Tag Archives: Wordplay

A Dollar For Your Thoughts? It’s the Hundred Dollar Puzzle!

Posted on by
Reply

[Image courtesy of ColourBox.com.]

That’s right, fellow puzzlers and PuzzleNationers! It’s that time again when we pit our puzzly minds against a fiendish brain teaser and test our mental mettle!

You might’ve seen this brain teaser making the rounds on social media. It’s known as the hundred dollar puzzle, and unlike most brain teasers, this one is less about the puzzle and more about how we got to the solution.

Intrigued? You’re not the only one. Let’s take a look at the brain teaser:

A young man sees a shirt for $97. He borrows $50 from mom and $50 from dad. He buys the shirt and is left with $3 change.

He gives $1 to mom, $1 to dad, and keeps $1 for himself. Now he owes his mom $49 and his dad $49.

$49 + $49 = $98 + his remaining $1 = $99. Where did the other $1 go?

[Image courtesy of CollecTons.]

People love brain teasers like this, because at first glance, and even at second glance, the math SEEMS to hold up.

But the real trick to this one is that it’s asking the wrong question. The other dollar didn’t go anywhere.

The problem here is… as soon as he pays his parents back, it’s no longer about one hundred dollars. It’s about ninety-eight dollars.

Let’s look at total borrowings versus borrowings after paying back his parents. The original specs were:

What he owed: $100
What he had: $3 and a $97 dollar shirt.

But the goalposts changed when he paid his parents back a dollar each. (And if he plans to pay the loan off a dollar at a time, it’s going to take FOREVER for them to get their money back.)

What he now owes: $98
What he has: $1 and a $97 dollar shirt.

The math adds up. Your total borrowings go from $100 to $98 dollars, and you spent $97 dollars and put the extra dollar in your pocket.

So the final equation in the brain teaser is flawed. It’s not $49 + $49 = $98 + his remaining $1 = $99. It’s $49 + $49 = $98 = his remaining $1 and his fancy shirt $97.

[Image courtesy of Ali Express.com.]

Sometimes, brain teasers aren’t about crunching numbers, but finding the logical flaw in the puzzle itself.

We hope you enjoyed unraveling the hundred dollar puzzle, and if you have any brain teasers, riddles, or other puzzly suggestions for mental challenges to conquer, let us know in the comment 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!

The (Increasingly Lengthy) History of Games

Posted on by
1

Being a student of history means constantly discovering amazing new things about our world, our culture, and ourselves. There are so many unexpected twists and turns, synchronicities, coincidences, and flat-out mind-blowing facts waiting to be uncovered.

And when you’re a student of history with an interest in puzzles and games, it means you get to discover just how long humans have been dabbling in baffling brain teasers and friendly competition.

Board games, for instance, have been around a long time, longer than most people realize. There is evidence that Go has been played in China for more than 5,500 years!

And many other games also have shockingly long lineages. Chess can be traced back to the seventh century in India. Game boards have been found in king’s courts, university halls, and even former houses used by the Knights Templar, as pictured above.

We’ve previously explored that Viking gravesites from the ninth century reveal that board games were not just a pastime for the Vikings, but that their win-loss records were important enough to be recorded for posterity!

Check this out. It’s an ancient Greek painting on a vase, dating back to 530 BCE. This piece is an example of the black figure technique where images painted on clay turned black when the clay was fired. It depicts the two mightiest warriors of the Trojan War, Achilles and Ajax, playing a board game to keep themselves busy during the siege of Troy.

It’s unclear what game they’re playing, though many historians believe the warriors are rolling dice in the image. That would make sense, since astragali (the knuckle-bones of goats and sheep) were used in ancient Greek gambling games.

Dice have an equally ancient history. The Egyptian game of Senet, which was played with dice, dates back over 5,000 years.

Dice games have been uncovered in Mesopotamian tombs (some as far back as the twenty-fourth century BC), and a Vedic Sanskrit text known as the Rigveda, which dates back to India in 1500 BC, also mentions dice.

Tile games have a similarly deep history.

Chinese Dominoes can be traced back to writings of the Song Dynasty, nearly a thousand years ago. Dominoes as we know them first appeared in Italy during the 1800s, and some historians theorize they were brought to Europe from China by traveling missionaries.

Another tile game, Mahjong, has been around for centuries, but there are several different origin stories for the game, one tracing back to the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), another to the days of Confucius (500 BC).

Perhaps at some point, I’ll try to put together a historical timeline of gaming (similar to the crossword timeline I created around the 100th anniversary of the crossword).

