Gollum’s Riddle
This thing all things devours,
Birds, beasts, trees, flowers,
Gnaws iron, bites steel,
Grinds hard stones to meal,
Slays king, ruins town,
And beats mountain down.
SOLUTION
The answer is TIME.
Category: Puzzles
John Ronald Reuel Tolkien (1892 – 1973) was an English writer, poet, philologist, and academic, who is best known as the author of the classic high fantasy works The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and The Silmarillion.
Puzzle Sum 7
What birds do these sums spell?
SOLUTION
WRENCH + ARM – CHARM = WREN
MAGNET – NET + PIE = MAGPIE
Knocked Off Piece
The following position occurs in a real game, right after one of the pieces gets knocked off the board. What was the piece?
SOLUTION
It was a black knight. First, notice that the black pawns have moved 14 times diagonally and thus they have taken 14 pieces. Therefore the knocked off piece is black. Since it is impossible for both kings to be checked at the same time, the missing piece was positioned on a2. It couldn’t be a queen or a rook, because the white king would be checked both by it and the pawn on b3, which is impossible. Therefore the missing piece is either the black white-squared bishop or the black knight. However, the pawns on b7 and d7 haven’t been moved the entire game and then the black white-squared bishop hasn’t either. Thus we conclude that the knocked off piece is a black knight.
Tetris Puzzle
As a birthday present last year, I received some fridge magnets. They didn’t come as a puzzle, so I don’t know if they have a solution, but I made a puzzle out of them anyway. The magnets are tetrominoes. There are 7 of each shape. Is it possible to arrange them into a 7×28 rectangle so that they are all used and all inside the rectangle? The closest I have managed is this:
SOLUTION
No, it is impossible. Imagine you are placing the tetrominoes on a 7×28 chess board. All of them, except for the T-shaped ones cover exactly 2 black and 2 white cells. Each of the T-shaped tetrominos covers either 2 more black cells than white cells or 2 more white cells than black cells. Since there are 7 of them, combined they will cover either more black cells than white cells or more white cells than black cells. Therefore all pieces on the picture can not cover perfectly a rectangle, which contains an equal number of black and white cells.
Source:
Out of Place
Which of the numbers below is out of place and why?
1011, 2223, 3940, 5646, 8910
SOLUTION
Every number except 5646 can be split into a sequence of consecutive numbers: 1011~10-11, 2223~22-23, 3940~39-40, 8910~8-9-10.
Two Games at Once
The Devil offers you a deal – you have to play two games of chess simultaneously against the two best GrandMasters in the world, one with black pieces and one with white pieces. If you win at least 1 point from the two games, you will get whatever your heart desires, if you don’t – you will go straight to Hell. Would you accept the challenge?
SOLUTION
Accept the challenge. You can easily get 1 point by just repeating the moves of your opponents. For example, if the white GrandMaster plays e4, then you play e4 against the black GrandMaster. If the back GrandMaster plays e5, then you play e5 against the white GrandMaster and so on.
Penrose Railway Maze 1
Get from START to FINISH, moving only over smooth lines, without reversing and making sharp turns.
SOLUTION
The solution is shown below.
Magic Liquid
You buy a bottle with a letter from the merchant, the merchant tells you that when you drink the liquid in the bottle it grants you eternal life, he supposedly deciphered this from the letter.
After you get home you decide to study the letter if it really says what the merchant told you, can you figure out if the bottle really grants eternal life?
You come to a fork in the road.
To the left is an empty well made from stone.
On the right is a pirate’s buried treasure.
Ahead you only see a tall straight tree.
The night is dark with only a dying moon in the sky.
Source: Puzzling StackExchange
SOLUTION
The objects described in the last paragraph have the following shapes:
fork in the road = T
empty well = O
buried treasure = X
straight tree = I
dying moon = C
The 5 letters form the word “TOXIC”, which suggests you shouldn’t drink from the bottle.
Bottle, Coin and Cork
You put a little coin in an empty wine bottle and then insert the cork in its opening. How can you remove the coin without taking out the cork or breaking the bottle?
SOLUTION
Push the cork inside and then take out the coin.
Puzzle Sum 6
What state does this sum spell?
SOLUTION
KENNEL + INK – LINK + STONE – NEST – ONE + TUCK + YEAR – EAR = KENTUCKY