Puzzle Prime is tirelessly looking all around the internet to find the very best puzzles and bring them all to puzzleprime.com.
Brain Drop is a new puzzle podcast by Brian Hobbs, released on a (mostly) weekly basis. In each episode, Brian presents 3 new puzzles and shares the solutions of the puzzles from the previous week. He uses professional voicework, music, and sound effects, to set up the mood and make his show more entertaining. Click the banner below to check out Brain Drop and see if you can answer Brian’s latest set of puzzles!
The evil witch has left Rapunzel and the prince in the center of a completely dark, large, square prison room. The room is guarded by four silent monsters in each of its corners. Rapunzel and the prince need to reach the only escape door located in the center of one of the walls, without getting near the foul beasts. How can they do this, considering they can not see anything and do not know in which direction to go?
The prince must stay in the center of the room and hold Rapunzel’s hair, gradually releasing it. Then, Rapunzel must walk in circles around the prince, until she gets to the walls and finds the escape door.
In the past few days, I, my friends, and a lot of Twitter people have been trying to beat each other’s scores in the game “Is This Prime?”.
The game itself is simple; you are shown random integers on the screen, and you need to guess whether they are prime or composite. It is fast-paced and fun, and a good opportunity to exercise some mental math. Below we have listed a few tips which can help you beat our personal record of 67 points.
The Puzzle TOAD is a website, created by four Carnegie Melon professors (Tom Bohman, PO Shen-Loh, Alan Frieze, Danny Sleator), where you can find a growing collection of ingenious math brain teasers. Unlike Puzzle Prime, The Puzzle Toad is targeted exclusively towards math and computer science majors. Students who are preparing for college Olympiads will find the problems particularly useful. Check out The Puzzle TOAD by clicking the banner below.
Minecraft: Magnetic Travel Puzzle (M:MTP for short) is a travel game by ThinkFun in which the goal is to arrange 3 types of objects, each coming in 3 different colors, in a 3 by 3 grid, such that certain conditions are satisfied.
As you progress through the 40 included challenges, the types of conditions you encounter become gradually more complex. While in the beginning you may be given all the colors of the objects with one clue and all the types of the objects with another, later on you need to analyze 5 or 6 clues at once, which makes the game more challenging and fun. That being said, at the hardest levels, M:MTP is still relatively easy, so experienced puzzlers will probably breeze through it within an hour or two.
At its core, M:MTP is identical to ThinkFun’s previously released Clue Master. Both games are presented in the form of magnetic notebooks, so they are easy to pick up and travel around with. The illustrations of the Minecraft edition are all based on the popular video game, so its fans may be particularly appreciative.
If you are looking for a casual puzzle to pass an hour or two on a road trip, then M:MTP would be a great choice. I only wish there were more challenges included, especially more difficult ones.
“The Boat” is a graphic novel adaptation of Nam Le’s book, presented as an immersive webpage experience by Matt Huynh. With beautiful artwork and stunning effects, the novel tells the story of a 16-year old Vietnamese refugee, embarking on a dangerous trip across the sea. Click the banner below and scroll your way through this captivating, moving, and harrowing tale.
Dear Diary,
This morning, I woke up at 9 o’clock. My first job was to drink a glass of water and brush my teeth. After that, I ate an apple, 2 bananas, and a toast with almond butter for breakfast. Then, I went to the gym for one hour, took a shower, and came back home at eleven. I cooked a few pieces of chicken with sweet potatoes for lunch; ate everything. In the afternoon, I started working on my projects while listening to classical music. In the evening, I went for the 2nd time to the gym, did cardio for half-an-hour, and after that visited my friend’s apartment. We had together one big pizza for dinner and in the end, I fell asleep on his couch.
As you can see, my entire day was perfect, except that my laptop keyboard broke. Can you figure out what’s wrong with it?
All of the numbers in the text are written using digit symbols except for the ones containing “one” (“one”, “eleven”, “first”). This inconsistency implies that the number “1” key on the keyboard is broken.
Puzzle Prime’s second puzzle tournament was organized on June 27, 2020. Congrats to Elyot G. who solved all the puzzles! You can see the problems and the rankings below.
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
Puzzle Prime Knight
Start from a square with a P on the chessboard, and keep jumping via knight’s move, consequently landing on squares with the letters U-Z-Z-L-E-P-R-I-M-E.
Point of View
8 of these diagrams correspond to views of the object in the corner when it is looked from different perspectives. Which 2 aren’t?
Note: The projections below are parallel (not perspective).
Chess Fight
Choose a chess piece on the board. Then, move the piece to a cell with another piece, and remove the first piece. Repeat, by moving the second piece to a cell with a new piece, and removing it. Continue until there is only one piece remaining on the board.
Note: For example, we can move the Queen on d2 to the Bishop on b2, the Knight on c3, or the Bishop on d4. If we move the Queen to d4 and remove it from the board, then we must move the Bishop on d4. The only available cell is c3, where a Knight is positioned. We must remove the bishop and move the Knight on c3 either to the Rook on b1 or the Rook on a2…
Special Date
On April 5, 2013 (5.4.2013), the digits used for expressing the date were all different and consecutive. When was the last date before it with this property?
Remark: The digits 9 and 0 are not consecutive.
Splitting the Area
You have 1 square with side length 1 and 2 circles with diameter length 1. Draw a single line so that the resulting areas on the left and on the right of the line are equal.
Notes: You need to specify how you find a line satisfying the condition above.
Chess Connect
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.
The answer to Point of View is C and J.
The answer to Special Date is 23.4.1765.
The solutions of the other puzzles are shown below.
| Puzzler | P1 | P2 | P3 | P4 | P5 | P6 | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Elyot G. | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 6 |
| David R. | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 4 |
| Rodrigo R. | 1 | 0.5 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 3.5 |
| N | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 3 |
| Hristo H. | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 2 |
| Rockmosis | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 |
#1.
$10 Gift Card (iTunes or Play Store)
Puzzle Avatar (custom made)
Puzzle Pelago (mobile game by Hallgrim Games)
Hook (mobile game by Rainbow Train)
#2.
$5 Gift Card (iTunes or Play Store)
Puzzle Avatar (custom made)
Puzzle Pelago (mobile game by Hallgrim Games)
Hook (mobile game by Rainbow Train)
#3.
Puzzle Avatar (custom made)
Puzzle Pelago (mobile game by Hallgrim Games)
Hook (mobile game by Rainbow Train)
#4-5.
Puzzle Pelago (mobile game by Hallgrim Games)
Hook (mobile game by Rainbow Train)
Have you noticed all those fun and interactive logos Google prepares for various occasions, such as holidays, sports events, and birthdays of famous people? If you have missed any of them in the past or you want to check again some of your favorite ones, you can do it by visiting the Google Doodle archive.
Cat Crimes is a logic game by ThinkFun inspired by classic deduction puzzles. It consists of 40 challenges split into four difficulty groups.
Each challenge presents the player with a cat crime which they must solve. One of six items on a carpet has been ruined, and several clues written on a card point towards the cat which is responsible. The player must analyze each of the clues, as well as the models of the cats and the carpet (included in the box), and find the perpetrator. Even though the puzzles can be completed just as easily with pen and paper only, the inclusion of cardboard models makes the solving process much more fun. The beautiful artwork of the set and the sturdy cardboard additionally improve the experience.
The included puzzles are best suited for students in primary and middle schools, but older people can enjoy them as well. Overall, Cat Crimes is a wonderful twist on a traditional type of puzzle, and I highly recommend it.
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