In the meantime, I’ll settle for being utterly fascinated with just how long humans have been socializing, relaxing, and competing through the medium of games.

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!

Putting the “Daily” Into “Daily POP Crosswords”

Posted on by
2

One of my favorite features built into the Daily POP Crosswords app is the ability to keep track of the puzzles you’ve solved. The Calendar screen is always a treat, with a special, unique icon appearing on the calendar for every puzzle you’ve completed.

But in addition to those daily icons, there’s also a Streak counter that details both the number of days in a row you’ve solved the daily puzzle and the date your solving streak began.

You can see your streak on the Home screen in the lower left corner (next to your coin total), as well as on the Calendar screen in the upper right corner, on your Profile screen beside your Solver ID, and on your Scores screen at the top of the page.

The app keeps track of your streak even if you haven’t linked it to your Facebook account, just as it keeps track of your daily icons on the Calendar page. (Of course, if you link your FB account to the app, you get bonus coins with which to solve additional puzzles. Hint hint.)

Naturally, watching my own Streak counter rise, only to reset when I accidentally miss a day, makes me wonder… What’s the longest streak amongst Daily POP Crosswords solvers?

I took to social media to ask the PuzzleNation readership, and the top Streak counts that solvers reported hovered between the 50 and 60 day mark. Which is quite impressive! That’s nearly two months without missing a single day!

But, as it turns out, I didn’t have to go far to find the highest Streak count I’ve encountered thus far in my search. How high was the Streak count, you ask?

152!

Yes, one hundred fifty-two days in a row! Nearly five months of solving without missing a day!

This total was amassed by friend of the blog and fellow puzzler Lori, who revealed her impressive puzzly feat to me around the 90-something day mark, and has been dutifully solving ever since!

She sheepishly admitted to me this week that it had slipped her mind to solve on Monday, and she was devastated to have broken her Streak, as she’d been hoping to go a full 365 days.

What do you think about that, fellow puzzlers and PuzzleNationers? Do you have a Daily POP Crosswords Streak that rivals super-solver Lori’s? Let us know where your Streak stands in the comment 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!

Back to School Puzzle Punnery!

Posted on by
Reply

You may be familiar with the board game Schmovie, hashtag games on Twitter, or @midnight’s Hashtag Wars segment on Comedy Central.

For years now, we’ve been collaborating on puzzle-themed hashtag games with our pals at Penny Dell Puzzles, and this month’s hook was #PennyDellSchoolPuzzles, mashing up Penny Dell puzzles with school subjects, supplies, cliches, and more, all about back to school!

Examples include: Mechanical Pencil Pusher, StarSpelling Bee, and Tossing & Turning (the Night Before a Big Exam).

So, without further ado, check out what the puzzlers at PuzzleNation and Penny Dell Puzzles came up with!

PaperBlips

Homecoming and Going

Piggybackpack

Lockerkuro

A-Plus Fours

Three of a Kindergarten

Schoolmaster Words (from Schoolmaster’s Variety Puzzles)

Middle School of the Road

In the Middle School

Back of the Word Rebus

Homework Runs

High School Scorer

Top to Bottom of the Class

Substitutions Teacher

Bull’s-Eye Spiral Notebook

Mixed Bookbag

Exchange Blackboards

Foreign Exchange Boards Student

A Few Multiple-Choice Words

Circles in the Square Root of Pi

Head of the Classified Adds

Crossing Guard Arithmetic

Textbook Worms

Crypto-Names and Dates

Double Occupancy Dorm Rooms

Give Homework and Take Attendance

Parse a Phrase

Staring Out the Window Boxes

End of the Line in the Cafeteria

Summer’s End of the Line

Learning the ABC’s

Class is Across & Down the Hall

High school Drop-Outs

Letterdropout

Letter Perfect Attendance

Short Attention Spanners

Freshman year Ups & Downs

Who’s Calling the Nurse?

Study Group Values

Home Rooms

It Facts and Figures

Lab Partners

Ringmaster’s degree

Gold Stars and Arrows

Chemistry Labyrinth

Yearbook Photo Finish

Spellingbound

Many of our contributors offered up puzzly versions of sentences you’d hear around school!

No eating Chips in the library.

Honeycomb your hair, you’ll be late for school.

Line ’em Up… for detention!

TODAY’S MENU: a Bowl Game of Alphabet Soup

Passing notes? Would you care to Share-a-Letter with the rest of the class?

Brick by Brick the new school was built.

Class, take your Places, Please.

