Tag Archives: Brain teaser

Riddle Me This: Answer Edition

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[Image courtesy of Nyafuu Archive.]

Last week, we shared a sampling of riddles from Raging Swan Press’s series of riddle-filled handbooks, “So What’s the Riddle Like, Anyway?”

And today, we’ve got the answers ready for you. So let’s see how you did!

1. What always runs but never walks,
Often murmurs, never talks,
has a bed but never sleeps,
Has a mouth but never eats?

Answer: a river.

2. What has a head and a tail, but no body?

Answer: a coin.

3. I can be cracked, I can be made.
I can be told, I can be played.

Answer: a joke.

4. What should the tenth number in this series be? 3, 3, 5, 4, 4, 3, 5, 5, 4

Answer: 3. (Each number is the number of letters in the digits one through nine, so ten would be “3.”)

5. A carpenter was in a terrible hurry. He had to work as quickly as possible to cut a very heavy ten‐foot plank into ten equal sections. If it takes one minute per cut, how long will it take him to get the ten equal pieces?

Answer: 9 minutes. (The first 8 minutes yield 8 pieces, but the ninth minute will yield pieces 9 and 10.)

6. Can you find a four‐digit number in which:
The first digit is one‐third the second digit,
The third is the sum of the first and second and
The last is three times the second?

Answer: 1349.

7. I am always hungry, I must always be fed.
The finger I lick will soon turn red.

Answer: fire.

8. A precious stone, as clear as diamond.
That shuns the sun’s bright fire.
Though you can walk on water with its power,
Try to keep it, and it’ll vanish ere an hour.

Answer: ice.

9. I am sometimes strong
And sometimes weak,
But I am nobody’s fool.
For there is no language that I can’t speak,
Though I never went to school.

Answer: An echo.

How did you do on these riddles, fellow puzzler? Let us know in the comments section below!

Thanks for visiting PuzzleNation Blog today! Be sure to sign up for our newsletter to stay up-to-date on everything PuzzleNation!

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Kickstarter Roundup!

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I’ve covered a lot of puzzle-centric Indiegogo and Kickstarter campaigns here at PuzzleNation Blog, because I think it’s fascinating how many puzzle variants there are, and how many creators are enthusiastically seizing the opportunity to add their own delightful gaming and puzzling twists to the market.

In previous posts, we’ve seen Baffledazzle‘s jigsaws with a twist, Completely Puzzled‘s community-building outreach, and 64 Oz. Games‘ campaign to adapt popular board games and card games for vision-impaired players. Some very creative and worthwhile projects have been realized with the help of crowdfunding.

So let’s take a look at some projects that are currently seeking funding and see if any pique your interest!

For any game enthusiasts out there who have problems organizing or transporting their collection, the crew at Init Gear have you covered with The Gamefolio System 2.0.

A line of binders, inserts, and duffles designed for all types of card games and board games, this system is all about helping you get the most out of your game collection while keeping it mobile and easy to tote along with you to game nights! You won’t be hefting a bunch of boxes with wasted space. Instead, you can condense your collection into something far more portable.

Plus, this project has already surpassed its initial funding goal, so there’s an excellent chance you’ll see your pledges fulfilled in a satisfying and timely fashion.

With only a week or so to go to get in on this one, time is of the essence.

And speaking of games, if you’re looking for a party game that mixes strategy and socializing, Death of the Party might be right up your alley.

A mix of Clue, Mafia, and bluffing games like The Resistance, Death of the Party is all about uncovering the identity of the murderer(s) before you get killed. It cleverly melds several established types of gameplay into a card game with a few other bits and bangles.

I must admit my bias on this one, since the premise is straight out of one of my all-time favorite movies, the comedic mystery film Murder By Death. Just like in the movie, every character plays a parody of a famous detective, trying to unravel the mystery without getting killed.

With almost two weeks left to fund, this one has a good chance of exceeding expectations.

If you’re looking for something a bit more puzzly, check out Puzzle Card.

This is an escape room/brain teaser contained entirely within a greeting card. It’s a fascinating concept, but given that there are only a few days left to fund the project — and they only ship to the UK, which hurts interest from puzzlers in other countries — it’s dubious whether this one will fund.

