No Body, No Nose
What do you call a person with no body and no nose?
SOLUTION
The answer is NOBODY KNOWS (no-body-nose).
D1G1TAL CHR0N1CLES
“D1G1TAL CHR0N1CLES” by the Georgean duo Levan Patsinashvili and Davit Babiashvili is a series of pictograms depicting major historical events using cleverly designed fonts. The designs are puzzling, educational, and eye-pleasing at the same time. Can you guess what happened in the years 1250, 1912, and 1975 by examining these three images?
Well, the sequence {1, 1, 2, 3, 5} is the Fibonacci sequence, and 1250 is the year the famous mathematician died. The sinking number “1912” hints that this is the year the Titanic crashed, and the funny “97” which resembles the Windows OS logo symbolizes the founding of Microsoft in 1975.
Below, we are presenting Levan and Davit’s entire series, consisting of 52 designs, in chronological order. Which ones are your favorites and how many events can you recognize?
Dr. Riesen’s Rebuses 3
Can you figure out what common phrases these rebuses represent?
SOLUTION
The answers are:
- Read between the lines
- Big picture thinking
- Turncoat
- Cut to the chase
- The last straw
- Nick of time
- Less is more
- Easy come, easy go
- Once in a blue moon
- Backgammon game
- Practice makes perfect
- Partial custody
- Throw in the towel
- Run out of steam
- Make or break
- Lost in translation
The Connect Game
Two friends are playing the following game:
They start with 10 nodes on a sheet of paper and, taking turns, connect any two of them which are not already connected with an edge. The first player to make the resulting graph connected loses.
Who will win the game?
Remark: A graph is “connected” if there is a path between any two of its nodes.
SOLUTION
The first player has a winning strategy.
His strategy is with each turn to keep the graph connected, until a single connected component of 6 or 7 nodes is reached. Then, his goal is to make sure the graph ends up with either connected components of 8 and 2 nodes (8-2 split), or connected components of 6 and 4 nodes (6-4 split). In both cases, the two players will have to keep connecting nodes within these components, until one of them is forced to make the graph connected. Since the number of edges in the components is either C^8_2+C^2_2=29, or C^6_2+C^4_2=21, which are both odd numbers, Player 1 will be the winner.
Once a single connected component of 6 or 7 nodes is reached, there are multiple possibilities:
- The connected component has 7 nodes and Player 2 connects it to one of the three remaining nodes. Then, Player 1 should connect the remaining two nodes with each other and get an 8-2 split.
- The connected component has 7 nodes and Player 2 connects two of the three remaining nodes with each other. Then, Player 1 should connect the large connected component to the last remaining node and get an 8-2 split.
- The connected component has 7 nodes and Player 2 makes a connection within it. Then, Player 1 also must connect two nodes within the component. Since the number of edges in a complete graph with seven nodes is C^7_2=21, eventually Player 2 will be forced to make a move of type 1 or 2.
- The connected component has 6 nodes and Player 2 connects it to one of the four remaining nodes. Then, Player 1 should make a connection within the connected seven nodes and reduce the game to cases 1 to 3 above.
- The connected component has 6 nodes and Player 2 connects two of the four remaining nodes. Then, Player 1 should connect the two remaining nodes with each other. The game is reduced to a 6-2-2 split which eventually will turn into either an 8-2 split, or a 6-4 split. In both cases Player 1 will win, as explained above.
Seven Letters Sequence
Find a seven-letter sequence to fill in each of the three empty spaces and form a meaningful sentence.
The ★★★★★★★ surgeon was ★★★ ★★★★ to operate, because there was ★★ ★★★★★.
SOLUTION
The sequence is NOTABLE:
The NOTABLE surgeon was NOT ABLE to operate, because there was NO TABLE.
Glow and Shine
There is a property that applies to all words in the first list and to none in the words in the second list. What is it?
- GLOW, ALMOST, BIOPSY, GHOST, EMPTY, BEGIN
- SHINE, BARELY, VIVISECTION, APPARITION, VACANT, START
SOLUTION
The words in the first list are called “Abecederian”, i.e. their letters are in alphabetical order.
The Four Oaks
A father left to his four sons this square field, with the instruction that they divide it into four pieces, each of the same shape and size, so that each piece of land contained one of the trees. How did they manage it?
SOLUTION
The solution is shown below.
