The Space Quiz
Puzzle Prime
Puzzle Prime is tirelessly looking all around the internet to find the very best puzzles and bring them all to puzzleprime.com.
Puzzle Prime is tirelessly looking all around the internet to find the very best puzzles and bring them all to puzzleprime.com.
FEATURED
Puzzle Tournament 4
Puzzle Prime’s fourth puzzle tournament was organized on February 26, 2022. Congrats to REDCROUTONS who solved all the puzzles (even found a small mistake in one of them)!
You have 60 minutes to solve 6 puzzles, each worth 1 point. Upload your solutions as a pdf, document, or image, using the form below. Good luck!
Time for work: 1 hour
Each problem is worth 1 point. Use the form at the bottom of the post to send your solutions.
1. The Grid
by Puzzle Prime
Figure out how the last portion (7×5 in yellow) of the grid should be colored in black and white.
2. Hexado
by Dr. DJ Upton
Place arrows along hexagon edges so that the number of arrows pointing to each hexagon equals the number of dots inside, adhering to the following rules:
- Arrows cannot be touching.
- Arrows cannot be placed on dashed edges.
SHOW EXAMPLE
3. Segments
by Puzzle Prime
Use at most 27 segments to create the largest number with distinct digits.
Notes: For example, the number 273914 would use 5+3+5+6+2+4=25 segments.
4. Constellations
by Raindrinker
Connect the stars with lines, so that the number inside each star corresponds to the number of lines connected to it, and the number outside each star corresponds to the total number of stars in its group.
Note: No line connecting two stars can pass through a third star.
SHOW EXAMPLE
5. Chess Connect
by Puzzle Prime
The starting and ending positions of 6 chess pieces are shown on the board. Find the trajectories of the pieces, if you know that they do not overlap and completely cover the board.
Notes: The pieces can not backtrack. Two trajectories can intersect diagonally but can not pass through the same square. Only the Knight has a discontinuous trajectory.
SHOW EXAMPLE
6. Broken Square
by Puzzle Prime
Use exactly 5 out of these 16 pieces to build a 7×7 grid, without overlapping.
Note: You can rotate the pieces, but you cannot mirror them.
Black and White
A boy draws 2015 unit squares on a piece of paper, all oriented the same way, possibly overlapping each other. Then the colors the resulting picture in black and white chess-wise, such that any area belonging to an even number of squares is painted white and any area belonging to an odd number of squares is painted black.
Prove that the total black area is at least one.
SOLUTION
Draw a grid in the plane which is parallel to the sides of the squares. Then, take the content of each cell of the grid and translate it (move it) to some chosen unit square. The points in that unit square which are covered by odd number of black pieces color in black, the rest color in white. It is easy to see that after doing this, the entire unit square will be colored in black (each of the 2015 squares cover it once completely). This implies that the total black area is no less than 1.
Biology Jokes
Who says science jokes are not funny? Below you can see some of the best Biology jokes we know, along with short explanations
Do you know any funny Biology jokes yourself? Let us know in the comment section below.
Two blood cells met and fell in love. Alas, it was all in vein.
Explanation
A clever
Pavlov is sitting at a pub, enjoying a pint. Suddenly the phone rings and he jumps up shouting, “Oh no, I forgot to feed the dog!”
Explanation
Pavlov is a physiologist who used to ring a bell every time he fed his dogs. After some time, he noticed that ringing the bell by its own caused salivation in his dogs, even if he didn’t offer them any food.
“I wish I was adenine, then I could get paired with U.”
Explanation
In RNA (Ribonucleic acid), adenine (A) makes a “base pair” with uracil (U).
“What did one sister chromatid say to the other?”
“Stop copying me.”
Explanation
“Sister chromatids” are two identical chromatids (replicated chromosomes), which are joined with each other.
What does DNA stand for? National Dyslexia Association.
Explanation
Dyslexia is a reading disorder, which causes various troubles during reading, even for people with normal intelligence. If read correctly, the abbreviation for National Dyslexia Association should be NDA, not DNA.
“What did the stimulus do to the neuron after they got married?”
“It carried it over the threshold.”
Explanation
The “threshold” is the depolarization level over which a stimulus must carry the neuron, in order for an action potential to be fired.
An infectious disease enters a bar. The bartender says, “We don’t serve your kind here”. The disease replies, “Well, you are not a very good host.”
Explanation
The word “host” has several meanings, one of which is “a person who accommodates guests”, and another one is “an animal or a plant in which a parasite lives”.
The scientists have just found the gene for shyness. They would have found it earlier, but it was hiding behind two other genes.
“What is the fastest way to determine the sex of a chromosome?”
“Pull down its genes.”
Explanation
Word play with the words “genes” and “jeans”.
One lab rat says to another:
“Girl, you are so hot, you denature my proteins.”
Explanation
When things get hot, proteins denature, i.e. lose their shape and structure.
“What did Gregor Mendel say when he founded genetics?”
“Woopea!”
Explanation
Gregor Mendel made his experiments using pea plants.
“What is sleeping brain’s favorite rock band?”
“REM”
Explanation
REM stands for “rapid eye movement”, which occurs during sleep.
FEATURED
Puzzle Tournament 3
Puzzle Prime’s third puzzle tournament was organized on January 31, 2021. Congrats to Elyot G. who is once again a winner! You can see the problems and the rankings below.
You have 60 minutes to solve 5 puzzles, each worth 1 point. Upload your solutions as a pdf, document, or image, using the form below. Good luck!
