Tag: Featured

Our first puzzle contest is officially over. Congratulations to the winner Kuan L.!
Also, special thanks to Rajesh Kumar, Johann Sturcz, Dave Phillips, P. A. Heuser, as well as ThinkFun and Dover Books for contributing puzzles.

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Time for work – 1 hour

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1. Connections

Examine the diagram and find which pairs of letters are connected with each other.

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2. King Kong’s Maze

Detective Roy Omoshi (upper right) is chasing a dangerous criminal (lower left) through a destroyed maze. King Kong is trying to help Roy by putting together all the pieces of the maze so that the detective can safely traverse it. Analyze the picture and find the sequence of pieces Roy Omoshi will pass through before he catches the criminal. Some pieces (#1, #7, #8) consist of multiple horizontal segments, so it is possible that the detective visits them multiple times.

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3. Color Path

Enter by the bottom red path and exit from the top of the maze. You may retrace your path, but you may not make a U-turn on a pathway. You must follow the paths in the order red, blue, yellow, and then red, blue, yellow again, changing color at the white squares.

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4. Amy’s Cats

Aunt Amy’s six cats have sat around the carpet, next to the thread, the pot, the cage, the coffee, the shoes, and the aquarium. You know that:

1. The two cats with bows sit next to each other.
2. The cats next to the bird cage and the coffee do not have blue eyes.
3. The two striped cats sit next to each other.
4. The weights of the cats next to the aquarium and the shoes do not differ by more than 3lbs.
5. There is a cat with a bell between two cats without long hair.
6. Pip Squeak sits next to Tom or Sassy (or both).

Find the names of the cats clock-wise around the carpet, starting from the left.

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5. Chess Connect

The starting and ending positions of 7 chess pieces are shown on the board. Find the trajectories of the pieces, if you know that they do not overlap and completely cover the board.
Notes: The pieces can not backtrack. Two trajectories can intersect diagonally but can not pass through the same square. Only the Knight’s has a discontinuous trajectory.

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6. Sheep and Wolves

A shepherd takes his two sheep every day to a 7×7 lawn, so that they can eat the fresh grass there. However, there are five wolves on the lawn which are preying on the poor sheep. The shepherd decided to build a closed, non-intersecting fence around the sheep, so that all wolves end up on the outside. He planned the shape of the fence carefully and installed several signs showing the number of fence pieces around the corresponding cells. Can you figure out the shape of the fence the shepherd is going to build?

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Solutions