Student: “Miss Lane, I can’t do this problem.”
Teacher: “Try to Figgerit out!”

What kinds of tests do monsters take? Criptoquizzes

Snow day Cancellations will Carry-Over into the summer!

Rodney DanGarfield Quotables: Double Negative lesson: “I don’t get no respect”

Rodney DanGarfield Quotables: “Why don’t you call me some time when you have no class?”

One solver offered the voice of experience…

Even though I graduated long ago, I still get excited by school supply displays! And now a little advice for those back-to-schoolers:

This might be a Throwback, but I remember when you got ready for Class-ified Adds by packing your TrapperKeyword in your Bookworm bag.

You could be a WordMathlete ready for the big Countdown.

You can get through those two-a-days Two at a Time to practice a perfect Bull’s-eye Spiral and make it to the Bowlgame.

And there’s One and Only valedictorian, so Try-Angles your best, and you can do it Step by Step.

Another solver delved into history with a look back on her puzzly school days:

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, please join me on a trip down memory lane as I travel in my TIME MACHINE and go back to school. During my first few DAIS-Y of school, I learned the ALPHABET PLUS played a lot of SIMON SAYS. My teacher gave us CRACKERS for snack time, but I wish she had given us BOXES of CRACKERJACKS instead. Some of the kids in my class loved constructing with wooden shapes and were pretty amazing BLOCKBUILDERS.

In elementary school, we were encouraged to increase our vocabularies and had to EXPLORAWORD every day. There was quite a bit of homework in which we had to FILL-IN the BLANKWORD to prove that we understood what we had learned. In my junior high years, I took shop class, in which we were taught to use JIGSAW SQUARES. I remember that there were BITS & PIECES of wood all over the floor of that classroom.

It was also during one of those junior-high years that we had the dreaded CIRCLES IN THE SQUARE dancing unit in gym class. Having to stand there, FACE TO FACE with a random classmate was nothing short of awkward. Later on, in high school, I KENKEN remember having a particularly cranky math teacher. I used to joke that he taught CROSS ARITHMETIC.

Well, after covering all those years of school, WHAT’S LEFT? Oh yes – just my college years. You may laugh when you PICTURE THIS, but I was the DRUMMERMAN major of our marching band. We’d SHUFFLE along, HERE & THERE during HALFTIME at every football game. Well, friends – that concludes our journey. I hope that you enjoyed your ONE & ONLY chance to experience the magic of time travel.

Finally, one solver set her puzzly school ideas to music…

It’s a fact
School is a Balancing Act
We race to Beat the Clock
Jocks hit Home-Runs and run Around the Block
While all the Bookworms and busy bees
Are learning their ABC’s
Dodge ball teams
Odds and Evens
Pick and Choose
Todds and Stevens
Tots Add One on their Abacus
Seniors are taking Quote Calculus
Rah-rahs cheer “All Four One”
Teachers are saying “Are we having fun?”
Lunch bell rings, Woohoo!
Lovebirds enjoy Alphabet Soup for Two
Keep on Moving, Line-Em Up
Scholars bolt down lunch before time is up
Outside kids play games of Hopscotch, Simon Says, and Seven-Up
Substitutions Fill-In when teachers are out
Classes and studies, hopefully no Drop-Outs
Text Message, Telephone Call
Is Johnny taking me to the Harvest Ball?
Guys and gals Mix and Mingle, then Pair Off
Stags feeling Out of Place at the Disco
Cause Double Trouble, throw Chips
Then Face to Face with…Guess Who?
Principal Chase!
School play time!
So Places, Please
Custodians clean the school Top to Bottom
Sweep spilled Animal Crackers and Crackerjacks
Miles of Bounty, the quicker Picker-Upper
Days come Full Circle
Work is done
Now home to supper!
Only question is: How many more days till summer?

One of our fellow PuzzleNationers also got involved in the puzzly fun! Jane W (aka @jawurts10) offered up the delightful entries “Essay Can You See” and “Cramming And Jamming,” which were great fun. Nice job!

Have you come up with any Penny Dell School Puzzles entries of your own? Let us know! We’d love to see them!

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!

Delving into the 2018 BosWords Puzzles!

Posted on by
1

I finally had a chance to sit down and take a crack at the puzzles from the BosWords Crossword Tournament last month. Given the talent involved amongst the organizers, I had high expectations, and I was not disappointed.

So let’s put those puzzles under the microscope and see what’s what!

