Category: Archive

I’ve installed a new widget here on Puzzlehead.org down in the lower left column of this page. It shows you a running feed of puzzle-related news stories (mostly – sometimes it hits the word “puzzle” in non-puzzle news). Enjoy!

Now that the boys are out of school and my own two-week winter vacation has started, I can return to my long-neglected but highly important care of this site. Enjoy it while you can!

In looking for some holiday themed puzzles to share, I came across the SSQQ Christmas Carol Puzzle. Once you get past being freaked out just a little bit by the 1990s-style layout of the web page, there’s really good stuff going on here.

The premise is simple: puzzle constructor Rick Archer offers you 12 different images with 10 panels each. Each panel that references a popular Christmas carol. For instance, here’s the first image (click on the image for a larger version):

So, which 10 Christmas songs do these represent? Click here to find out!

[spoiler /Show Answers/ /Hide Answers/]

1. Jingle Bells

2. Walking in a Winter Wonderland

3. Santa Claus is Coming to Town

4. The First Noel (there’s no “L”)

5. Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer

6. The Little Drummer Boy

7. I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas

8. I Saw Three Ships Come Sailing In

9. What Child is This?

10. We Three Kings[/spoiler]

If you liked those puzzles, Rick has even more for you hidden away on his SSQQ Dance web site.

Happy Holidays everyone!

-eP

Here’s a puzzle a co-worker shared with me recently. See how you do with it!

Suppose you have five bags of gold coins. All of the coins weigh exactly 1 lb each except for all of the coins in one bag whose coins weigh 1 lb 1 oz each. The bags are unmarked, and there is no visible indication as to which bag holds which coins. The bags may contain different quantities of coins.

Suppose you have a scale on which you can make exactly one instantaneous measurement – put something on the scale, push the “Weigh” button, and you get a reading of the weight at the moment the button is pushed.

Using the scale, is it possible to identify which of the 5 bags contains the heavier coins with only a single measurement? If so, how?

[spoiler /Show Answer/ /Hide Answer/]On the scale, place one coin from the first bag, two coins from the second bag, three coins from the third bag, four coins from the fourth bag, and five coins from the fifth bag. When the weight is taken, the number of ounces will indicate which bag has the heavier coins. That is, if the weight is 15 lb 3 oz, then the third bag has the heavier coins.[/spoiler]

(I haven’t forgotten about you … I’ve just been really, really, really busy in a way that seems to be soaking up an awful lot of my personal time. Real Soon Now, I will be increasing my posting frequency here back to the levels I know you’ve all come to expect.)

There was a wonderful story about geocaching in the Sun-Sentinel this weekend, featuring a mention of Yours Truly. Check it out.

“The thing that interested me about painting Masquerade was, how could you make people look at those paintings…and look…and look…and look again. The puzzle–that was the way to do that.”
— Kit Williams

The children’s book Masquerade, published in 1979, tells the story of Jack Hare, commissioned by the Moon to carry a treasure to her love, the Sun. When Jack finally arrives at the Sun, he finds that he has lost the treasure.

The book is more than just a beautifully-illustrated children’s fairy tale – it is one of the most elaborate and elegant puzzles ever created. Kit Williams created the puzzle, the artwork, and the treasure itself – an 18-karat gold amulet encrusted with jewels and shaped like a hare.

The public was told that amulet was buried in a clay casket somewhere in the United Kingdom and that it was buried on public property which could be easily accessed. The book’s publication set off one of the most famous puzzle-solving contests in history – it sold more than one million copies.

In March 1982, Kit Williams announced that Ken Thomas had solved the puzzle, found the hare, and won the contest. (Despite announcement and accompanying news stories and photographs, puzzleheads in denial continued to search and to dig throughout the summer of 1982!)

But Williams had reservations about the find, which eventually proved to be correct. In 1988, the story broke that the real name of Ken Thomas was Dugald Thompson, who was a business associate of a man named John Guard. Guard’s girlfriend at the time was Veronica Robertson – a former live-in girlfriend of Kit Williams. Williams had told Robertson the general location of where he had hidden the treasure and how to find it.

Robertson pointed Guard in the right direction – she, Guard, and Thompson combed the area at night with metal detectors and shovels looking for it. Eventually, Guard drew a sketch of the final “solution” and prodded Thompson into sending it to Williams to verify, which he did. Thompson, disguised as Ken Thomas, went with Williams to unearth the golden hare.

