This weeks puzzle is a simple chance problem. One of my sons has a one out of four chance to win one or perhaps even two medals at skating this weekend. My other son this weekend has a 1 out of 3 chance to win a medal.
What is the chance that at least one of them wins a medal this weekend?
You can check your solution
What comes next in the following sequence?
4 3 3 5 4 4 3 5 5 4 3 ..
If you think you found the solution, you can check the solution
Where does the zero go in this sequence?
8 5 4 9 1 7 6 3 2
I would like to thank fellow consultant Harrie Jans for coming up with this little poser 🙂
If you solved it, we have the solution so you can check yours.
How can you plant 10 trees such that they are planted in 5 rows of 4 trees each?
Alex is an art-student who sends an email to Bert. Charles is not an art-student. Bert sends an email to Charles.
Now the simple question is: Does an art student send an email to someone who is not an art student?
Yes or No? Or can’t decide because of lack of information?.
This puzzle comes from a presentation by Paul Fenwick, which you can find here
If you solved it, we have the solution so you can check yours.
In this type of puzzle: swap two pairs of digits to make the addition correct. For example, in the illustration above the 7 and the adjacent 0 might have been swapped, or the 3 with one of the 8’s. Your task of course is to restore the original correct sum by finding the two swaps.
1) nr 1*
1486
3172
—-+
7313
2) nr 2*
3155
4349
—-+
7317
3) nr 3*
2748
6146
—-+
6134
4) nr 4*
9559
1326
—-+
5418
5) nr 5*
See the illustration at the top of this post.
Nr 3 comes from Issue no 41, 1975, of the famous British magazin Games and Puzzles. I suppose an anonymous editor came up with this puzzle type.
If you have other information about the origin of this puzzle type, I’d love to hear it.
You can find the solutions at 137, 147, 157, 167 and 177
,
1) Complete the alphabet*
ACDGHIMNOPUVWXY
BEFJKLQRST
In which row does the letter Z go?
If you solved it, we have the solution so you can check yours
—-
One of the nice things of wordpress is its detailed visitor stats.
This blog had 6900 views in 2012.
The visitors have come from (in from most to fewer, only countries > 5 views represented:
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There were 38 new posts, brining the total up to 52. 127 new pictures were uploaded.
The busiest day of the year was December 17th with 97 views.
The most popular posts date back to 2011, all types of river crossing puzzles.
Oh, and the most poopular page was the page with the solutions.
Though this blog mainly concentrates on logical puzzles, this post is about the Soma Cube, invented by Danish scientist Piet Hein in 1933 during a lecture on quantum physics. The name SOMA may be related to the name of an array.
It is a solid dissection puzzle, where a 3x3x3 cube is divided into 7 pieces:
You can easily create your own set with a saw and some wood glue.
The Soma cube has been discussed in detail by Martin Gardner and John Horton Conway, and the book Winning Ways for your Mathematical Plays contains a detailed analysis of the Soma cube problem. There are 240 distinct solutions of the Soma cube puzzle, excluding rotations and reflections.
Piet Hein also published or authorized a booklet with puzzles. I found a copy here. However, I found 2 figures with a number of blocks less than 27, so I have discarded them and added two of the problems listed below in this file.
Here are some problems I did not find elsewhere on the web:
1)
2)
3)
4)
5)
6)
(Thanks go to fellow consultant Harrie Jans for this one!)
7)
8)
Many people noticed that the pieces used are not all tetracubes, and the tricube is a strange duck in the pond. In response several people have suggested something dubbed Soma+, but that is a subject for a different post in this blog.
There is an awful lot of literature on the web. Here are some links:
* Thorleif Bundgaard collected a very nice and very extensive collection of figures which can be made with the soma cube pieces.
* Chapter 24: Pursuing Puzzles Purposefully from the book “Winning Ways II “
* Article on english wikipedia on soma cube
* Article on englsih wikipedia on tetrominoes
* List of figures
* All 240 solutions to the cube
* Instructions for making a soma cube
If you solved it, we have the solution to nr 1, nr 2, nr 3, nr 4, nr 5, nr 6, nr 7, and nr 8
1) Lips*
Here’s a small drawing. Can you complete the drawing with 3 straight lines to make a lip?
The Dutch original of this puzzle ( a chicken) was handed to me by my current manager, Onno Mous (thx, Onno!)
Talking about lips, here is a lovely silly video by veggie tales – I love my lips:
You can find a hint at 234
justpuzzles 