Sequence 2

Find the next term of the sequence:
1, 2,6,12,25, _


Hint: The answer is in 40's or 50's

Please give the logic as well as logic only would decide the correctness of the answer.

Lets go on with the Puzzles..

I hope you have done your AP, GP and (HP) Chapter well. If you have ::
Find the next term of the sequence..

2, 3, 10, 12, 13, 20, 21, 22, _

Bad Hint :: Its not related with Fibonacci

Mayank, if you remember the answer please do not post it.

{Level: Medium}

Some more CJ's, SJ's, JC's to make you CRY

I think you are familiar with the term CJ, ie, "Chhonkar Joke" another name for low level(extrreeeeemely low level) sastas..

I have posted these on the blog "Puzzle Spot" because they also involve certain(very different) kind of thinking and presence of mind

Note:Comments are necessary for this post.
I would like you to consider my decisions which I have made upon the level of a PJ after much technical review. However if there are any discrepancies I would consider them.

Here are some. Some are better than CJ so consider them as SJ(Shikhar Joke) and some are even better so you can consider them as JC(Jain Comments)..


Question: An elephant was in love with a she-elephant. But the she-elephant
went and got married to some other elephant. So our elephant was very
Depressed. One of his friends felt sorry for him, and took him to a park to
cheer him up. In the park, they sat on a see-saw, but the see-saw broke.
Now, which song would our hero sing?(CJ)





Ans: "See-saw ho ya dil ho, aakhir toot jaata hai."



Question: Two hairs on a bald man's head fall in
love with each other and want to get married, but
cannot. Why?(SJ)






Ans: Because under Indian laws, "baal vivaah" is
illegal.


Question: One fine morning, Ravan felt guilty day
for all his bad deeds. He felt that he should go an
apologise to Ram for all the problems he had caused. So he went to Ram's
house and knocked on the door. Ram opened the door and was surprised to
find Ravan standing there. Ravan just kept staring and thinking but
didn't say a word. What was he thinking?(JC)





Ans: "Kis mooh se maafi maangoon?"


Question: How do you "cut" roads?(CJ)






Ans: By laughing... because "Haste haste cut jaye
raaste".


Question: Luv and Kush are going to a village and pass by a well. Luv falls
into the well. Why?(SJ)






Ans: Because Luv is blind.


Question: Now, Kush also jumps in. Why?(CJ)






Ans: Because Luv ke liye saala Kush bhi karega!



Question: Jackie Chan ki saas ka naam kyahai? Socho, socho. Nahi pata?(JC)






Ans: D'Cold; Because... Chan ki saans - D'Cold


Question: Chalo ab batao, Jackie Chan ki bahu ka
naam kya hai??(CJ)









Ans: D'Cold again... Kyunki saans bhi kabhi bahu thi


A railway station beggar meets another beggar. A software engineer meets
another software engineer.
Both of them ask the same question to each other.
What is the question?(DJ)-Dipanshu Joke







"So, which platform are you working on?"

A large ssssssssss noise should be produced right at this moment


Question: What do you call a person who is leaving
India?(CJ)




Ans: Hindustan Lever.


Question: What do you call a person who leaves India, but doesn't travel
much?(DJ)





Ans: Hindustan Lever Limited.



Question: In an elephant school, some loafer elephants were hanging around
in the canteen. A sexy female elephant passes by. What do the loafer
elephants say about her?(CJ)






Ans: Look yaar, 36000 - 24000 - 36000!!


Question: Kalidas ka ek bhai joote banata tha. Uska
naam kya tha?(DJ)






Ans: Adidas.


Question: Prasad asks Kumble to bring a Pepsi. Kumble brings a bottle, but
takes it directly to Tendulkar. Why?(JC)





Ans: Because Tendulkar is an opener.


Question: What is the similarity between Satynarayan pooja and the Indian
cricket team?(AGRJ)-understandable






Ans: Dono ke ant me "Prasad" aataa hai.

Question: Who is Joe?(CJ/DJ)







Ans: Kambakth ishq... Because "Kambakth ishq hai
Joe!"


Question: The Madrasi said, I want to see the movie "my heart is an
umbrella'. Which movie did he really want to see?(AGRJ)







Ans: Dil Chhaata Hai.


Woh kaun sa hindi geet hai jis main "Internet Explorer" ka zikar kiya gaya
hai???(DJ)


Hint: The heroine also refers to herself as Internet Explorer.







The answer is... Maine Pyar Kiya.

And the song goes....

Aajaa shaam hone IE (Internet Explorer)
Mausam ne lee angada IE
To kis baat ki hai lada IE
Tu chal........ Main IE !!!