Time for work: 1 hour
1. Constellation
by Raindrinker
Connect the stars with lines, so that the number inside each star corresponds to the number of lines connected to it, and the number in each barrier corresponds to the number of lines intersecting it.
Note: The stars in the corners cannot be connected, since the lines would pass through other stars.
SHOW EXAMPLE
2. Lineon
by Blaž Gracar
GOAL:
Move one of the Friends to the Exit Point.
PLAYING THE GAME:
Draw lines to move Friends. A move is connecting a point on the Grid to another point on the Grid by drawing a straight line. The line can be made in any direction, as long as it connects exactly two points and doesn’t cross or touch another line.
TIMELINE:
You move each Friend as many times as it says on the Timeline, starting with the topmost Friend and continuing in the order all the way down to the bottom one.
KEY POINTS, EXIT POINT, AND WALLS:
One of the Friends must move to the Exit Point, but before he does that, each of the Key Points must be already connected with a line. A Wall is a double line and no Friend can cross or touch it.
SHOW EXAMPLE
3. Vinculus
by Dr. DJ Upton
Circles are particles and lines joining them are bonds. The objective is to find all the hidden values, following these four rules:
- Particle values must be the sum of their bond values.
- Particles can have the following values: 0, 1, 2, 4, 8, 12, 16.
- Bonds can have the following values: 0, 1, 2, 4.
- If two particles have the same value, the bond between them must have value 0.
SHOW EXAMPLE
4. Chess Connect
by Puzzle Prime
The starting and ending positions of 6 chess pieces are shown on the board. Find the trajectories of the pieces, if you know that they do not overlap and completely cover the board.
Notes: The pieces can not backtrack. Two trajectories can intersect diagonally but can not pass through the same square. Only the Knight has a discontinuous trajectory.
SHOW EXAMPLE
5. Murder Mystery
by Hiroji Osaka
In the three murder cases below, you can read the testimonies of all suspects. For each case, find who the killer is, knowing that no 2 people are in the same row or column, and that the killer was alone in a room with the victim.
SHOW EXAMPLE
Solutions
Results
| Puzzler | P1 | P2 | P3 | P4 | P5 | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Elyot G. | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 3 |
| Leong W. | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| Chandan R. | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
REWARDS
The TOP 3 players will win codes for some of our favorite puzzle video games. Thanks to Other Tales Interactive, Thomas Bowker, and Daniel Nora for supporting our tournament.
Escape the Room: The Cursed Dollhouse
Review
With the huge success of real-life Escape Rooms all around the world, more and more puzzle manufacturers have been trying to recreate the experience with their solve-at-home kits. ThinkFun‘s latest offering, Escape the Room: The Cursed Dollhouse, is possibly the closest you can get to the real thing, so far.
The setup of “The Cursed Dollhouse” is quick and simple. Within a few minutes you get to build a cardboard model of a dollhouse, turn on the recommended soundtrack of creepy music, and light up a few candles to get into the right mood. Once you do this, you can start reading the story of the house and unravel its mysteries.
You begin the adventure in the living room, where you have to solve several puzzles, involving a broken bookshelf, a dusty carpet, and a spiderweb on the wall. Then, you make your way through the rest of the house: kitchen, bathroom, bedroom, until you get to the attic. Each of the rooms you visit contains multiple objects, including hidden ones, which you need to use in order to solve its three challenges. Once you solve a challenge, you get a cryptic symbol which you must enter in the “solution wheel”. Get the three symbols correctly and proceed to the next room.
As you progress, you will encounter various puzzles, including many mechanical ones. You will have to cut, fold, entangle, and do all kinds of fun activities. The puzzles are logical and satisfying to solve. There were one or two which my group found a bit confusing, but fortunately, ThinkFun has created a website, where players can get small hints without spoiling the entire puzzles. In the end, all participants were very happy with the time we spent playing together.
While the price of “The Cursed Dollhouse” is a bit steep, the game provides a lengthy and immersive experience which justifies the cost. It also can be replayed by another group of people using the provided printable forms from the official website.
- 1-4 players, 13 years and up
- over 30 puzzles to solve within 2.5 hours
- realistic small-scale Escape Room experience
- puzzles are re-printable from the official website
GET ESCAPE THE ROOM HERE
Topple Magazine
Review
Topple is a new online magazine that can be printed out and solved with pen and paper, the old-fashioned way. The price of each issue is just a meager $1, and for that amount you get a PDF of about 10 pages and up to 20 puzzles.
The magazine authors have worked hard to offer a wide range of puzzles for everyone to enjoy. There are interesting trivia questions, rebuses, grid logic puzzles, as well as some unique challenges I have never encountered before. The number of puzzles in the magazine keeps increasing with each next issue:
Issue 1: 7
Issue 2: 7
Issue 3: 10
Issue 4: 10
Issue 5: 10
Issue 6: 12
Issue 7: 16
Issue 8: 18
Issue 9: 18
The quality of the puzzles keeps improving as well, as you can see from these two identical puzzles, the second one of which has updated artwork.
To catch a glimpse of the activities you will encounter in Topple, you can check the 4-page sampler provided below. Regular issues are much longer and feature proper formatting, complete with front and back covers. It’s just like purchasing any magazine from a newsstand.
If you enjoy these puzzles as much as we do, we recommend you get the latest issue of Topple and then start collecting the previous ones in reverse order. At just $1, it will be hard to find something that provides better value for the money.
- appropriate for all ages
- PDF booklet for easy printing
- about 10-20 puzzles per issue
- fun old-school vibes
- just $1
GET TOPPLE MAGAZINE HERE