Vinculus Puzzles

Circles are particles and lines joining them are bonds. The objective is to find all the hidden values, following these four rules:

  1. Particle values must be the sum of their bond values.
  2. Particles can have the following values: 0, 1, 2, 4, 8, 12, 16.
  3. Bonds can have the following values: 0, 1, 2, 4.
  4. If two particles have the same value, the bond between them must have value 0.

The solutions are shown below.

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Jugs with Water

You have a 3 liter jug, a 5 liter jug, and an infinite amount of tap water. How can you measure exactly 4 liters of water using the jugs?

Call the 3 liter jug “small” the 5 liter jug “large”.

  • Fill the large jug with water.
  • Pour 3 liters of water from the large jug into the small jug.
  • Empty the small jug with water.
  • Pour the remaining 2 liters of water from the large jug into the small jug.
  • Fill the large jug with water.
  • Pour water from the large jug into the small jug, until the small jug is full.

Now there are exactly 4 liters of water in the large jug.

A Good Bet

Someone tells you: “I’ll bet you $1 that if you give me $3, I will give you $5 in return”. Is this a good bet?

You should not accept the bet and give him $3. If the person gives you the $5, then you would have given him $1+$3=$4, and you would make a profit of $1. However, the person can simply not give you anything and you will lose $3-$1=$2.

Scoring penalties

At some point in Leonel Messi’s career, the football player had less than 80% success when performing penalty kicks. Later in his career, he had more than 80% success when performing penalty kicks. Show that there was a moment in Leonel Messi’s career when he had exactly 80% success when performing penalty kicks.

Let us see that it is impossible for Messi to jump from under 80% success rate to over 80% success rate in just one attempt. Indeed, if Messi’s success rate was below 80% after N attempts, then he scored at most 4N/5 – 1/5 = (4N-1)/5 times. If his success rate was above 80% after N+1 attempts, then he scored at least 4(N+1)/5 + 1/5 = (4N-1)/5 + 6/5 times. However, Messi can not score more than one goal in a single attempt, which completes the proof.

A Dream Man at a Funeral

While at her own mother’s funeral, a girl meets a guy she doesn’t know. She thinks the guy is amazing – her dream man – and is pretty sure he could be the love of her life. However, she never asks for his name or number and afterwards can not find anyone who knows who he is. A few days later, the girl kills her own sister.

Why did she do it?

The girl assumed the man was a family friend, so she decided he would come also to the funeral of her sister.

Canals on Mars Maze

Starting with the letter “T” at the bottom, visit all spots exactly once before returning to the beginning, so that the letters you pass through spell a complete sentence.

The path goes through the letters “T”, “H”, “E”, “R”, “E”, “I”, “S”, “N”, “O”, “P”, “O”, “S”, “S”, “I”, “B”, “L”, “E”, “W”, “A”, “Y”, to spell the sentence “There is no possible way”.