Once 5 CHIPKALIs (house lizards) :
Phulwa,RaamPyaari, RaamDulari,RaamPuri and
RaamChuri were crawling on the wall when all of a sudden, Phulwa started to
sing a song. the moment Phulwa stopped singing the song, RaamPyaari,
RaamDulari, RaamPuri and RaamChuri fell down from the wall !!!... WHY ???(SJ)









coz, they all started clapping !!!!


PJ Isse kehte hain.........

Gattu ek lecture attend karta hai. lecture ke baad use bhookh lagti hai. so
he goes to the canteen. Canteen mein gattu ek pav leta hai. jaise hi woh
pav khane ke liye uthata hai to dekhta hai ki uski plate mein "jannat"
likha hai.

To janaab ab aapko yeh batana hai ki gattu jiska lecture attend karke aa
raha hai, us proffessor kanaam kya hai??? guess(JC)









The answer is

Ishq Ki Chhaon.

Jinke "Sir" ho "Ishq ki Chhaon"
"Pav" ke neeche "Jannat" hogi....

Don't scratch ur head this is a song from film "Dil Se"









What wud u call a Gal who never laughs ????(CJ)










....and the Answer is..........

HASINA !


Once all the scientists die and go to heaven. They decide to play
hide-n-seek. Unfortunately Einstein is the one who has the den. He is
supposed to count up to 100 ...and then start searching. Everyone starts
hiding except Newton. Newton just draws a square of 1 meter and stands in
it rightin front of Einstein. Einsteins counting....
97,98,99.....100........


He opens his eyes and finds Newton standing in front.
Einstein says "newtons out..newtons....out....." Newton denies and says i
am not out. He claims tht he is not Newton. All the scientists come out
and he proves tht he is not Newton...... how ????(JC)



lesson from this PJ- use of physics is not limited








His proof:

Newton says:


I am standing in a square of area 1m square. That means I am Newton per
meter square. Hence I am Pascal....since Newton per meter square = Pascal

Think Free – Your Office Online!!

ThinkFree Online is an Internet-based file sharing and storage ( Java Application).
You'll get 1Giga for free to storage any file you need. (up to10MB for a file)

The platform allows you to:

1. Create Microsoft Office compatible word processing, spreadsheet and presentation files or edit existing documents.
2. Access your most important documents and applications from any computer anytime.
3. Share your inspiration with others - Set the privilege for each person, allowing them either read only or read and edit.
4. Document revision history and rolling back-ThinkFree Online tracks previous versions of a document.
5. Publish live documents within your blog or publish your files to a location on the internet. Send private message/email to your friends when you publish new documents.
6. Add to your work: images, graphs, charts and input from others. Moreover, you can add images from Flickr to your documents.
7. Create your own guest book.
8. Add comments and Tags.

Unfortunately the application is a bit heavy because of the Java but the results are pretty good and the interface is pleasant to use.

ThinkFree Office is compatible with Windows, Macintosh, Unix and Linux systems.

The CocoNut Problem

Five sailors survive a shipwreck and swim to a tiny island where there is nothing but a coconut tree and a monkey. The sailors gather all the coconuts and put them in a big pile under the tree. Exhausted, they agree to go to wait until the next morning to divide up the coconuts.

At one o'clock in the morning, the first sailor wakes up. He realizes that he can't trust the others, and decides to take his share now. He divides the coconuts into five equal piles, but there is one coconut left over. He gives that coconut to the monkey, hides his coconuts (one of the five piles), and puts the rest of the coconuts (the other four piles) back under the tree.

At two o'clock, the second sailor wakes up. Not realizing that the first sailor has already taken his share, he too divides the coconuts up into five piles, leaving one coconut over which he gives to the monkey. He then hides his share (one of the five piles), and puts the remainder (the other four piles) back under the tree. At three, four, and five o'clock in the morning, the third, fourth, and fifth sailors each wake up and carry out the same actions. In the morning, all the sailors wake up, and try to look innocent. No one makes a remark about the diminished pile of coconuts, and no one decides to be honest and admit that they've already taken their share. Instead, they divide the pile up into five piles, for the sixth time, and find that there is yet again one coconut left over, which they give to the monkey.

The Question: What is the smallest amount of coconuts that there could have been in the original pile?

You can also generalize the answer for n number of sailors by devising a C++ program.

Once Again, the Same Puzzle

Find the number of integral solutions to the following equation.
1/x + 1/y = 1/12

The Tourist : Lateral Thinking Puzzle

this is one of the standard L.T. puzzles: Enjoy!!!
the tourist from spain used to suffer from stomach pains regularly. Years ago his doctor had been born in goa. When he came back to his hotel, what was the landlady from israel watching on TV?