Still, it’s a very cool idea.

Turning from a puzzly challenge for adults to one for kids, we’ve got Tree Top Hop.

A spelling game for younger solvers, Tree Top Hop has players maneuvering through an elaborate network of trees connected by rope bridges in order to spell out different words.

It’s a nice intermediate step for kids to move them beyond simpler board games and into more strategic ones, all while encouraging spelling and other puzzly skills.

I had a chance to try out this game at this year’s New York Toy Fair, and I was impressed by the adaptive design and how quickly kids could get into the game play.

With nearly a month before its closing date, I suspect this offering from Befuddled Games will do well.

Finally, from the wholly unexpected idea pile, we have Plan 9 From Outer Space: The Deckbuilding Game.

Yes, someone has devised a card game based on one of the most infamously awful films in history, Ed Wood’s classic Z-grade alien invasion film.

Loaded with screenshots from the film — as well as references to both the plot itself and various in-jokes that have emerged among B-movie fans over the decades — this game puts you in the role of one of the movie’s heroic protagonists. Can you thwart the devious aliens and their undead minions as they try (for the 9th time) to conquer the Earth?

With three weeks left to fund, I think this one will squeak across the finish line, depending on the level of fan interest and crossover appeal to gamers. On the puzzly side, there does seem to be a fair amount of strategy to the gameplay itself, though luck will no doubt also play a big role in the cards you draw.

Let us know if you end up contributing to any of these campaigns, fellow puzzlers! We’re always interested in what interests you!

Thanks for visiting PuzzleNation Blog today! Be sure to sign up for our newsletter to stay up-to-date on everything PuzzleNation!

You can also share your pictures with us on Instagram, friend us on Facebook, check us out on Twitter, Pinterest, and Tumblr, and explore the always-expanding library of PuzzleNation apps and games on our website!

Riddle Me This!

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[Image courtesy of Forbidden Planet.]

A PuzzleNationer reached out to me recently and asked about riddles. Specifically, he was asking about wordplay riddles, the ones that can take you a bit of time to mentally unravel, rather than the jokey riddles found in most children’s puzzle books.

You see, he’s a Dungeon Master, the man runs a Dungeons & Dragons game, shaping the story for the other players. He was about to lead his players into a lost catacomb left behind by a crafty wizard known for his love of wordplay, and he needed ideas for riddles that might challenge his players.

Thankfully, I had the perfect resource for him.

[No, not that guy… (Image courtesy of Nyafuu Archive.)]

The puzzly crew at Raging Swan Press foresaw the need for something like this, and years ago, they assembled three handbooks about riddles for anyone who might need them. This series is called “So What’s the Riddle Like, Anyway?” Downloadable PDFs of the books can be found on DriveThruRPG.com.

From the book’s introduction, where the authors present possible scenarios:

Your PCs are deep in the dungeon and have just encountered a terrifying monster which they have no chance of defeating. Luckily, the monster is bored and challenges the party to a riddling contest instead of simply just killing them. Alternatively, the party have encountered a sentient statue that will not let them past until they have answered three riddles correctly.

I am a huge fan of Raging Swan, because they’re all about providing additional content for roleplaying games in order to make the games more varied and interesting, and they price these expansions and idea-boosters very affordably.

For instance, each of the three editions of “So What’s the Riddle Like, Anyway?” are only $1.99 apiece.

And I figured, why not pit the puzzly minds of the PuzzleNation readership against the crafty campaign creators of Raging Swan Press.

Enjoy!

Volume I of the series not only walks the reader through the process of designing and choosing riddles for your game, but also instructs you on how best to use the riddles to advance your story. Volume I also offers some examples to get you started.

1. What always runs but never walks,
Often murmurs, never talks,
has a bed but never sleeps,
Has a mouth but never eats?

2. What has a head and a tail, but no body?

3. I can be cracked, I can be made.
I can be told, I can be played.

Volume II delves deeper into the puzzlier aspect of riddles, employing pattern identification, word problems, and brain teasers to offer another possible challenge for your players.

