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Parking Lot
On top of which number is the car parked?
SOLUTION
You are looking at the parking lot upside-down. The numbers on the picture are from 85 to 92. The car is parked on top of 87.
Difficulty: Advanced
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Yes, No, I Don’t Know
Your friend is thinking of a number among 1, 2, and 3. You can ask him just one question, to which he is allowed to answer only with “yes”, “no”, or “I don’t know”. What would you ask him in order to find his number?
SOLUTION
You can ask him the following:
“If I am thinking of a number among 1 and 2, is your number going to be bigger than mine?”
If your friend’s number is 1, he will say “no”. If his number is 2, he will say “I don’t know”. If his number is 3, he will say “yes”.
MLN
This puzzle/game is played with groups of people, in which at least one of the participants knows the meaning of “MLN”, and the others are trying to figure it out.
All players must sit in a circle, facing each other. Then the people, who do not know what “MLN” stands for, take turns to ask questions. Every question must start with “Is MLN…” and must have a “yes” or “no” answer. Then a player who knows the meaning of “MLN” answers the question and the game continues until everyone solves the puzzle.
To play this game with your friends, at least one of you must know about the solution, which is explained below. Just keep in mind that whoever reads it, will lose the enjoyment of figuring it out by himself.
SOLUTION
The abbreviation “MLN” stands for “My Left Neighbor”. For example, if someone asks “Is MLN a boy?”, the answer will depend on the gender of the person on their left side. This makes the game both interesting and confusing.
68 Coins, 100 Weighings
You have 68 coins with different weights. How can you find both the lightest and the heaviest coins with 100 scale weighings?
SOLUTION
1. Compare the coins in pairs and separate the light ones in one group and the heavy ones in another. (34 weighings)
2. Find the lightest coin in the first group of 34 coins. (33 weighings)
3. Find the heaviest coin in the second group of 34 coins. (33 weighings)
The Gingerbread Dog
Can you cut Sam Loyd’s gingerbread dog into two identical pieces?
SOLUTION
The solution is shown below.
Turns Maze
Enter the maze from the bottom and exit through the top. Turn right at every right square, turn left at every blue square, and go straight through every yellow square.
SOLUTION
The solution is shown below.
Stopped Wall Clock
Ben has a wall clock in his room, but he didn’t wind it one day, so it stopped working. Later that day he left his house, walked to his best friend’s place, who has his own, always precise clock, stayed there for a while, then walked back home. When he arrived, he went to his wall clock and adjusted it to show the correct time. How did Ben do it, if he didn’t see any other clocks during the day, except for the one at his best friend’s place?
SOLUTION
Before Ben left his place, he winded his clock. When he went to his friend’s place, he noted for how long he stayed there, say X, and at what time he left, say Y. After Ben got back home, he looked at his own wall clock and calculated the time he was outside, say Z. Then he concluded that the time he was walking was Z – X in total, and therefore it took him (Z – X)/2 time to get from his friend’s place to his own house. He added Y (the time he left his friend’s place) and got Y + (Z – X)/2, the correct time.
Group of Three
I give you a group of three. One is sitting down, and will never get up. The second eats as much as is given to him, yet is always hungry. The third goes away and never returns. What is this group of three?
SOLUTION
The answer is STOVE, FIRE, SMOKE.
Codex Enigmatum
These are a few enigmas from the puzzle book CODEX ENIGMATUM. What is the answer to puzzle #9?
SOLUTION
- Puzzle #2 After turning the first wheel 22 times to the right, then 19 times to the left, then 15 times to the right, and finally 11 times to the left, the final wheel will spell the word EXIT.
- Puzzle #3 The total number of spots on the hidden sides of the die on the left is 6, which corresponds to the sixth letter in the alphabet – F. Therefore, the four dice on the right correspond to the letters K, I, N, G.
- Puzzle #4 In the mosaic on the right, you can find a little star which contains pieces with letters H, I, D, E.
- Puzzle #6 If you trace the signature on the paper, starting from the large C, you will pass through the letters C, O, N, T, I, N, U, O, U, S.
- Puzzle #8 The picture on the left and the answer to puzzle #6 (“continuous”) suggest that we have to consider the images on the right which can be drawn continuously, without taking off the pencil from the paper or passing through any segment twice. These images are labeled with the letters N, O, S, E.
- Puzzle #9 The first 2 letters from the word NOSE spell NO. The last letter from the word EXIT is T. The first letter from the word HIDE is H. The last three letters from the word KING spell ING. When you combine all of them, you get the word NOTHING.
Source:
1985
What number corresponds to 1985?
0 0 0 0 – 4
1 7 5 2 – 0
1 8 7 9 – 3
2 0 6 1 – 2
3 1 4 1 – 0
4 0 9 6 – 3
7 7 7 7 – 0
9 9 7 3 – 2
1 9 8 5 – ???
SOLUTION
The numbers on the right count the total number of “holes” in the digits on the left. “1”, “2”, “3”, “4”, “5” and “7” have 0 holes in them. “0”, “6” and “9” have 1 hole in them. “8” has 2 holes in it. Therefore, the corresponding number is 3.