Level: Medium


I have a nice clue....request in comments if wanted.

Möbius strip

A Möbius strip is a surface with one and only one side. You might have seen a ring which has two distinct sides, one outside and one inside, but, as you see, the inside merges into the outside and the outside into inside in a Möbius strip. A model can easily be created by taking a paper strip and giving it a half-twist, and then joining the ends of the strip together to form a single strip. The strip was discovered independently by the German mathematicians August Ferdinand Möbius and Johann Benedict Listing in 1858.

The Möbius strip is a peculiar object and has curious properties like:





(i) A line drawn starting from the seam down the middle will meet back at the seam but at the "other side". If continued the line will meet the starting point and will be double the length of the original strip of paper. This single continuous curve demonstrates that the Möbius strip has only one boundary.

(ii) If the strip is cut along the above line, instead of getting two separate strips, it becomes one long strip with two full twists in it, which is not a Möbius strip. This happens because the original strip only has one edge which is twice as long as the original strip of paper. Cutting creates a second independent edge, half of which was on each side of the knife or scissors. Cutting this new, longer, strip down the middle creates two strips wound around each other.

The branch of Mathematics dealing with such objects is called Topology. Another such mysterious object is the Klein bottle, depicted on the left. The Klein bottle was first described in 1882 by the German mathematician Felix Klein. The Klein bottle has no distinct outside or inside and has no edges.

The Comparision of The TITANS

Have a look at this greatest comparision between the 2 most popular teams in the world





An Effort By:

Sajal Jain
Shikhar Srivastav

First Puzzle : The Monkey Dance

Ok friends, Hi I am Mayank Gupta......Thanks first of all to Sajal for inviting me to this blog....he must have surely been in a state of hypnotism when he sent an invite to a dunce like me.......

So I start with one of my favourite puzzles....well it came in ZIO 2005:
The director of Hind Circus has decided to add a new performance called the monkey
dance to his show. The monkey dance is danced simultaneously by N monkeys.
There are N circles drawn on the ground. There are N arrows drawn between the
circles in such a way that for each circle, exactly one arrow begins at that circle and
exactly one arrow ends at that circle. No arrow can both begin and end at the same
circle.
When the show begins, each monkey sits on a different circle. At each whistle of the
ringmaster, all the monkeys simultaneously jump from one circle to the next, following
the arrow leading out of the current circle. This is one step of the dance. The dance
ends when all the monkeys have simultaneously returned to the circles where they
initially started.
The director wishes the dance to last as many steps as possible. This can be achieved
by drawing the arrows intelligently.
For each of the three values of N given below, what is the maximum number of steps
that the monkey dance can be made to last by drawing arrows appropriately?

(a) 9 (b) 12 (c) 15

Sajal: Don't ans since u already know the soln.

Level : Difficult

Weigh It

Suppose five bales of hay are weighed two at a time in all possible ways. The weights in pounds are 110, 112, 113, 114, 115, 116, 117, 118, 120, and 121.

How much does each bale weigh?

Level:Medium

Flowers

In a small town, there are three temples in a row and a well in front of each temple. A pilgrim came to the town with certain number of flowers.

Before entering the first temple, he washed all the flowers he had with the water of well. To his surprise, flowers doubled. He offered few flowers to the God in the first temple and moved to the second temple. Here also, before entering the temple he washed the remaining flowers with the water of well. And again his flowers doubled. He offered few flowers to the God in second temple and moved to the third temple. Here also, his flowers doubled after washing them with water. He offered few flowers to the God in third temple.

There were no flowers left when pilgrim came out of third temple and he offered same number of flowers to the God in all three temples. What is the minimum number of flowers the pilgrim had initially? How many flower did he offer to each God?

Level:Easy

River Game!

THE AIM

The object is to get everyone (father, two sons, mother, two daughters, police officer and thief) from one side of the river to the other whilst adhering to certain rules.

THE RULES
The following rules apply:

1. Only two persons on the raft at any time
2. The father can not stay with any of the daughters without their mother's presence
3. The mother can not stay with any of the sons without their father's presence
4. The thief (striped shirt) can not stay with any family member if the police officer is not there
5. Only the father, the mother and the police officer know how to operate the raft

Some of the classics of KVPY

1) How many 4 digit square numbers exist such that after increasing each digit by 1 we get another square number?
2)3 points lie in the x-y plane such that coordinates are (0,0),(6,0),(2^1/2,3).Find the largest side of the square inscribed in it such that the 2 vertices's of square lie on AB(x-axis).
3)A circuit diagram is drawn with 1 ohm resistance lying along the sides of a cube and a 10v battery is connected to it. Find the current in the circuit.
4)A light ray is sent from vertex A of a square making an angle "theta" with the side AB. The ray after being reflected from side BC,CD,DA passes through vertex B. Find sin"theta".

