Llama Lawn
Get from START to END in this maze, created by Sean Jackson.
SOLUTION
The solution is shown below.
Category: Puzzles
Sean Jackson is a broadcast designer and art director based in New York. He has been creating mazes for over 30 years. He finds creating them and solving them both fun and relaxing.
Four Points in the Plane
Find all configurations of four points in the plane, such that the pairwise distances between the points take at most two different values.
SOLUTION
All 6 configurations are shown below: a square, a rhombus with 60°-120°-60°-120°, an equilateral triangle with its center, an isosceles triangle with 75°-75°-30° and its center, a quadrilateral with 75°-150°-75°-150°, and a trapezoid with base angles of 72°.
Guess the Fruits
You are given 3 boxes – one labeled “Apples”, one labeled “Bananas”, and one labeled “Apples and Bananas”. You are told that the labels on the boxes have been completely mismatched, i.e. none of the three labels is put on its correct box. How can you open just one box and pick a random fruit from it, so that after seeing the fruit, you can guess correctly the contents of every box out of the three?
SOLUTION
Open the box labeled “Apples and Bananas”. If you pick a banana from it, then the box labeled “Bananas” will contain apples, and therefore the box labeled “Apples” will contain apples and bananas. Similarly, if you pick an apple from it, then the box labeled “Apples” will contain bananas, and therefore the box labeled “Bananas” will contain apples and bananas”.
Thank You!
A cowboy walks into a bar and asks the barman for a glass of water. The barman pulls out a gun instead and points it at the man. The man genuinely says “Thank you” and walks out.
What happened?
SOLUTION
The cowboy had hiccups and needed water. The barman shocked him with his gun instead and that cured the hiccups.
Twiddled Bolts
Two identical bolts are placed together so their grooves intermesh. If you move the bolts around each other as you would twiddle your thumbs, holding each bolt firmly by the head so it does not rotate and twiddling them in the direction shown below, will the heads:
(a) move inward
(b) move outward, or
(c) remain the same distance from each other?
SOLUTION
One of the bolts will be screwing itself, and the other one will be unscrewing itself. This will happen at the same pace and the bolts will remain the same distance from each other. Thus the answer is (c).
The Missing Dollar
Three people check into a hotel room and each of them gets charged $10 – a total of $30. Later the clerk realizes that the bill is just $25, so he sends the bellboy to return $5 to the guests. On his way to the room, the bellboy decides to cheat and pockets $2 of the money, and gives the three men just one dollar each. Now the three men have spent $9 each, for a total of $27. Additionally, the bellboy took $2 for himself, which adds up to $27 + $2 = $29. Since the guests originally handed over $30, the question is what happened to the remaining $1?
SOLUTION
The calculation is made the wrong way. The three men originally gave $30, but later $5 of them were sent back, which makes it $30 – 5 = $25 left at the clerk. Each of the men spent $9, so they gave $27 in total, $2 of which ended up in the bellboy’s pocket. $27 – $2 = $25, so no “missing dollar” here.
3 x $9 – $2 = $30 – $5.
Do Not Mate!
Find a move for White, which does not result in a mate.
SOLUTION
The move is Rc6+. Then Black can play Rxh7.
Eye Maze
Enter through one side of the iris and exit via the other.
SOLUTION
The solution is shown below.
The Yolk of the Egg
What is correct to say – “the yolk of the egg is white” or “the yolk of the egg are white”?
SOLUTION
Neither – the yolk of the egg is yellow.
Driver’s Seat
Where is the driver sitting in this car?
SOLUTION
Using the positioning of the mirrors, you can conclude that the driver is sitting on the right.