Napoleon and the Policemen
Napoleon has landed on a deserted planet with only two policemen on it. He is traveling around the planet, painting a red line as he goes. When Napoleon creates a loop with red paint, the smaller of the two encompassed areas is claimed by him. The policemen are trying to restrict the land Napoleon claims as much as possible. If they encounter him, they arrest him and take him away. Can you prove that the police have a strategy to stop Napoleon from claiming more than 25% of the planet’s surface?
We assume that Napoleon and the police are moving at the same speed, making decisions in real time, and fully aware of everyone’s locations.
SOLUTION
First, we choose an axis, so that Napoleon and the two policemen lie on a single parallel. Then, the strategy of the two policemen is to move with the same speed as Napoleon, keeping identical latitudes as his at all times, and squeezing him along the parallel between them.
In order to claim 25% of the planet’s surface, Napoleon must travel at least 90°+90°=180° in total along the magnitudes. Therefore, during this time the policemen would travel 180° along the magnitudes each and catch him.
Sunome Puzzles
Review
Sunome is a new logic puzzle, invented by Adam Bontrager. The name is an abbreviation of “Suji no meiro” which means “digit maze” in Japanese.
Sunome puzzles come in the form of a grid with numbers on the sides, and a Start (S) and End (E) cells inside. The goal is to design a “proper” maze with the given Start and End cells, such that the amount of vertical and horizontal walls in each row and column is predetermined by the numbers around the grid. The meaning of “proper” involves a lot of technical requirements, such as existence of a unique path from Start to End, lack of closed off regions, etc.
Initially, the rules of Sunome seem relatively complex in comparison to the likes of Sudoku and Kakuro. However, it takes little time to get a good grasp of them. The clues regarding the number of walls in the rows and columns are the ones used mostly, just like in a Nonogram. Once the player gets stuck, they need to apply some of the other rules, which unlock the solving process further. Overall, I find the experience highly enjoyable, since it requires paying attention to multiple components at once.
Each puzzle in the Sunome books is manually designed, so that the solution can be deduced analytically, without the need of a trial-and-error approach. The difficulty is generally lower than Sudoku and Kakuro which allows the player to complete a few puzzles in a 10 to 20 minutes long break and get back to working on other things.
While the original Sunome puzzles would hardly get boring, the author makes sure new puzzle mechanics are introduced in each successive book in the series:
- BOOK 2: Pits, Portals, and Passages – adds objects and complexity to the grid
- BOOK 3: Sunome Cubed – changes the shape of the grid to a cube
- BOOK 4: Sunome Blocks – instead of a creating a maze, the player must break the grid into shapes with predetermined sizes, similarly to Shikaku
In addition to Sunome, the author has started publishing a separate series of original Transportation puzzles. So far this includes Kartdoodle and Skyways, with Railways coming out soon. While all puzzles are highly entertaining, my personal favorite so far is Skyways. It plays a lot like Numberlink and the mobile game “Flow Free” but has some added complexity.
One can get the PDF versions of the books from itch.io for merely $1 each (at the time of publishing this post), which is a great bargain for such a good bundle of puzzles. Physical versions are also available on Amazon for $8. Each one of them is in the form of a small-format softcover, ideal to keep in the bag during travels. I hope the author will eventually consider combining all Sunome books in one deluxe hardcover edition and will do the same with his Transportation puzzles.
If you are still not convinced about Adam’s original puzzles, you can try the free sampler provided below. Also, for just a few bucks per month, you can subscribe to his Patreon. I am very happy to see such a prolific puzzle creator and looking forward to try his future work.
- about 100 puzzles in each book
- all hand-made logic puzzles
- variations keep the puzzles engaging
- affordable PDF and physical formats
GET SUNOME PUZZLES
Escaping the Kingdom
A long time ago there was a kingdom, isolated from the world. There was only one way to and from the kingdom, namely through a long bridge. The king ordered the execution of anyone caught fleeing the kingdom on the bridge and the banishment of anyone caught sneaking into the kingdom.
The bridge was guarded by one person, who was taking a 10-minute break inside his cabin every round hour. Fifteen minutes were needed for a person to cross the bridge and yet, one woman managed to escape the kingdom. How did she do it?
SOLUTION
Once the guard entered the cabin, the woman started crossing the bridge for 9 minutes, and then turned around and pretended to be going in the opposite direction for one more minute. When the guard caught her, she said she was trying to enter the kingdom, so he banished her away.