To Shikhar and Ananth,
Anybody solving all 4 correctly deserves a treat from me.

If you have any confusion regarding any question please comment.

One of the Classics

The King of Honolulu tells his two sons to race their ships to a distant city to see who will inherit his fortune. The one whose ship is slower will win. The brothers, after wandering aimlessly for days, ask a wise man for advice. After hearing the advice they jump on the ships and race as fast as they can to the city.
What does the wise man say?

This is one of the classical puzzles and very old. So may be you done this already.

The master of logic.

Three masters of logic wanted to find out who was the wisest one. So they invited the grand master, who took them into a dark room and said: "I will paint each one of you a red or a blue dot on your forehead. When you walk out and you see at least one red point, raise your hands. The one who says what colour is the dot on his own forehead first, wins." Then he painted only red dots on every one. When they went out everybody had their hands up and after a while one of them said: "I have a red dot on my head."
How could he be so sure?

difficulty - easy - medium.

The Cauldron of Death

Once upon a time, there was a prisoner trapped in the Cauldron of Death. There were two doors to exit from, one leading to the hungry alligators and the other leading to the actual exit. There were two guards who were keeping vigil of the prisoner. The prisoner, a clever man, bribed them so that they would tell him which door to go through, but he could ask only one question to only one of the guards. One of the guards always lied while the other had never ever said a lie in his whole life - He didn't know which one. The prisoner managed to escape from the clutches of the alligators and the guards. How? What question do you think he asked one of the guards?

EQUATION

Fill in the eight missing digits so that the equation is correct and uses each of the digits from 0 to 9.(7 and 5 have already been used).

Leval:Medium

Time Warp

An event took exactly 131 seconds. The first picture of a 24-hour digital clock shows the time when the event began, the second one when it ended. However, there was a strange breakdown, and some parts of the display are not visible; the nature of the breakdown was different for the two times. What are the two times?
Note:Click on the picture to view it clearly.
Hint:The answer is unique.

Level:Medium

Hourglasses

You have two hourglasses: A 7 minute one and an 11 minute one. Using just these 2 hourglasses, accurately time 15 minutes.

A more wordy version of this - A baker has only 2 timers that can measure 7 minutes and 11 minutes. How can he set a timer for 15 minutes to bake a cookie?

Level:EASY

CJ (Chonkar Joke)

Master: Chicken ready ?
Servant: Yes sir
Master: Fish ?
Servant: Yes sir
Master: Mutton ready?
Servant: Yes sir
Master: Aur bakra
Servant: No sir, abhi voh blog par CJ padh raha hai.

Zonal Informatics Olympiad 2007

Zonal Informatics Olympiad coming up.
Its on 17th November 2007.
The questions are generally logical based puzzles.One of the questions of last year has been posted recently as "Weigh it!"
If you want to participate, please contact the undersigned:

Sajal Jain
XI G

Weigh It!

In a normal pan balance (as used by, say, a vegetable vendor) the item to be bought is balanced against a known combination of weights. The weights may be applied on either side of the pan--for instance, to weigh 1500 g of onions, the vendor may either place the onions in one pan and a 1000 g and 500 g weight in the other, or place the onions along with a 500 g weight in one pan and a 2000 g weight in the other pan.

We would like to be able to weigh all quantities between 1 g and 4000 g to the nearest gram using such a balance. One way to do this is to have 12 weights weighing 1 g, 2 g, 4 g, 8 g, 16 g,..., 2048 g.

1. Design a smaller set of weights to achieve the same objective.

2. In general, to weigh items between 1 g and n g to the nearest gram, what is the smallest sequence of weights we can use (in terms of n)?

Level:Medium-tough

My Ideal TEAM INDIA

This is my ideal team for One Day Internationals,
In specific batting order:
1)Gautam Gambhir
2)Sachin Tendulkar
3)Rohit Sharma
4)Yuvraj Singh
5)MS Dhoni
6)Robin Utthappa
7)Irfan Pathan
8)Harbhajan singh
9)Zaheer Khan
10)RP Singh
11)Sreesanth/Piyush Chawla(depending on Pitch)

The Substitutes:
12)Virender Sehwag
13)Rahul Dravid
14)Sreesanth/Piyush Chawla
15)Dinesh Kartik

Comments are welcomed!