After claiming the prize, Thompson placed the hare in a bank vault. In 1985, the hare was put up as collateral to fund a software company called Haresoft that ultimately went bankrupt. In December 1988, the hare was placed for auction by Sotheby’s where it sold to an anonymous private collector for £31,900 (approx US$60,000) – Williams himself bid on it to win it back but had to drop out at £6,000.

The whereabouts of the hare remained unknown for over 20 years. After hearing a radio interview with Williams, the owner of the hare agreed to be interviewed for a TV program produced by BBC Four in 2009. For the first time since the hare was unearthed, Williams was reunited with the hare (if only temporarily).

Masquerade was the forerunner of the armchair treasure hunt, which includes David Blaine’s Mysterious Stranger.

I have not spoiled any part of the Masquerade puzzles in this blog entry. But many descriptions of the solution exist on the internet. My favorite one is at bunnyears.net, which also includes links to all of the artwork in the book. Enjoy!

“Dear Editor This is the Zodiac Speaking …”

The evening of Friday, December 20, 1968, was the first date of Betty Lou Jensen and David Faraday of Benicia, California. The couple planned to attend a Christmas concert at a nearby high school two or three blocks from Jensen’s home. Instead, they visited a friend and stopped at a local restaurant, then drove out Lake Herman Road. At about 10:15 p.m. Faraday parked his mother’s Rambler in a gravel turnout, which was a well-known lovers’ lane.

Shortly after 11 p.m., another car pulled into the turnout and parked beside them. The driver apparently got out with a pistol and ordered them out of the Rambler. Jensen exited first. When Faraday was halfway out, the man shot Faraday in the head. Fleeing, Jensen was gunned down twenty-eight feet from the car with five shots through her back. The man then drove off. Their bodies were found minutes later by Stella Borges, who lived nearby. The sheriff’s department investigated but found no leads.

On July 4, 1969, sometime around midnight, Darlene Ferrin and Michael Mageau were shot multiple times while parked at a golf course in Vallejo, four miles from where Jensen and Faraday were murdered. At 12:40 am, a man phoned the police department from a phone booth only a few blocks away from the police station and claimed responsibility for the attack as well as for the murders of Jensen and Farady.

On August 1, 1969, nearly identical letters were received by the Vallejo Times-Herald, the San Francisco Chronicle, and the San Francisco Examiner in which the author took credit for the shootings. Each letter also included one-third of a 408-symbol cryptogram which the killer claimed contained his identity. The killer demanded they be printed on each paper’s front page or he would “cruse [sic] around all weekend killing lone people in the night then move on to kill again, until I end up with a dozen people over the weekend.” The threatened murders did not happen, and all three parts were eventually published.

On August 7, 1969, another letter was received at the San Francisco Examiner with the salutation “Dear Editor This is the Zodiac speaking”. It was the first time the killer had referred to himself with this name. In it, the Zodiac included details about the murders which had not been released to the public as well as a message to the police that when they cracked his code “they will have me”. On August 8, 1969, Donald and Bettye Harden of Salinas, California, cracked the 408-symbol cryptogram. No name appears in the decoded text.

From September 27 to October 11, 1969, the Zodiac murdered three more people. On November 8, 1969, the Zodiac mailed a card with another cryptogram consisting of 340 characters. The 340-character cipher has never been decoded.

We’re having a going-away party for Gothicstorm & sweetpea3 on Sat Sep 12. You’re all invited.

This post is the first of an N-part series, where N is a number between 0 and infinity.

I have been working on a few puzzles lately that involve letter-to-number mappings of A-1, B-2, C-3, etc. Thanks to many years as a child playing Battleship, I still know that H is 8 and J is 10 … but I can’t remember many of the mappings after that. I know that T is 20, but I can never seem to remember the rest without writing out the entire table … is M 13 or 14? And what’s Q? Or V?

Because I’m extremely lazy (it comes with being a Perl programmer), I created a little mnemonic that saves me from having to write out the entire table every time I need it. I write it like this:

A B C D E
F G H I J
K L M N O
P Q R S T
U V W X Y
Z

Written this way, I get a simple visual reminder that the letters at the ends of the rows correspond to the multiples of 5 (E-5, J-10, O-15, T-20, Y-25). It’s easy to just count to the next letter. So Q is 17 and V is 22.

I found a puzzle cache yesterday. I thought you might appreciate the log entry from it. It’s all 100% true, even the entry from 2:35:12.

