I been able to locate them, I would absolutely have posted them here.)
But do not fear. There are plenty of marvelous Rubik’s Cube costume pics on the Internet, and I’m happy to post a few of my favorites.
This one is outstanding. Not only is the center row offset, but I’m pretty sure you can actually spin those rows!
(I imagine it’s quite difficult getting him in and out of the car. I had a similarly boxy Optimus Prime costume as a child and got wedged in the backseat for at least ten minutes.)
This one is undoubtedly an improvised dorm room costume, but it’s still terrific.
I think the young lady’s expression is what really sells this one. She’s obviously proud of getting three yellow squares on a single side.
Okay, I promise that this is the last weird mass-produced costume. But it’s so bizarre and mod that I couldn’t NOT post it. I mean, look at that hat!
I’ve saved the best two for last. The first will instantly ring bells for anyone who has played the puzzletastic Professor Layton video game series. It’s the Professor himself, alongside Luke and Flora!
And, in conclusion, here’s my favorite puzzle-themed costume, and the one that actually inspired the entry.
Yup, two Tetris pieces. Hilarious and very sweet all at once.
Happy Halloween, puzzle fiends of all ages! Keep calm, puzzle on, enjoy your candy, and I’ll catch you next time.
(via Francis Heaney)
PuzzCulture 