Names

Miss Alden, Miss Brent, Miss Clark, Miss Doyle, and Miss Evans have short first and middle names.
[1] Four of them have a first or middle name of Fay, three of them have a first or middle name of Gay, two of them have a first or middle name of Kay, and one of them has a first or middle name of May.
[2] Either Miss Alden and Miss Brent are both named Kay or Miss Clark and Miss Doyle are both named Kay.
[3] Of Miss Brent and Miss Clark, either both are named Gay or neither is Gay.
[4] Miss Doyle and Miss Evans are not both named Fay.
Who is named May?
(Level-Medium)

Poly-diagonios

How many diagonals does a decagon (see right) have? After you have calculated for a decagon, generalize it for any polygon with 'n' vertices. Calculate the number of diagonals of a centagon using the formula which you have derived.

P.S. Those who already know the answer, please don't post it.

Level:Easy

The Conical Funnel

I have a conical funnel similar to the one used in the Chemistry laboratory, but a bit different. I put into it 5 marbles of different sizes. The marbles are such that they touch each other and the wall of the funnel, but the lower-most marble does not fall out. Find the amount of water the middle marble (3rd from top) can hold if it is hollow. Assume its inner radius to be equal to its outer radius. The radii of the uppermost and lowermost marble are 18 mm and 8 mm respectively.

Level: Easy-Medium

Finally, Got a question!

Find the integral solutions of x and y in the following equation:

1/x +1/y =1/12

Level:{Medium}

What's our average salary?

There are 3 colleagues who want to know what their average salary is, but they do not want to disclose to each other their individual salary. How do they go about doing it? In the process of doing it what is the worst that each could learn about the salaries of the other two? Is this method fail-proof? Think about it! Would you be willing to adopt your methodology with your colleagues and find the average salary?

Level: Medium

X and O

The game of Tic-tac-toe is played in a large square divided into nine small squares.
[1] Each of two players in turn places his or her mark -usually X or O-in a small square.

---------- X O __
------X __ __
------O O --X

[2] The player who first gets three marks in a horizontal, vertical, or diagonal line wins.
[3] A player will always place his or her mark in a line that already contains (a) two of his or her own marks or (b) two of his or her opponent's marks- giving (a) priority over (b).
Only the last mark to be placed in the game shown above is not given.
Which mark-X or O- wins the game?
{Level-Medium/Hard}

000000000000000...............

How many trailing 0's does 100! have? Generalize it for any N! after you have computed for 100!

N! = Factorial N = N * N-1 * N-2 * ......2 * 1

Level: {Medium to Hard-lets see}

To Shashwat: Maybe you know the answer as I told you how to solve these kind of questions in class X. If you remember, please don't post the solution.

Relations

Lee, Dale, and Terry are related to each other.
[1] Among the three are Lee's legal spouse, Dale's sibling, and Terry's sister-in-law.
[2] Lee's legal spouse and Dale's sibling are of the same sex.
Who do you know is a married man?
{Level-Medium}

National Puzzle Championship Question Paper

Here is the Question Paper.
Click here(pdf)
The password is LM07GoodLuckBrazilBeckons
My score was 227 out of 1000.
The level was pretty high.(Maybe it was not for us.
However there were 3 categories and so there is some hope.
See yourself.
Time awarded was 2.5 hrs.
Result has been announced!
My result-
Overall AIR-147
Junior 18 category AIR-6

100- gold coins

2. 100 Gold Coins

Five pirates have obtained 100 gold coins and have to divide up the loot. The pirates are all extremely intelligent, treacherous and selfish (especially the captain).

The captain always proposes a distribution of the loot. All pirates vote on the proposal, and if half the crew or more go "Aye", the loot is divided as proposed, as no pirate would be willing to take on the captain without superior force on their side.

If the captain fails to obtain support of at least half his crew (which includes himself), he faces a mutiny, and all pirates will turn against him and make him walk the plank. The pirates start over again with the next senior pirate as captain.

What is the maximum number of coins the captain can keep without risking his life?

Just hope you haven't seen this before.
difficulty ( hmm i 'll let you decide)

World Puzzle Championship

World Puzzle Championship's national selection for team India is going to be held tomorrow-2nd Sep 2007. If you are free, you can also participate to get selected!

