And I thought it was another case of prendrelemick kills off the thread with a too easy question .
Clue: This old man kept a comb but had no hair.
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And I thought it was another case of prendrelemick kills off the thread with a too easy question .
Clue: This old man kept a comb but had no hair.
Rooster? (I don't know what the comb would be, but I'm throwing it out there anyhow.)
EDIT: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comb_(anatomy)
**** of the walk, baby!
Commiserations billl, you're right!
So what's the 'never born' bit about? Having been an egg doesn't count as birth?
See, this is why I hate riddles. That kind of contrivance makes me cross.
Still - off we go....
I heard this one over the weekend:
There's a 10-mile long bamboo and twine bridge between two islands in the South Pacific. It's a hell of a thing this bridge, enormous and pretty strong for not having any metal or concrete involved.
Anyhow, there's a toll booth at each end, and you have to pay AND you have to get weighed if you are in a truck, because the bridge has a strict (total) 20 ton limit. If you go even the slightest bit beyond that limit, the bridge will collapse.
Well, Joe Trucker drives onto the scales, and his truck (with him inside) weighed EXACTLY 20 tons. Not a milligram over or under. Well, the toll booth guy called the toll booth guy at the other end, and they blocked incoming traffic and waited for the cars already on the bridge to clear off. With the bridge eventually clear of all other traffic, Joe T. started the engine and began driving onto the bridge.
About half-way across, a sparrow came flying alongside his truck, on the passenger side. Then, amazingly, the bird stuck out its legs and made to land on the passenger-side rear-view mirror. In a matter of moments, the bird would be resting on the truck, and adding to the total weight!
What did Joe Trucker do?
Shoot it, thus lightening the truck by the weight of a bullet?
Toss his coffee out the window?
Nothing, because he'd burned more than a sparrow's weight of gas driving that far?
The last one in your list of suggestions is the one that the guys on the radio show Car Talk were looking for (Joe didn't have to do anything), but they also admitted that tossing a shoe out of the window and so on were also things that Joe might do. Good going, Calidore.Quote:
Originally Posted by Calidore
Score one for the dartboard approach.
However, I haven't a puzzle handy and don't always look at this thread anyway, so if anyone who doesn't normally get to would like to put one up in my place, go for it.
And if it's bad form to toss out an answer without a follow-up handy, please say so.
What connects table football, calm water on a breezeless day and Soviet anti anti tank weapons?
I'm sorry, I just have to check (because the nearly redundant/repetitive "calm water on a breezeless day" opens up a vaguely tantalizing prospect, albeit one exposed as pretty much hopeless in the light of the straight-forward "table football") if there really is supposed to be two "anti's" in there.Quote:
Originally Posted by MarkBastable
I 've heard of soviet tanks having "reflective" armour that exploded outwards when hit by a shell.
That would tie in with a reflective surface of water, (just noticed quotation marks - more research needed there.)
The table football has me stumped (or should that be sick as a parrot) at the moment.
Yes, there is.Quote:
Originally Posted by billl
All right--and while I have you, would it also be the case that "weapon" would indicate something that strikes back/against (rather than some defensive equipment, like armor or camoflauge)?
Yes, it would.Quote:
Originally Posted by billl
This is quite a difficult problem, and might require a bit of research - but the connection's not very contrived. If there's no progress by tomorrow, I'll give clues.
Practically giving it away, here are the clues...
http://i447.photobucket.com/albums/q...le/birdone.jpg
http://i447.photobucket.com/albums/q.../birdthree.png
http://i447.photobucket.com/albums/q...le/birdtwo.jpg
I recognise the Thrush and the Kingfisher, and am willing to bet the other is a Falco Subbuteo because that was a line of enquiry I rejected last week.
So, table football = Subbuteo = Hobby
Still water = Halcyon =Kingfisher
That leaves the Thrush and its connection to auntie's anti tank weapon.
Thanks billl, that means its your turn, eh?