4. What should the tenth number in this series be? 3, 3, 5, 4, 4, 3, 5, 5, 4

5. A carpenter was in a terrible hurry. He had to work as quickly as possible to cut a very heavy ten‐foot plank into ten equal sections. If it takes one minute per cut, how long will it take him to get the ten equal pieces?

6. Can you find a four‐digit number in which:
The first digit is one‐third the second digit,
The third is the sum of the first and second and
The last is three times the second?

Volume III rounds out the trilogy with numerous traditional riddles about various aspects of the standard medieval roleplaying setting. Riddles about elements, dragons, weapons, creatures, and more await you inside this slim tome.

7. I am always hungry, I must always be fed.
The finger I lick will soon turn red.

8. A precious stone, as clear as diamond.
That shuns the sun’s bright fire.
Though you can walk on water with its power,
Try to keep it, and it’ll vanish ere an hour.

9. I am sometimes strong
And sometimes weak,
But I am nobody’s fool.
For there is no language that I can’t speak,
Though I never went to school.

How did you do on these riddles, fellow puzzler? Let us know in the comments section below!

Thanks for visiting PuzzleNation Blog today! Be sure to sign up for our newsletter to stay up-to-date on everything PuzzleNation!

You can also share your pictures with us on Instagram, friend us on Facebook, check us out on Twitter, Pinterest, and Tumblr, and explore the always-expanding library of PuzzleNation apps and games on our website!

A Barrage of Brain Teasers!

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[Image courtesy of SharpBrains.com.]

One of our favorite pastimes here on PuzzleNation Blog is cracking brain teasers. From riddles to logic problems, we accept challenges from all comers, be they TV detectives or fellow PuzzleNationers!

I got an email a few days ago from a reader who needed help unraveling a few brain teasers from a list she found online. She was proud to have solved most of them, but a few had eluded her.

We’re always happy to assist a fellow puzzler, so let’s take a look at those brain teasers!

In case you want to try them for yourself before we reveal the answers and how to solve each puzzle, I’ll list the original puzzles here and put a nice spoiler-safe break between the questions and the answers.

QUESTION 1: If you have a 7-minute hourglass and an 11-minute hourlass, how can you boil an egg for exactly 15 minutes?

QUESTION 2: Name the next number in the following sequence: 1, 11, 21, 1211, 111221, 312211, _____.

QUESTION 3: Four people want to cross a river, but the only option is a narrow bridge. The bridge can only support two people at a time. It’s nighttime, and the group has one torch, which they’ll need to use every time they cross the bridge. Person A can cross the bridge in 1 minute, Person B in 2 minutes, Person C in 5 minutes, and Person D in 8 minutes. When two people cross the bridge together, they must move at the slower person’s pace. Can all four get across the bridge in 15 minutes or less?

QUESTION 4: During a recent census, a man told a census taker that he had three children. When asked their ages, he replied, “The product of their ages is 72. The sum of their ages is the same as my house number.” The census taker ran to the man’s front door and looked at the house number. “I still can’t tell,” she complained. The man replied, “Oh, that’s right, I forgot to tell you that the oldest one likes chocolate pudding.” The census taker then promptly wrote down the ages of all three children. How old are they?

QUESTION 5: There are five bags of gold that all look identical, and each contains ten gold pieces. One of the five bags has fake gold, though. All five bags are identical, and the real gold and fake gold are identical in every way, except the pieces of fake gold each weigh 1.1 grams and the pieces of real gold each weigh 1 gram. You have a perfectly accurate digital scale available to you, but you can only use it once. How do you determine which bag has the fake gold?

[Image courtesy of AwesomeJelly.com.]

Okay, here’s your spoiler alert warning before we start unraveling these brain teasers.

So if you don’t want to see them, turn away now!

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…

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Last chance!

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Ready? Okay, here we go!

[Image courtesy of Just Hourglasses.com.]

QUESTION 1: If you have a 7-minute hourglass and an 11-minute hourlass, how can you boil an egg for exactly 15 minutes?

A variation on the two jugs of water puzzle we’ve covered before, this puzzle is basically some simple math, though you need to be a little abstract with it.