Not a Puzzle

Google Phone is winner already

Google Search, Google Maps, Google News, Google Video, Google Groups, Google Image Search, Google Directory, Google Earth, Google Desktop , Google Blogger, Google Scholar, Google Book Search, Gmail, Google Finance, Google Page Creator, Google Docs & Spreadsheets, Google Answers, Picasa, Google Web Accelerator, Google SketchUp, Google Base, Google Moon, Google Gears, Orkut, Google Calendar, Youtube, Google Translator, Google Analytics, Google Checkout, Google Talk, Google Transliteration, Google Sky, Google Web Toolkit, Google Wifi, Google Adwords/ Adsense...................... list goes on and on and on

All these services in one device, a device which is ABSOLUTELY a HIT before even coming to the market.

so my theory says, Gphone > all Phones > iPhone

Guess the Number

I have a natural number which has the following properties:

(1) Each of the 10 digits (0 to 9) appears exactly once in the number.
(2) For each pair of digits whose sum is 9, the number of other digits positioned strictly between the pair is equal to the smaller digit of the pair.
(3) The sum of each pair of digits positioned at the same distance from opposite ends of the number is a prime number.
(4) The difference between any 2 adjacent digits is greater than 1.
(5) The number is a multiple of the number of digits in the number.

What number am I talking about? This number is unique; there is only one answer to this question.

Equal Sums

A B C
---. D
G F E
H
I

Each of the digits 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8, and 9 is:
[1] Represented by a different letter from A to I. (Not necessarily in same order)
[2] Each of A+B+C, C+D+E, E+F+G, and G+H+I is equal to 13.
Which digit does E represent?
{Level-Medium}

Old Coin Puzzle

You blindfolded and let into a room. The room has an infinitely many coins scattered around on the floor. your friend tells you that that 20 of these coins are tails and the rest are heads. He also says that if you can divide the coins into 2 piles where the number of tails is the same in both piles, then you win all of the coins. You are allowed to move the coins and to flip them over, but you can never tell what state a coin is currently in (the blindfold prevents you from seeing, and you cannot tell by feeling it). How do you go about partitioning the coins so that you can win all of them?

difficulty:medium

Open or closed?

A high school has a very strange principal. On the first day, he has his students perform an odd opening day ceremony

There are one thousand lockers and one thousand students in the school. The principal asks the first student to go to every locker and open it. Then he has the second student go to every second locker and close it. The third goes to every third locker and, if it is closed, he opens it, and if it is open, he closes it. The fourth student does this to every fourth locker, and so on. After the process is completed with the thousandth student, how many lockers are open?

Rules

1. The correct answer should be posted atleast 2 days after the date of posting of the puzzle so that others who have not answered can get a chance too.
2. A person should be limited to one puzzle per three days and he must not post a new one immediately after the previous one is solved; he must wait for more two days. However others can post a puzzle the next day.

What do you say about this?

P.S. What I mean is that the person posting the question shall reveal the answer as a comment after 2 days. Meanwhile, however, the others are free to answer as many times as they want. But, the one correctly answering the question first will get the points.

My Secret Word

One of the words listed below is my secret word.

AIM DUE MOD OAT TIE

With this list in front of you, if I were to tell you any one letter of my secret word, then you would be able to tell me the number of vowels in my secret word.

Which word is my secret word?

{Level-Medium}

After-Dinner Drink

Abigail, Bridget, and Claudia often eat dinner out.
[1] Each orders either coffee or tea after dinner.
[2] If Abigail orders coffee, then Bridget orders the drink that Claudia orders.
[3] If Bridget orders coffee, then Abigail orders the drink that Claudia doesnt order.
[4] If Claudia orders tea, then Abigail orders the drink that Bridget orders.
Who do you know always orders the same drink after dinner?
{Level-Medium}

The Tennis Players

Zita, her brother, her daughter, and her son are tennis players. As a game of doubles is about to begin:
[1] Zita's brother is directly across the net from her daughter.
[2] Her son is diagonally across the net from the worst player's sibling.
[3] The best player and the worst player are on the same side of the net.
Another Simple question-Who is The Best Player?
{Level-Medium}

Have a look please:

1)I have given all of you the administrator rights.
2)I recommend that a new puzzle should only be posted after the previous one is solved or 2 days after the post of the previous puzzle(which ever is earlier). "Everyday puzzle" will consume a lot of time and might prove harmful!

Questions & Answers

Hope you haven't seen this before...

The word "answer" in the test refers to YOUR answer, not some hypothetical "best" answer.
After choosing the 8 answers score the test by comparing each question with your answers.
Score 1 point for each question answered correctly, 0 otherwise.
Keep re-taking the test, trying to get the highest possible score.