Comedy Central by Andrew Kingsley

This unscored opening puzzle is a nice warm-up, getting everyone into the puzzly spirit and ready to solve. The revealer (INSIDE JOKE) explains the simple hook — words and phrases containing synonyms for “joke,” a la ACU”PUN”CTURE — and the easily-accessible fill entries make this puzzle a breeze.

Interesting grid entries included ZINN, YUAN, THE OC, and FAMOUS AMOS, and my favorite clues were “Ocean liner?” for SHORE and “Ending with ‘buck’ or ‘stink’” for AROO.

Puzzle 1: Cold Open by Laura Braunstein

For the second year in a row, Laura Braunstein constructed the opening puzzle of the tournament, and once again, she delivers a picture perfect appetizer for a day of solving. The cluing feels fresh and relevant, and the theme — phrases with a chilly starter, like ICY RECEPTION — is instantly gettable without feeling hackneyed or overdone. The grid fill is fun with hardly any crosswordese. A terrific start for the event.

Interesting grid entries included AIR GUITAR, TACO TRUCK, LISZT, and DOODAD, and my favorite clues were “Medieval peasant (no, not ESNE!)” for SERF — a nice reference to common crosswordese there — and the pairing of “Much ____ About Nothing” for ADO and “‘Much ____ About Nothing’ (1996 ‘The Simpsons’ episode)” for APU.

Puzzle 2: Not Ready for “Prime” Time Players by Andrew Kingsley and John Lieb

This puzzle puts an interesting spin on the classic moniker for Saturday Night Live cast members by casting athletes from Boston-based teams whose jersey numbers are not prime numbers. (For instance, BOBBY ORR is “Bruins #4 who is an NHL and crossword legend.”) Although you need to know your Beantown sports figures for this one, the accessible fill makes it easy to cobble the names of the athletes together if sports isn’t your strong suit.

Interesting grid entries included BALL PIT, MASTER YODA, OPIUM, and BLUE MAN, and my favorite clues were “What this is” for PRONOUN, “What this entry isn’t” for ACROSS [this was a down clue], and “‘The Fast and the Furious’ films, e.g.” for OCTET.

Puzzle 3: Musical Guests by Brendan Emmett Quigley

Although Puzzle 3 was the toughest puzzle in last year’s BosWords tournament, this year’s contribution by Quigley didn’t have the most difficult theme of the day, but it did have the most challenging fill. (The crossing of VAPED and VSIX was particularly vexing.)

But the theme entries were very clever, concealing famous musicals within mashup entries — TRENTON OF BRICKS, which is TON OF BRICKS with RENT inside, for instance — all of which spanned the entire grid as 15-letter answers. Another topnotch grid and concept from one of the best.

Interesting grid entries included CUT BAIT, AFLAC, MINSK, and K-SWISS, and my favorite clue was “Like the main characters in ‘Scooby-Doo’” for NOSY.

Puzzle 4: Deep Thoughts by Joon Pahk and Lena Webb

This year’s toughest tournament puzzle — other than the actual championship themeless — Puzzle 4 had two tricks up its sleeve. First, the answer words in the bottom half of the grid extended beyond the grid itself, as the missing last letters in those Down answers spelled the word IDEA three times underneath the grid. (For instance, DALI, PACED, WEATHER VANE, and ONEIDA appeared in the grid as DAL, PACE, WEATHERVAN, and ONEID, and it was up to the solver to realize what was happening.)

But those missing IDEAs — the “deep thoughts” of the title — were also missing from the theme entries, so EUCLIDEAN GEOMETRY had to be written into the grid as EUCLNGEOMETRY. It was diabolical, and a masterful example of gridplay at work.

Interesting grid entries included BANTU, MAJORCA, ADONAI, MY BABY, and ROPE RUG, and my favorite clues were “Buster’s target?” for MYTH and “HAL 9000 adversary” for DAVE.

Puzzle 5: Celebrity Jeopardy! by Finn Vigeland

The tournament concluded with a fun, punny hook, as Vigeland paired six celebrity guest hosts with descriptors to create common phrases like VOLCANIC (Chris) ROCK and BURNED (Jeff) BRIDGES. After the challenge of Puzzle 4, this was a pleasant solve that still made you work for some of the obscure fill entries.

Interesting grid entries included TIMESUCK, FBI AGENT, EBATES, and I GOTTA GO, and my favorite clues were “The Great Wall of China is visible from space, e.g.” for MYTH and “Deal breakers?” for NARCS.