  • Step 1: Start boiling the egg and flip over both hourglasses.
  • Step 2: When the 7-minute hourglass runs out, flip it over to start it again. (That’s 7 minutes boiling.)
  • Step 3: When the 11-minute hourglass runs out, the 7-minute hourglass has been running for 4 minutes. Flip it over again. (That’s 11 minutes boiling.)
  • Step 4: When the 7-minute hourglass runs out, another 4 minutes has passed, and you’ve got your 15 minutes of egg-boiling time.

QUESTION 2: Name the next number in the following sequence: 1, 11, 21, 1211, 111221, 312211, _____.

The answer is 13112221. This looks like a math or a pattern-matching puzzle, but it’s far more literal than that.

Each subsequent number describes the number before it. 11, for instance, isn’t eleven, it’s one one, meaning a single one, representing the number before it, 1.

The third number, 21, isn’t twenty-one, it’s “two one,” meaning the previous number consists of two ones, aka 11.

The fourth number, 1211, translates to “one two, one one,” or 21. The fifth number, 111221, becomes “one one, one two, two one.” And the sixth, 312211, becomes “three one, two two, one one.”

So, the number we supplied, 13112221, is “one three, one one, two two, two one.”

[Image courtesy of Do Puzzles.]

QUESTION 3: Four people want to cross a river, but the only option is a narrow bridge. The bridge can only support two people at a time. It’s nighttime, and the group has one torch, which they’ll need to use every time they cross the bridge. Person A can cross the bridge in 1 minute, Person B in 2 minutes, Person C in 5 minutes, and Person D in 8 minutes. When two people cross the bridge together, they must move at the slower person’s pace. Can all four get across the bridge in 15 minutes or less?

Yes, you can get all four across the bridge in 15 minutes.

This one’s a little tougher, because people have to cross the bridge in both directions so that the torch remains in play. Also, there’s that pesky Person D, who takes so long to get across.

So what’s the most time-efficient way to get Person D across? You’d think it would be so send D across with Person A, so that way, you lose 8 minutes with D, but only 1 minute going back with the torch with A. But that means only 6 minutes remain to get A, B, and C across. If you send A and C together, that’s 5 minutes across with C, and 1 minute back with A, and there’s your 15 minutes gone, and A and B aren’t across.

So the only logical conclusion is to send C and D across together. That’s 8 minutes down. But if you send C back down, that’s another 5 minutes gone, and there’s no time to bring A, B, and C back across in time.

So, C and D have to cross together, but someone faster has to bring the torch back. And suddenly, a plan comes together.

  • Step 1: A and B cross the bridge, which takes 2 minutes. A brings the torch back across in 1 minute. Total time used so far: 3 minutes.
  • Step 2: C and D cross the bridge, which takes 8 minutes. B brings the torch back across in 2 minutes. Total time used so far: 13 minutes.
  • Step 3: A and B cross the bridge again, which takes 2 minutes. Total time used: 15 minutes.

(It technically doesn’t matter if A returns first and B returns second or if B returns first and A returns second, so long as they are the two returning the torch.)

QUESTION 4: During a recent census, a man told a census taker that he had three children. When asked their ages, he replied, “The product of their ages is 72. The sum of their ages is the same as my house number.” The census taker ran to the man’s front door and looked at the house number. “I still can’t tell,” she complained. The man replied, “Oh, that’s right, I forgot to tell you that the oldest one likes chocolate pudding.” The census taker then promptly wrote down the ages of all three children. How old are they?

Their ages are 3, 3, and 8.

Let’s pull the relevant information from this puzzle to get started. There are three children, and the product of their ages is 72.

So let’s make a list of all the three-digit combinations that, when multiplied, equal 72: 1-1-72, 1-2-36, 1-3-24, 1-4-18, 1-6-12, 1-8-9, 2-2-18, 2-3-12, 2-4-9, 2-6-6, 3-3-8, 3-4-6. We can’t eliminate any of them, because we don’t know how old the man is, so his children could be any age.

But remember, after being told that the sum of the children’s ages is the same as the house number, the census taker looks at the man’s house number, and says, “I still can’t tell.” That tells us that the sum is important.

Let’s make a list of all the sums of those three-digit combinations: 74, 39, 28, 23, 19, 18, 22, 17, 15, 14, 14, 13.