1. The next question with the same answer as this one is:
(A) 2 (B) 3 (C) 4 (D) 5

2. The first question with answer C is:
(A) 1 (B) 2 (C) 3 (D) 4

3. The last question with answer A is:
(A) 5 (B) 6 (C) 7 (D) 8

4. The number of questions with answer D is:
(A) 1 (B) 2 (C) 3 (D) 4

5. The answer occuring the most is: (if tied, first alphabetically)
(A) A (B) B (C) C (D) D

6. The first question with the same answer as the question following it is:
(A) 2 (B) 3 (C) 4 (D) 5

7. The answer occuring the least is: (if tied, last alphabetically)
(A) A (B) B (C) C (D) D

8. The highest possible score on this test is:
(A) 5 (B) 7 (C) 6 (D) 8

Tough One

The warden of a prison meets 23 new prisoners when they arrive. He tells them, "You may meet today and plan a strategy. But after today, you will be in isolated cells and will have no communication with one another.

"In the prison is a switch room, which contains two light switches labeled 1 and 2, each of which can be in either up or the down position. I am not telling you their present positions. The switches are not connected to anything.

"After today, from time to time whenever I feel so inclined, I will select one prisoner at random and escort him to the switch room. This prisoner will select one of the two switches and reverse its position. He must flip one switch when he visits the switch room, and may only flip one of the switches. Then he'll be led back to his cell.

"No one else will be allowed to alter the switches until I lead the next prisoner into the switch room. I'm going to choose prisoners at random. I may choose the same guy three times in a row, or I may jump around and come back. I will not touch the switches, if I wanted you dead you would already be dead.

"Given enough time, everyone will eventually visit the switch room the same number of times as everyone else. At any time, anyone may declare to me, 'We have all visited the switch room.'

"If it is true, then you will all be set free. If it is false, and somebody has not yet visited the switch room, you will all die horribly. You will be carefully monitored, and any attempt to break any of these rules will result in instant death to all of you"

What is the strategy they come up with so that they can be free?

I score 1 point for this question...
Hope you havent seen the puzzle earlier because i had seen this two years back...

The Fight

Two of Anthony, Bernard, and Charles are fighting each other.
[1] The Shorter of Anthony and Bernard is the older of the two fighters.
[2] The younger of Bernard and Charles is the shorter of the two fighters.
[3] The taller of Anthony and Charles is the younger of the two fighters.

The question is simple!! Who is not fighting??

Scoring System

QUESTIONS given:

1. Awesome questions which involve good thinking and which are within our level will be awarded 1 point.
   
2. Medium level questions include Lateral Thinking & Table Problems and will be awarded 0.5 point.
   
3. Stupid easy questions are worthless!
   
4. Any question above our level of thinking will be awarded -0.5 point as it will simply mean time wastage by the other members.

ANSWERS given:

1. Awesome Question: 2 points
   
2. Medium level: 1 point
   
3. Easy Question: 0.5 point
   

The First Puzzle

Male-Female balance
In a certain land to increase the number of females so as the females can outnumber the males, a ruler, ordered the following: "As soon as a mother gave birth to her first son, she would be forbidden to have any more chilren." the ruler argued that some families can have more girls but no family would have more than one boy thereby creating a higher ratio of girls to boys. Now do you really think the ruler's strategy would work? Why and why not?

What Is a Puzzle?

Fuldu wrote about on element of a good puzzle (Solvability), and that reminded me that I wanted to try to define what a puzzle is in general. You'd think that I'd have gotten to it sooner, since it was one of the motivating ideas behind starting this blog, but I was distracted by fiddling with the Blogger template.

On Google, the most prominent article on the subject is "What Is a Puzzle?" by Scott Kim:

My favorite definition of "puzzle" came out of a conversation with puzzle collector and longtime friend Stan Isaacs:

1. A puzzle is fun,
2. and it has a right answer.

I think this is a good start, but it's too limiting. The requirement that a puzzle be "fun" is not only far too subjective, it also limits the field to what could be considered "good puzzles". At the Puzzle Museum (a site that ably documents physical puzzles), there's a classification of mechanical puzzles by James Dalgety & Edward Hordern that includes a broader definition:

A PUZZLE IS A PROBLEM HAVING ONE OR MORE SPECIFIC OBJECTIVES, CONTRIVED FOR THE PRINCIPLE PURPOSE OF EXERCISING ONES INGENUITY AND/OR PATIENCE.

A MECHANICAL PUZZLE IS A PHYSICAL OBJECT COMPRISING ONE OR MORE PARTS WHICH FALLS WITHIN THE ABOVE DEFINITION.

This is closer to a definition, but there are still issues with it. For one thing, it deliberately encompasses items that are designed solely to test dexterity. For another, I am not convinced that something designed solely to exercise patience is necessarily a puzzle. The best definition I've found so far comes from "Toward a Theory of Interactive Fiction" by Nick Montfort. In the section "Puzzles and Their Solution, Montfort cites a newsgroup post by Greg Cox with two requirements:

* a puzzle has to have an objective
* a puzzle can't be obvious

Later, Montfort adds that a puzzle is "a challenge" with these qualities. Montfort was trying to define a puzzle in the context of Interactive Fiction, and so more qualifications will be needed, but I think this is an excellent place to start. (I'm not going to discuss IF very much in this post. If you desperately want information about it now, you might want to visit Brass Lantern.)

