Aug 12

Puzzle week – Day 1

math, puzzle 2 Comments »
  1. All, but one of the images in the collage below appear two times. Which is the odd one out? double_m
  2. The plots below show the movement of the ball in different games. By analyzing the movement of the ball, find the games portrayed in each of the pictures below. Please explain your answer i.e. explain as to how the plot matches the movement of the ball. This would help cases where the game you think the plot belongs to, is different from our answer. game1game2game3game41

  3. Each colour represents a direction. Blue – Left, Green - Right, Yellow – Up and Red - Down. The number in each square represents the number of squares to move. Starting at the middle of the grid, follow the instructions to traverse every square of the grid. Which is the square which you will go to at the end?

    4

    2

    4

    2

    1

    2

    3

    1

    3

    3

    2

    1

    2

    2

    1

    3

    1

    2

    2

    4

    4

    3

    1

    2

    2

4. Write the answer to each clue in the clockwise direction. Every answer overlaps the next by few letters (1/2/3). Each answers starts in its numbered section. The answer to the last clue ends with the letter in the first section.

square-puzzle-word

1 Alloy of Zinc and Copper

2 Attacked

3 Large and impressive structure

4 Stringed Instrument

5 Ek Chalis ki Last ….

6 Frightening

7 Snatch Eagerly

8 Explosive device


5.

Fill in the 3*3 magic square below with nine consecutive numbers such that all rows, columns and the two diagonals add up to the same value. 10 points

14

11

8

written by Rajaram S

Jun 29

Puzzle Mix – to keep you busy this week

math, puzzle 1 Comment »

UPDATE: The answers to all the puzzles below have been posted here.

I has organized a daily puzzle contest (for 5 days) sometime back. I had prepared around 4-5 puzzles every day and sent them across by mail. Given below are all the puzzles. Answers in a week’s time.

PUZZLE 1: Head of the Pack

Let me tell you a thing or two about solving puzzles. It is much easier than you think it is. Maybe, all the big puzzle competitions happen only in the capitals of the various countries, but this doesn’t mean you can’t capitalize on the other opportunities. Actually, the capitalism existing in our country is preventing us from spending more time on solving puzzles. Sometimes, this lack of time to solve puzzles results in lesser innovation in organizations. So, it is time to throw out the bureaucracy and come together to solve all the puzzles. One always wonders whether such techniques do yield results, but believe me, they do. Last, but never the least, we hope that you were able to find the name of the city.

PUZZLE 2: Piled up in Egypt

The boxes are arranged such that the number inside a box is equal to the sum of the numbers of the two boxes supporting it (i.e. the two boxes below it). No number is repeated and all numbers are greater than zero. What is the number in the topmost box?

PUZZLE 3: A puzzle on my table!

After seeing this puzzle kept on the table, even Dr.Watson would have been tempted to say, “It’s elementary, my dear!”

99, 15, 53, 8, 11, 32

PUZZLE 4: STR-ANG-E OR-GANI-SMS

Given below is an empty crossword. You have to fit the following words into the grid. Then the letters in the colored cells will give you the answer.

Words: 282, 2253***, 28669, 78779, 5262

PUZZLE 5: Counting the Extras

Corfu

Either

Viefi

Nerves

Open

Sexi

Wort

Look at the words above. All of them have something extra. Once you identify the “extra” bit, do the most logical thing and you will get the seven letter answer.

PUZZLE 6: TOUR OF LIMASSOL

Amdocs Social Club has organized a tour of Limassol. You are here, sharp at 8 AM on a nice Saturday morning. As you try to board the bus, the driver asks you for a password. You say to the driver that you were not given any password when you registered in the survey. The driver says that the survey system had crashed on Friday night and the only way they could allow people to get on the bus was through this password system. You try to argue, but to no avail. As you turn back, the driver says “Sorry, my friend. Maybe, you can have a look at some of the photographs taken by your friends during the previous tour”. You grab the paper thinking that the driver was just making fun of you. But, soon you realize otherwise. The paper seems to be a collage of 9 photographs with people gesturing through some strange signs. You immediately start decoding the message and realize that it indeed has the password. Can you find the password from the collage below? You can download a higher resolution picture here. Thanks to Harish and Anith for modeling for this puzzle. Btw, both are right-handed and hence, their right hands take priority over their left.

PUZZLE 7: MILITARY TALK

Do you know the NATO phonetic alphabet? If not, search it up on the net. In the passage below, the NATO phonetic code words of all letters of the alphabet (A to Z) but one have been encoded. Find the one alphabet which has been omitted. To get you started, I shall give an example: Alpha (for letter A) has been encoded as one of the “Two Greeks”.

