Tag Archives: Puzzle to solve

The Conclusion of Brain Teaser Week!

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It’s the third and final day of our celebration of all things brain-teasing, riddling, and word-tricky, and we’ve got one last devious challenge lined up for you.

Remember! On Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday of this week, a different brain teaser or word problem will be posted, and it’s up to you to unravel them. Contact us with the correct answer — either here on the blog through the comments, or on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram through our messages — and you’ll be entered into a pool to win a prize!

And yes, you can enter more than once! Heck, if you solve Tuesday, Thursday, AND Friday’s puzzles, that’s three chances to win!

Let’s get started, shall we?

Here’s today’s brain teaser, which mixes the math of Tuesday’s puzzle with the deductive reasoning of Thursday’s puzzle:

The owner of a winery recently passed away. In his will, he left 21 barrels to his three sons. Seven of them are filled with wine, seven are half full, and seven are empty.

However, the wine and barrels must be split so that each son has the same number of full barrels, the same number of half-full barrels, and the same number of empty barrels.

Note that there are no measuring devices handy. How can the barrels and wine be evenly divided?

Good luck, fellow puzzlers! We’ll see you Tuesday with answers for all three brain teasers!

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!

Brain Teaser Week Continues!

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It’s Day 2 of our celebration of all things mind-tickling, and we’ve got another diabolical challenge lined up for you.

Remember! On Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday of this week, a different brain teaser or word problem will be posted, and it’s up to you to unravel them. Contact us with the correct answer — either here on the blog through the comments, or on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram through our messages — and you’ll be entered into a pool to win a prize!

And yes, you can enter more than once! Heck, if you solve Tuesday, Thursday, AND Friday’s puzzles, that’s three chances to win!

Let’s get started, shall we?

Here’s today’s brain teaser, which is less mathematical than Tuesday’s and more logical or deductive:

You want to send a valuable object to a friend securely. You have a box which can be fitted with multiple locks, and you have several locks and their corresponding keys. However, your friend does not have any keys to your locks, and if you send a key in an unlocked box, the key could be copied en route.

How can you and your friend send the object securely?

Good luck, fellow puzzlers! We’ll see you Friday with our next brain teaser!

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!

Welcome to Brain Teaser Week!

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[Image courtesy of Bogoreducare.org.]

Hello puzzlers and PuzzleNationers!

This week I thought I would try something different and focus on a theme for the week’s posts, rather than posting about different topics on our usual days.

So, please join me in some puzzly challenges as we celebrate Brain Teasers Week here at PuzzleNation Blog.

On Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday of this week, a different brain teaser or word problem will be posted, and it’s up to you to unravel them. Contact us with the correct answer — either here on the blog through the comments, or on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram through our messages, and you’ll be entered into a pool to win a prize!

And yes, you can enter more than once! Heck, if you solve Tuesday, Thursday, AND Friday’s puzzles, that’s three chances to win!

Let’s get started, shall we?

Here’s today’s brain teaser:

A set of football games is to be organized in a “round-robin” fashion, i.e., every participating team plays a match against every other team once and only once.

If 105 matches in total are played, how many teams participated?

Good luck, fellow puzzlers! We’ll see you Thursday with our next brain teaser!

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!

Puzzles… in… Space!

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When you’re a puzzle enthusiast, you never know where your interest might take you, or what interesting and unexpected people you’ll encounter along the way. All sorts of folks enjoy puzzles, after all.

If you enjoy puzzles with trivia, you could bump into Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? winners or Jeopardy! champions like Ken Jennings. The New York Times has introduced us to several famous crossword enthusiasts. The British government is publishing puzzle books. Heck, actors Joel McHale and Neil Patrick Harris both included puzzles in their autobiographies!

Even astronauts are getting into the puzzly spirit!

Astronaut Tim Peake spent half a year in one of the most fascinating places in the solar system: the International Space Station. He was the first British astronaut to serve under the banner of the European Space Agency, and the first British astronaut to perform a spacewalk.

Upon returning to Earth, he turned his attention to more literary efforts, penning three books about space. The third, published last year in partnership with the European Space Agency, takes readers behind the scenes of the ESA screening process for astronauts.

Yes, puzzles are part of the screening process for the ESA.

Would you like to try your hand at solving some of them?

How did you do? Let us know in the comments section below! We’d love to hear from you

And if you’d like, you can find more of these puzzles in Peake’s delightful book The Astronaut Selection Test Book: Do You Have What it Takes for Space?

Do you have what it takes? I suspect that you do, fellow puzzler.

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!

Valentine’s Day Puzzle Fun!

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It’s Valentine’s Day.

I know, I know, you’ve been bombarded with Valentine’s-themed content for days or weeks now.

I get that. Sure, I could spend today’s post talking about examples of puzzly romance like romantic cryptic crossword clues. I could regale you with tales of marriage proposals cloaked in puzzly trappings. I could offer up some last-minute gift ideas. I could discuss romantic puzzle moments from television.

But maybe you want a break. Maybe… you just want to read about puzzles.

And whether you’re single or in a relationship, a fan of today or a detractor of Valentine’s Day trapping, there’s one thing we can all agree on.

We love a good puzzle.

So I cooked one up for you.

Of course, I couldn’t ignore the holiday, so with Valentine’s Day in mind, it seemed appropriate to whip up a Partners puzzle for you to solve. Enjoy!

Can you unscramble and match these pairs from film, television, and literature?

Why nineteen? Well, it’s 2019, and I couldn’t resist flouting the convention of nice round numbers by not coming up with a 20th entry. Heck, maybe I’ll make this a thing, avoid round numbers for a while longer, do a top 12 instead of a top 10. Just to keep this gag going.

Oh, and I couldn’t include some of my favorite couples for logistical reasons (too many 3-letter anagrams would be blah) or obscurity, so shout-out to Han & Leia, Gemma & Leopold (FitzSimmons!), Vastra & Jenny, and of course, both Jim & Pam and Tim & Dawn from The Office.

Anyway, enjoy putting your anagram and matching skills to work! Let us know how you did in the comments 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!

Answers to our National Puzzle Day Starspell!

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For National Puzzle Day (aka International Puzzle Day), we laid down the gauntlet for you, fellow puzzlers.

We challenged you to put your vocabulary skills and your word-forming knowhow to the test with a Starspell puzzle specially constructed for the holiday (as it featured all the letters in the phrase INTERNATIONAL PUZZLE DAY)..

The goal was to form common six-letter words by moving from letter to connected letter in the Starspell diagram. You were allowed to repeat letters, but only so long as you left the letter first and then came back to it.

We found 28 six-letter words. Did you find more than that?

Here’s our list: ALATED, ATONED, DEALER, DELETE, DENIED, DENOTE, DEPEND, EATERY, ELATED, EYELET, LAUREL, LENDED, LENDER, NEATEN, NEATER, NOTATE, PEALED, PENDED, REDEAL, RED-EYE, REINED, RELATE, RENDED, RENDER, REPEAL, REPEAT, TENDED, TENDER.

Did you find any that we missed? Let us know in the comments section below! We’d love to hear from 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!