1. A puzzle has an achievable objective. Most definitions of a puzzle include a reference to an answer, a solution, or a goal. I like "objective" it's an adaptive word. It's a bit broader than Kim's "right answer;" it allows the possibility of multiple answers. It accepts that the point of a puzzle might be a method, not necessarily an simple answer. I think that the addition of "achievable" is a natural one. It's not necessary in the context of Montfort's original discussion, but it is in ours, where hoaxers occasional put impossible tasks into a form similar to a puzzle.

2. A puzzle is not obvious. I'm just going to quote Montfort on this, rather than try to create a shallow, just-barely-not-plagiarized version of his excellent analysis:

Obviously, there may be disagreement about what is "obvious" and what is not, but this criterion at least suggests an independent way of determining what is a puzzle and what isn't, one that does not refer to the author's intentions and the [solver]'s specific knowledge and aspirations. Any typical [solver] should be able to determine what is or isn't a puzzle simply by studying [it], without needing to interview the author or take a survey of other [solvers]. The other factors essential to the determination of "obviousness" should be not the mindset of the author or of a particular [solver], but the culture or subculture within which the work was published — along with the conventions of [the puzzle type].

3. A puzzle is a challenge from its creator. In "Toward a Theory of Interactive Fiction," Montfort draws a useful distinction between puzzles and interesting bonuses. Discussing the final puzzle in the game Adventure, he claims that the score reported by the game (349 out of 350 before solving this puzzle):

clearly presents a challenge to the interactor: to get the last lousy point, independent of successfully traversing and winning Adventure. If the interactor had 350 points beforehand and dropping the magazine gave the interactor 351 points—and there was thus no way to know beforehand that an extra point could be obtained—this could be referred to as an Easter egg but would not be a puzzle. A challenge would not have been presented initially.

This also means that a puzzle cannot occur naturally. It is always artificial, or is artificially framed. If a reporter writes an article with three instances of three words that are homonyms of each other, it's not a puzzle. But if the reporter, or another person, presents the article with the frame "Can you find nine words that sound alike in this article", it becomes part of one.

And that's all Montfort gives us. Right now, we have a definition of a puzzle that includes a game of chess: the objective is to win, it is not obvious how, and there is a challenge presented. To distinguish puzzles further, we turn to Greg Costikyan and Chris Crawford who tell us . . .

4. A puzzle is static. Both The Art of Computer Game Design by Crawford and "I Have No Words and I Must Design" by Costikyan are focused on games, and in consequence, I believe both miss the boat slightly when defining games. But a puzzle being "static" is a useful idea. Many puzzles are clearly static: paper-and-pencil puzzles are clearly so. But there are others, like Rubik's Cube or sliding-block puzzles, that are clearly reactive. And we already pulled or initial definition from an interactive medium. By "static," I mean that a puzzle must be predictable. No essential elements are subject to chance. In theory, every variable can be accounted for by the solver.

For example, in the game Deadly Rooms of Deathyou control an exterminator who must kill the creatures within a dungeon, room by room. These adversaries move according to preset rules. Those rules are not disclosed to the player, and the rules are occasionally very complex, but they are fixed. In fact, if you start from the same position in a room and duplicate a series of moves, the monsters will always respond in the same way. This game is a series of puzzles. In contrast, the "puzzle" game Tetris features randomized pieces that move at variable speeds, so that the same series of moves will produce extremely different results on different plays.

I think the definition is almost complete, but there is still a class of items that needs to be eliminated. Under this definition, Dalgety & Hordern can still claim that toys that test dexterity are puzzles, and Crawford can claim the same for simple games. So I add . . .

5. A puzzle does not test physical traits. This includes dexterity and hand-eye coordination, as well as strength, speed, stamina, height, weight, arm length and other abilities like knitting or singing in key. Any of these things might be tied into a puzzle in some way (some larger puzzle events require these kinds of things), but the puzzle is always separate from it. Many video-game puzzles feature this kind of distinction. The player may have figured out the method that kills the almost entirely invulnerable monster, but he may still be unable to actually defeat it if his hand-eye coordination is lacking.

I think this is a good working definition. It seems to filter games, toys, problems and jokes out of the category of puzzles in a way that I find appropriate. But it does leave one gray area: Trivia. I'm fine with that, for now, because I don't have a clear idea of where it ought to go. Add that to the list of things to think about for this blog.