The census taker doesn’t know their ages at this point. Which means that the sum has multiple possible combinations. After all, if there was only one combination that formed the same number as the house number, the census taker would know.

And there is only one sum that appears on our list more than once: 14.

So the two possible combinations are 2-6-6 and 3-3-8.

The chocolate pudding clue is the deciding fact. The oldest child likes chocolate pudding. Only 3-3-8 has an oldest child, so 3-3-8 is our answer.

[Image courtesy of Indy Props.com.]

QUESTION 5: There are five bags of gold that all look identical, and each contains ten gold pieces. One of the five bags has fake gold, though. All five bags are identical, and the real gold and fake gold are identical in every way, except the pieces of fake gold each weigh 1.1 grams and the pieces of real gold each weigh 1 gram. You have a perfectly accurate digital scale available to you, but you can only use it once. How do you determine which bag has the fake gold?

With only one chance to use the scale, you need to maximize how much information you can glean from the scale. That means you need a gold sample from at lesst four bags (because if they all turn out to have real gold, then the fifth must be fake). But, for the sake of argument, let’s pull samples from all five bags.

How do we do this? If we pull one coin from each bag, there’s no way to distinguish which bag has the fake gold. But we can use the variance in weight to our advantage. That .1 difference helps us.

Since all the real gold will only show up before the decimal point, picking a different number of coins from each bag will help us differentiate which bag has the fake gold, because the number after the decimal point will vary.

For instance, if you take 1 coin from the first bag, 2 coins from the second, 3 coins from the third, 4 coins from the fourth, and 5 coins from the fifth, you’re covered. If the fake gold is in the first bag, your scale’s reading will end in .1, because only one coin is off. If the fake gold is in the second bag, your scale’s reading will end in .2, because two coins are off. And so on.

Thanks for visiting PuzzleNation Blog today! Be sure to sign up for our newsletter to stay up-to-date on everything PuzzleNation!

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PN Trivia Scavenger Hunt: Answers & Winner!

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[Image courtesy of Alaris Health.]

Thank you to everyone who entered our anniversary trivia scavenger hunt! Plenty of solvers, puzzlers, and PuzzleNationers tried their hand at answering all five questions before the deadline at midnight on Wednesday, and many succeeded!

Alas, there can be only one winner. But before we get to that, let’s look at the answers, shall we?

PuzzleNation Anniversary Trivia Scavenger Hunt

1.) One of my favorite recurring features is Puzzles in Pop Culture, where I explore puzzly moments in television, film, and literature. We’ve discussed Sherlock, Hell’s Kitchen, and even Gilmore Girls in installments of Puzzles in Pop Culture.

Question: How do you solve the four gallons of water puzzle?

Answer: There were actually two answers featured in the August 19, 2014 post “Puzzles in Pop Culture: Die Hard with a Vengeance” referenced in this question. Here’s the answer our winner submitted:

1. Fill the 3-gallon jug and pour the water into the 5-gallon jug.
2. Refill the 3-gallon jug and pour the water into the 5-gallon jug until the 5-gallon jug is full, leaving 1 gallon in the 3-gallon jug.
3. Empty the 5-gallon jug and pour the 1 gallon of water from the 3-gallon jug into the 5-gallon jug.
4. Fill the 3-gallon jug again and empty it into the 5-gallon jug, leaving exactly 4 gallons in the 5-gallon jug.

2.) You can’t talk about puzzles without also discussing games, because there’s so much overlap between the two. Game reviews from a puzzle solver’s perspective have become a part of the fabric of PuzzleNation Blog, as has creating your own puzzles and games from scratch.

Question: What’s the name of the DIY game that only requires a bunch of identical blank pieces of paper (like index cards) and something to write with?

Answer: Discussed in our September 15, 2015 post “DIY Pencil and Paper Puzzles,” this game is known as 1000 Blank White Cards.

3.) Naturally, if you’re going to talk puzzles, Sudoku is going to be part of the conversation sooner rather than later. We’ve not only explored the history of Sudoku here, but we’ve been a part of it, debuting brand-new Sudoku variants created by topnotch constructors.

