Daily puzzles/problems.

Thanks for that everyone. I think I understand.- If you add the extremes and divide by two, that must be the average, provided it is a regular progression. But Billl being Billl, was able to jump a step and just times by 26 to get the answer.

Whoops! Wow! Finally, a wrapping-up and an end to the avalanche of carelessness (dating back at least to the mix-up about the variable Y in jajdudes puzzle from days ago. 10652!).

EDIT: Correction, I wasn't as careless as I just thought about skipping the division, and multiplying by 26. I think...

I have a whopper all loaded up, if you guys really want to deal with it. Definitely requires math, and pencil and paper. I'm taking my time, in case some people are yet to give the cryptogram a fair shot... But raise your objections now, if you must, and I'll try to come up with something else, because you might not like this next one...
:leaving:




EDIT: I've attached the solution to jajdude's cryptogram.

Five Barrels

Goran has been assigned the task of ordering a customized trailer for his company. His company makes really big barrels of something (he isn't sure what, he mostly just uses the internet at his desk), and each barrel is 5 feet in diameter. If the trailers can't be wider than 9 feet wide, what is the minimum length the trailer must be to completely accommodate 5 barrels. (The barrels cannot be stacked or lain on their side.)

Good job bill, will look at your puzzle later. Bit drunk now.

:wave:

There's a coincedence I spent yesterday stacking 5ft round bales into my shed.

That might've made for a better set-up than "Some guy has to do something with barrels full of who knows what," but I'm guessing hay is stacked and stored on its side (if drives in the country are sufficient to reveal how that works.)

That sounds great, though, to be outside (and in a shed) dealing with hay. Grass is always greener, maybe, at least some days, but still, sounds nice. Actually, the grass would have lost its green-ness, in this case, and would most certainly be greener over at the other hypothetical spot... Another nice coincidence there, this time in my application of an idiom. Hmph.

Delivering lambs, though--I think I'd have to get pretty good at it before I stopped dreading that particular task.

Its usually wet and cold Billl.

Mick got the latest puzzle (The Five Barrels).

I've attached the solution that he PM'ed to me.

Ok, enough of all this logic and maths. Its time for some intuition, a little knowledge and possibly a bit of wiki-ing.


A King fisher is flying over the countryside, when it sees a small pond. Next to the pond is a convenient stone cairn. It lands on the cairn and peers into the water. In the pond is a freshwater fish, that is unfortunetly too large for the bird to catch. My question is, how much stone was needed to build the cairn?

Enough stone for the bird to spot a rock perch?

("Perch" has two meanings in this undoubtedly incorrect answer, with one of them being a species of freshwater fish, including something called a "rock perch" which is not actually a perch at all, but is instead a type of small bass.)

Thanks billl, my first clue was going to be that the fish is a perch, and not a red herring. so you're in the right area.

24.75 cubic feet of stone?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perch_(unit)#Volume

That is correct. The cairn was a perch, and a perch is just under 25 cubic feet of stone. It's not all that archaic either, a few years ago I did a walling job for a large estate and was paid by the perch.

The dictionary on my computer mentioned it as a unit to measure length, but didn't have the volume definition so I ended up thinking along different lines. So close...

I'll try and come up with something soon, but anyone else with a good puzzle/problem is welcome to jump in...