(Repeat Twice): Tyson and his father (in a radiation outfit) went to a country, a Canadian province and a capital city. There they met Frankenstein, two Greeks, an African, an American and his angels. They danced twice (to critical acclaim), had a drink in the local Mariott, played a sport, watched a play by William and before December they founded a software company, for which they won an award.

PUZZLE 8: PRIME-TIME PUZZLE

All the numbers in the table below can be expressed as a product of some primes. Do the prime factorization for each of them and then look for some pattern to find the 8-letter word!

 

PUZZLE 18: READING BETWEEN THE WORDS
Each sentence below contains a country’s name within it. Find each of the countries.
a. My landlords went to a spa in Latvia for this year’s holidays.
b. To find the Great Wall, search in an Asian country.
c. It is normal in this country to walk to work.
d. This country has a fine palace where horses live.
e. You have to visit this city to enjoy such adventures.
f. While attending the innovation session i germinate ideas for the next big thing.
g. The crowd consists of thousands of people so those leaving cannot be monitored individually.
h. The rough analysis proved that this machine does not work.
PUZZLE 19: GOING TO THE MOVIES
For all you movie buffs out there, these puzzles should be a piece of cake! Each of these rebuses solve to a movie name. (14 movies)
Enjoy!!!!!!!!

written by Rajaram S

May 13

an easy math puzzle

math, puzzle 9 Comments »

Got this puzzle in an email-forward today…
IF:
2+3=10
7+2=63
6+5=66
8+4=96
THEN
9+7=?

Answer in the comments section.

written by Rajaram S

Mar 21

Two math puzzles to puzzle you

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I have always been fascinated by puzzles based on logic rather than pure mathematics. How these puzzles are different from the usual mathematical ones is that at some point in time of solving the puzzle, you have to use your logical part of the brain and eliminate some answers and not just keep doing some calculations to reach the answer. Below are two such puzzles which are extremely interesting to solve (in my opinion). The answers are written in white just after the puzzle. So , to see the answer, highlight the empty area after the puzzle. Enjoy!
Puzzle 1:
A census-taker(CT) (one who counts the population) goes to a house and knocks on the door. A woman(W) opens the door. Given below is the conversation they have:
CT: Ma’am, how many children do you have ?
W: Three
CT: Can you please tell me their ages ?
W: I won’t tell you their ages, but i can give you clues.
CT: wow, a puzzle! Ok, give me the clues.
W: Clue No 1: The product of my kid’s ages is 36.
W: Clue No 2: The sum of their ages is equal to my door number.
CT looks at the door number, thinks for a while and says “i need more clues”.
W: Okay, one more clue. My eldest plays baseball.
CT: Thank you Ma’am. I know their ages now.
Now, all you have to do is to find their ages with the above information.
Solution:
The woman has three children. The product of their ages is 36.
First, write down the possible combinations. They are 36/1/1, 18/2/1, 9/2/2, 9/4/1, 6/6/1, 6/3/2 and 4/3/3. Now, try to do what CT would have done i.e. take the totals of the ages which respectively are 38, 21, 13, 14, 13, 11 and 10.
The CT knew the door number (he can see it). If one of the totals matched the door number, he would have solved the puzzle. But, he asked for more clues. That means that the door number appeared as the total of more than one combination, which in our case is 9/2/2 and 6/6/1 whose total is 13.
The next clue was “My eldest plays baseball”. This clue may seem weird, but it is actually a very intelligent clue. When the woman refers to “my eldest”, it means that her eldest kid is unique which is not the case with the twins of 6/6/1. So, the answer is 9/2/2.
Puzzle 2:
There are 37 students in a classroom. What is the probability that at least 4 of them would have their birthday in the same month? Though this looks like a mathematical question, it is actually to be solved logically.

Solution:
Assume the worst case of the students’ birthdays being split right across all the months. If there were 36 students in the class, then 3 of them would have their birthdays in each month(36/12 months = 3 in each month). If a 37th student appears, this his/her birthday could be in any of the 12 months. What that means is that, for sure he would be at least the 4th person to have a birthday in any month. So, the probability is 1 (one) i.e. surely in a class of 37 students, at least 4 would have their birthday in the same month.

Hope you enjoyed the puzzles. If you liked them , you can check out more puzzles from the Logic Puzzle quiz which i conducted some time back.

written by Rajaram S