Inaugural Blog Post
Welcome.
One of the more constructive things I've done in the last month is find a number of on-line puzzles to solve.
It all began with the Google/Sony Da Vinci Code Quest. In the first round, there were 24 daily puzzles beginning in mid April (just in time for end of the puzzle to coincide with the release of the movie). The puzzles varied from chess to sudoku. Each puzzle was timed and the 10000 entrants with the lowest cumulative time was sent a limited edition replica cryptex (see mine!) and was allowed to enter the finalist round where there was a battery of several puzzles to be solved in a single sitting. The winner got $150000 worth of fabulous prizes (this includes the first trip to London I did not win) and the rest of us continue to complain about how easy it was to cheat.
One of the more constructive things I've done in the last month is find a number of on-line puzzles to solve.
It all began with the Google/Sony Da Vinci Code Quest. In the first round, there were 24 daily puzzles beginning in mid April (just in time for end of the puzzle to coincide with the release of the movie). The puzzles varied from chess to sudoku. Each puzzle was timed and the 10000 entrants with the lowest cumulative time was sent a limited edition replica cryptex (see mine!) and was allowed to enter the finalist round where there was a battery of several puzzles to be solved in a single sitting. The winner got $150000 worth of fabulous prizes (this includes the first trip to London I did not win) and the rest of us continue to complain about how easy it was to cheat.
Next up was the Eurostar Da Vinci Code Quest. The more modest prizes still included the 5 finalists embarking upon a trip to London. These puzzles were more varied and the prize rounds (four of them) involved opening cryptexes by guessing their combinations in the fewest tries and the fastest times. The final puzzle was a 10 dial cryptex with the consonants (21 letters) on the dials---pain in the butt.
There was a bit of a lull in puzzle production so one of the Google/Sony puzzle authors decided to have daily puzzles on Google with no big prizes. They aren't quite daily puzzles (there have been 2 in the past week and a half). The first one was using the numbers 3, 3, 8 and 8 and any arithmetic operations write down an expression which equals 24. The second one, currently online, is about "Why Me Rhymes:" words which differ by only their first letter but do not rhyme like leaf and deaf. Here are the clues:
1) What is heard when your little girl is having fun
2) A disgustingly dirty sticker
3) A siesta for weirdos
4) A friendly rejection
5) Lists of all sorts of animals to be eaten
6) An unrefined crucifix
7) A type of bar bet, maybe
8) Makes a news agency irrelevant
9) Stamps that someone refuses to return
10) Makes contact with feminine hygiene products
11) A price reduction given only to certain noblemen
12) Newer style of patio furniture
I'll put the answers in the "comments" section.
Another puzzle sequence that came on line was the Amazing Web Race. The authors had fun with the Da Vinci Code Quests and made their own puzzle sequence relying on a primitive knowledge of html and search engines. I can post the answers to that in the "comments" section also.
And finally, the third trip to London I'm not planning to win: the Microsoft Conspiracy Game. I'll make a separate entry about this in a minute.
There was a bit of a lull in puzzle production so one of the Google/Sony puzzle authors decided to have daily puzzles on Google with no big prizes. They aren't quite daily puzzles (there have been 2 in the past week and a half). The first one was using the numbers 3, 3, 8 and 8 and any arithmetic operations write down an expression which equals 24. The second one, currently online, is about "Why Me Rhymes:" words which differ by only their first letter but do not rhyme like leaf and deaf. Here are the clues:
1) What is heard when your little girl is having fun
2) A disgustingly dirty sticker
3) A siesta for weirdos
4) A friendly rejection
5) Lists of all sorts of animals to be eaten
6) An unrefined crucifix
7) A type of bar bet, maybe
8) Makes a news agency irrelevant
9) Stamps that someone refuses to return
10) Makes contact with feminine hygiene products
11) A price reduction given only to certain noblemen
12) Newer style of patio furniture
I'll put the answers in the "comments" section.
Another puzzle sequence that came on line was the Amazing Web Race. The authors had fun with the Da Vinci Code Quests and made their own puzzle sequence relying on a primitive knowledge of html and search engines. I can post the answers to that in the "comments" section also.
And finally, the third trip to London I'm not planning to win: the Microsoft Conspiracy Game. I'll make a separate entry about this in a minute.
posted by meg at 4:54 AM
3 Comments:
Google Puzzle #1: 8/(3-(8/3)) = 24
Google Puzzle #2:
1) daughter laughter
2) fecal decal
3) freak break
4) genial denial
5) genus menus
6) gross cross
7) lager wager
8) neuters Reuters
9) hostage postage
10) touches douches
11) viscount discount
12) younger lounger
Amazing Web Race:
one) denver [Smitty's code: a 5x5 grid of the alphabet minus the letter k. The coordinates of each letter in denver are given]
two) anaheim [anaheim angels of los angeles and the new jersey devils, anaheim comes first] **baseball diamond image imbedded in html**
three) santa fe [Gene Autry Way is the address of "Angel Stadium," his first movie was In Old Santa Fe (1934)]
four) mexico city [Sante Fe is in New Mexico; drop the new add the city and we're off]
five) tokyo [use the "feeling lucky" button in google with "mexico import partners" to go to a wiki on the economy of Mexico. The smallest import partner is Japan at 5.3%]
six) indianapolis [just an anagram of in a solid pain]
seven) portland [at Amazon find Doug Stanton's book In Harm's Way about the USS Indianapolis. Use Google to find that it was a Portland class heavy cruiser]
eight) princeton [the US has had 9 capitals, enumeration solved this one because I still don't get the "seek the truth."] **imbedded in the html is an image of the dates in 1783 during which P'ton was the capital**
nine) grant [again at Amazon find that "Form Follows Finance" refers to a book about Chicago. The largest park in Chicago is Grant Park] **imbedded in the html is an image of the park's famous fountain**
ten) kuala lumpur [Solve sudoku to get 843662, stare at a phone to convert to "vienna," translate to german to "wien," unscramble to "wine," see image of maylasian twin towers]
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