Question: What do you call two overlapping Samurai Sudoku?

Answer: We posted many different Sudoku variants in our December 4, 2014 post “The Wide World of Sudoku,” but the puzzle in question is known as Shogun Sudoku.

4.) A fair amount of puzzle history, both past and present, has been covered here over the last five years. We’ve examined cryptography in the American Revolution, the Civil War, both World Wars, and beyond. We’ve celebrated the one-hundredth anniversary of the crossword. And we’ve even discussed scandals in the puzzle world.

Question: What are the names of the programmer and crossword constructor who first uncovered the curious pattern of puzzle repetition in USA Today and Universal Uclick puzzles that eventually led to the ouster of Timothy Parker?

Answer: As discussed in a series of posts entitled “Puzzle Plagiarism,” the programmer’s name is Saul Pwanson and the constructor’s name is Ben Tausig.

5.) In the Internet age, memes and fads appear and disappear faster than ever. A picture or a joke or a news story can sweep the world in a matter of hours, and then vanish forever. On a few occasions, the Internet has become obsessed with certain optical illusions, and we’ve done our best to analyze them from a puzzler’s perspective.

Question: The creators of The Dress appeared on what talk show to put the mystery to bed once and for all?

Answer: Discussed on March 6, 2015 in a Follow-Up Friday post, the mystery of The Dress was laid to rest on The Ellen DeGeneres Show.

[Image courtesy of ClipArt Panda.]

And now, without any further ado, we’d like to congratulate our winner, who shall remain nameless. After all, like a lottery winner, she doesn’t want to be mobbed by those hoping for a piece of the action. =)

She’ll be receiving her choice of either a Penny Dell Crosswords App puzzle set download OR a copy of one of the puzzle games we’ve reviewed this year!

Thank again to everyone for playing and for celebrating five years of PuzzleNation Blog with us. We truly could not have done it without you!

Thanks for visiting PuzzleNation Blog today! Be sure to sign up for our newsletter to stay up-to-date on everything PuzzleNation!

You can also share your pictures with us on Instagram, friend us on Facebook, check us out on Twitter, Pinterest, and Tumblr, and explore the always-expanding library of PuzzleNation apps and games on our website!

Get Into the Puzzly Swing of Things with Swinger!

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Puzzles are infinitely adaptable. They’ve gone from riddles to pen and paper puzzles to mechanical puzzles made of wood, steel, plastic, and onward into video games, and now, apps on your phone. More puzzle apps than ever before are available on all platforms; it’s the new frontier of puzzle-games.

One of the puzzle apps that has recently been making some waves in the online market is Swinger, an addictive little puzzly delight.

In Swinger, your goal is to capture the little blue sparkling objects known as balls. To do so, you must tag them with a swinging arm that moves back and forth at your command.

Tap on one of those green rings to anchor one end of your swinger, and it will circle that ring like the spoke of a bicycle wheel. You can tap that same green ring to change direction, swinging your swinger back and forth as needed.

Navigate the ever-changing landscape of green rings to capture the balls, but be careful to avoid the obstacles that crop up over time, because they’ll block your swinger and damage your overall score.

A fun mix of quick reflexes and clever strategy, Swinger is all about adapting to your environment. Timing is key as your swinger swings toward each blue ball, before you tap another ring to move it, either to avoid one of the obstacles or to snag the next ball on the screen. You might even find yourself flipping the grid around in order to jump your swinger from one ring to another!

The concept is simple, but the gameplay grows increasingly complex with each passing screen as the obstacles become more bothersome and the swinger varies in size from ring to ring.

It’s an interesting mechanic that I haven’t seen in app form before. (For long-time video game fans, it has the feel of advanced platform games like Bionic Commando, Ratchet & Clank, or Super Mario Galaxy!)

Swinger is available from PiPiPass Studios on Google Play for Android devices.

Thanks for visiting PuzzleNation Blog today! Be sure to sign up for our newsletter to stay up-to-date on everything PuzzleNation!

You can also share your pictures with us on Instagram, friend us on Facebook, check us out on Twitter, Pinterest, and Tumblr, and explore the always-expanding library of PuzzleNation apps and games on our website!