I suppose. A bittersweet victory, caught on the tails of doubly-grand-accomplishment and give-away-clues.
The guy who invented the game tried to patent it as 'The Hobby' but was told that wasn't allowed. So he used the Latin for the bird of the same name - Subbuteo.
I find it oddly satisfying that the Russian 'drozd' is so obviously cognate with 'throstle'.
I might be shaking my fist with a little too much indignant frustration here, because I wasn't even close, but the internet was directing me to Foosball when I checked "Table Soccer".
I actually had a friend who had the complete Subbuteo thing with the pitch and everything in the 70's, and I was totally thinking that might be what "Table Soccer" was until my Google steered me wrong.
But, to reiterate, it isn't like that was the one element that ultimately stumped me. And thanks for the memories!
Yuae iuei otoh vfgr dtu!
Quote:
Originally Posted by billl
Yeah, Google did that to me too, turned me from the right path early on.
(It would be cruel to do a "typical" cryptogram as short as this one. It's a different kind of cipher, and pretty difficult I would think, if you are unfamiliar with it. Maybe a clue tomorrow, if needed...)Quote:
Originally Posted by billl
It's got me stumped.
Unlike other ones we've done, this one is not a *substitution* cipher.
Great. That narrows down my available approaches. From one to none.Quote:
Originally Posted by billl
We might normally have the puzzle-giver give some clue here, somewhere between the lines of our typical one-upmanship half-disguised as discussion. Perhaps something like that would be in order?
Ha! I've got it.
and it did indeed take alot of figuring out!
The clue was that all the vowels seemed to be together and so were all the consanants, so it was a case of sorting them out, then a pattern emerged.
simple but clever, well done billl.
I didn't come up with it myself, but I'm glad you enjoyed figuring it out! (Nice work, by the way.)
Here's an attached text file with the explanation of the cipher for those who are done racking their brains on it:
.....having read it, I still don't understand it. Or rather, I do, but I can't make it work with yours, even though I can see what the answer is.
This may be one of those things that have to do with how my brain works, along with not knowing my left from my right, and having all the spatial awareness of a stick-man drawn in lipstick on a mirror. I'm lousy at Scrabble too.
Ha, well, I noticed that I spelled "book" wrong in my attachment, and so I wouldn't be surprised if my hasty explanation was inelegant or even featured a completely backwards near-misrepresentation of a key point.
Here is another explanation I found from Wikipedia, with a slightly trickier example that might be easier to understand than mine (at the very least, it's another look at the thing).
Yo uh av ef ig ur ed it ou t
Brutal. Took my brain a long time to work through that! I'm exhausted.
I'll bet it was satisfying to finally figure it out, Grace.
So, Mick is next (unless he's really pulled off one heck of a bluff on us).
No, no I split the sentence in half - ten characters in each, (including exclamation mark) Then wrote down the first letter of the first half, then the first letter of the second half, then the second letter of the first half, then the second letter of the second half.... Simples!
Now my turn
A group of friends booked a holiday together. With their conformation they received this weasley worded pledge.
"We promise that regardless of age or gender, Iceland -your holiday destination - will inspire nearly all who visit"
How many went on the trip?
What were their names?
And just for fun (To avoid the dreaded Brit bias ) what kind of bread was in the packed lunches.? and what was the gluten free alternative?
Well, that would have been Seth, Reg, Les, George, Andy, Des, Nat, Will, Ned and Al, the Terrible Ten, I think. And the sarnies were made of Hovis with an alternative of Rice. (You didn't ask, but they were sitting on the sofa when they decided on the trip.)
They certainly were,:D but there were many more of them.
Ned may be a stowaway.
Did Rene and Tina go along too? And I wondered about Deric but I wouldn't have spelled his name like that.
....I was going to suggest where they filled up the car on the way to the airport, but it seemed too little too late. Not that they were late. Quite the opposite.
yep, but they were by no means the only ladies.
Mark: a person may be named after not being late.
I'm not having Deric though..