Space Walks by John Lieb and Andrea Yanes

This well-constructed tiebreaker puzzle abandoned the SNL theme for a sci-fi twist, and the resulting puzzle was very smooth, combining a good hook — eight phrases consisting of two B words — with a clever revealer: beloved Star Wars rolling droid BB-8. Although not strictly part of the tournament puzzles in either point value or style, this was a fun puzzle all around.

Interesting grid entries included MR. DARCY, OPEN BAR, BOO BERRY, and ACADIA, and my favorite clue was “Like inside-the-park home runs” for RARE.

Championship Themeless by David Quarfoot

The grand finale of the tournament was this fairly tough puzzle with lots of long entries crossing and some difficult cluing. Although well-constructed — particularly the corners with intersecting 8- and 9-letter entries — the inclusion of answers like H-TILE and ECON EXAM felt like a little bit of a cop-out, compared to the otherwise tight grid construction by the usually impeccable David Quarfoot.

Still, this outdid Puzzle 4 for toughest overall solve for the tournament. I don’t think I would have completed it in the time allotted, let alone fast enough to do well against fellow solvers.

Interesting grid entries included CHEMTRAIL, BOSOX, ARIOSO, TRAVEL BAN, and NEVERLAND, and my favorite clues were “Fitting position?” for TAILOR and “Pill-dropping alternative to Tetris” for DR. MARIO.

Overall, I would call this year’s array of tournament puzzles a rousing success. They clearly had fun with the Saturday Night Live-inspired hooks, and the puzzles were challenging and creative in their fill without being intimidating or getting too esoteric.

BosWords is probably the most new-solver-friendly tournament out there in terms of puzzle difficulty — not nearly as challenging or as experimental as those at Lollapuzzoola or The Indie 500 — while still remaining engaging.

It’s the right mix of challenge and creativity for solvers accustomed to NYT-style solving, and I think the constructors and organizers did one heck of a job putting together the tournament.

Can’t wait to see what they cook up for us next year.

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 6th Anniversary Instagram Brain Teasers!

Posted on by
Reply

Last week, we celebrated six years of PuzzleNation Blog by announcing a week-long puzzly social media blitz.

Facebook and Twitter saw twice-daily alerts for the puzzle of the day for both Daily POP Crosswords and Penny Dell Crosswords App, cuing solvers to contact us with the answers to particular across and down clues.

Instagram solvers were encouraged to tackle a series of brain teasers, and today, we’ve got all the answers for you! Let’s jump right in.

We started off on Tuesday with this relatively straightforward brain teaser: How can you add eight 4s together so that the total adds up to 500?

We got the most responses to this one, and it’s no surprise, as we have some very crafty followers on Instagram. The trick here is number placement. By grouping 4s, you create larger numbers that make it easier to add to your total.

Solution: 444 + 44 + 4 + 4 + 4 = 500

Wednesday’s puzzle involved placing the numbers 1 through 8 into the grid above. Consecutive numbers cannot appear in an adjacent or diagonal box.

This puzzle was actually created and submitted by a PuzzleNationer named Sanjana, so kudos to you, Sanjana, as you made one heck of a brain teaser!

Here’s the solution. (Using the same numbers in reverse or flipped layout creates four different variations on the same solution.)

Thursday’s brain teaser put your Scrabble and Upwords skills to the test, as we played a round of Quad-Doku! The goal is to play each tile, one at a time, onto the board, forming a new common word (or words) each time. Do this with all 8 tiles in any order. By the end, all four corners will have changed.

This is a nice chain-solving puzzle, and here’s the solution we came up with:

F makes FOUR/FIND, S makes FINS/SEEM, A makes SEAM, B makes FIBS, C makes SCAM, W makes SWAM, L makes FOUL/LOOM, and P makes LOOP/SWAP.

On Friday, we posted a riddle to test your puzzly skills. Once I am 24, twice I am 20, three times I am unclean. What am I?

Solution: The answer is X. It’s the 24th letter of the alphabet, two X’s makes 20 in Roman numerals, and three X’s marks something as inappropriate for some viewers.

Monday brought us our final brain teaser, a matchstick puzzle (or, in this case, a toothpick puzzle). Can you move four toothpicks in order to change the zigzag path into 2 squares? The two squares do not have to be equal in size.

In the image above, we’ve circled the four toothpicks to move.

And here is the completed puzzle, with two squares of unequal size.

How did you do, intrepid solvers? Well, based on the responses we received, pretty darn well! We’ll be reaching out to contest winners later this week!

But in the meantime, we’d like to thank everyone who participated in our PN Blog 6th Anniversary event. You help make this the best puzzle community on the planet, and we are forever grateful.

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!