August 20 by ePeterso2 (580 found)

WEDNESDAY

12:40 pm – Begin work on solving this puzzle with the intent of finding it on the way home

12:55 pm – Puzzle solved. Well, most of the puzzle is solved. I’m only missing one of the words, but I’m so sure about the crossing words that I know I must be right.

4:30 pm – Get ready to skip out early to have enough time to get to the cache. Co-worker walks into cube and asks for “just a minute of my time”.

5:27 pm – One minute of my time ends.

5:28 pm – Give up hope of finding cache today.

THURSDAY

8:30 am – Arrive at work. Plan to leave at noon. Need to be in downtown Fort Lauderdale at 4:00 pm.

10:42 am – Doctor’s office calls. The doctor will be in surgery the rest of the day – all appointments today are canceled. Reschedule for tomorrow!

12:59 pm – Get son to band camp with one minute to spare! Have lunch.

2:30 pm – Arrive at the cache parking lot. Power up GPSr, punch in coordinates, and head in the direction of the arrow. “Battery Low” warning appears on GPSr screen.

2:31:15 pm – GPSr turns self off. Press on in same direction.

2:33 pm – Trail veers sharply away from the direction I know I need to be traveling. Remember signs at trailhead that say “STAY ON TRAIL”. Begin debate with self as to whether heeding that guidance is a good idea or not. If I stay on the trail, I don’t think I’ll find the cache. Ever.

2:34 pm – Debate with self concluded. I must find this cache! Leave trail.

2:34:30 pm – Restart GPSr, hoping to get a few minutes of battery life out of it. Stare at GPSr.

2:35 pm – Walk face-first into a massive spider web across the trail.

2:35:01 pm – Drop GPSr, shake head violently, and hope the spider isn’t in my hair. Frantically swipe at hair in hopes of brushing away any potential spiders.

2:35:05 pm – Consider that if the spider is in my hair, I will have smashed it and spider guts will now be in my hair.

2:35:06 pm – Check hair for spider guts. No spider guts found. Remainder of spider web removed. Pick up GPSr to find that it has died and powered off again.

2:35:12 pm – Grab a stick to use to clear away spider webs in front of me. Look up at remains of spider web. The spider is as large as my outstretched fingers.

2:35:25 pm – Exhale. Press on.

2:36 pm – Avoid spider webs 2, 3, and 4.

2:38 pm – Power up the GPSr again. It stays on just long enough for me to walk around a particular area of interest. Cache must be there.

2:39 pm – It is. Container is in hand!

2:39:01 pm – But I can’t open it. RATS. But I do remember what I need to open it!

2:39:03 pm – What I need is the last bit of the puzzle I wasn’t able to solve. RATS. And my solution to the puzzle is back on my desk at work. 30 miles away.

2:40 pm – Piece together what I think is the correct solution to the puzzle from memory. Ignore insect stings. Ignore pain of being poked by a thorny plant. Keep trying to open the cache. Keep failing.

2:45 pm – Give up squatting. Realize that I need to work on this some more. Decide to take the container with me back to the trailhead and work on it there.

2:50 pm – Return to trailhead after avoiding spiders 4, 3, 2, and 1 successfully. Fail to open container.

3:00 pm – Make notes about the container. Return container to hiding spot. Return to car and leave the area to try to find a nearby WiFi spot to cross-check my puzzle solution.

3:10 pm – Find WiFi spot. Order frozen lemonade which is awesome relief for being outside in the afternoon heat. Check answers. Discover potential solution that I totally overlooked.

3:35 pm – Return to the cache site. Apply solution – SUCCESS! Sign log, leave Red Otter pathtag for next finder.

3:45 pm – Return to the car. Miraculously hit a lucky combination of green lights. Make it to my meeting on time.

Thanks for the cache!

-eP

Several of you have asked if I’ve considered doing a Puzzlehead podcast. I love the idea and have the equipment and technical skill to do it and make it sound good, but I don’t have the time to commit to doing it right. I figure this blog is just effort-intensive enough for me right now.

However, there are several interesting puzzle-related podcasts around. Here’s the ones I know exist, either from personal experience or from searching around in the iTunes store. If you know of more, please let us know in a comment here.

NPR’s Puzzle on the Air

http://www.npr.org/puzzle

The Car Talk Puzzle

http://www.cartalk.com/content/puzzler/

The Puzzle Podcast

http://www.puzzlepodcast.com