Daily puzzles/problems.

[billl]

Answer = "You win."


everyadvent 5 y
stlukes 4u ?
stanislaw 9w
the atheist 8i
qimissung 8n

(I still haven't found who the 'o' comes from, though)

[Jack of Hearts]

Well, that probably took longer to make up than it took you to solve it. Hope you liked it, or at least found it a little amusing.

Well done, billl. That's your turn.







J

[billl]

It was a nice change of pace, but my internet connection was a little cranky, and that turned maybe 3 minutes into maybe 10 minutes, a fact that dampened the enjoyment of those 10 minutes.

I'm not ready with anything myself, so I'll open the floor to others, but will eventually come up with something failing any intervention.

[Jack of Hearts]

Motion to rename the thread "Almost Daily puzzles/problems."








J

[billl]

Here's one I've been reluctant to put out there, but what the heck?

Driving carefully on a frozen Alaskan road--but also eating junk food and drinking soda while chewing gum--I accidentally just dropped a delicious cheddar "goldfish" into my tall, slender, ice-cold bottle of Pepsi™ (the only drink in the car). Naturally, I have pulled over to the side of the road, wanting to deal with this problem.

I have a toothpick that is two inches long, and I can hold it by just a half-inch at the end, so that it extends my reach into the top of the bottle by one and a half inches. Unfortunately, I have already drunk some of the Pepsi, and the goldfish is floating almost two inches beyond the bottle's screw-top opening.

What can I do to retrieve the goldfish?

[Jack of Hearts]

Put ice/snow into the bottle until the liquid is displaced enough to use the toothpick to 'fish' the 'fish' out?









J

[billl]

That's more succinct than my solution (stick the bottle outside for a while, until the Pepsi freezes, the ice expanding enough to raise the goldfish to a point where the toothpick can easily reach it, but the fish would probably be stuck in the ice and the toothpick would just dig at it and carve a hole, and so some smallish amount of the chewing gum would then be stuck to the end of the toothpick so that it could be mashed against the goldfish embedded at the top of the frozen Pespi. Bringing the bottle back into the heated compartment of the vehicle and maintaining a grip on the toothpick, the gradually thawing pepsi would eventually allow the gum-stuck goldfish to be pulled out of the bottle. Well, maybe--I haven't actually tested a lot of these elements, in particular the stickiness of a gum/goldfish-cracker bond in a freezing environment.)

Back to you.

[Jack of Hearts]

... Your solution is better.









J

[Jack of Hearts]

The billl Chatting Up Women Puzzle Thing

Our hero, billl, is at a classy cocktail establishment circa 1974. As he’s putting the Aqua Velva back into his smoking jacket and reaching for his pipe, two beautiful women, identical twins, approach him. As a matter of fact, they’re Bond girls (but not the transsexual one that Roger Moore chokes in For Your Eyes Only). Each of them offer him a fine scotch-whiskey, identical in appearance. Except one of these beverages is loaded with a laxative.


One of the girls always tells the truth. One of the girls always lies. He doesn't know which. How can billl entertain the company of these ladies and discern which drink is not poisoned?



Superlatively Shamed by MarkBastable on 8/7/11.

[MarkBastable]

Actually, we did this one a while back (though, admittedly, not with Bill in the lead role.)

[Jack of Hearts]

Whoops. Have looked through these but not that closely.

Ok, MarkBastable, have a go then?







J

[prendrelemick]

Well, that probably took longer to make up than it took you to solve it. Hope you liked it, or at least found it a little amusing.

Well done, billl. That's your turn.







J

That was a good one, I didn't have time to look at it till this morning. Too late, too late.

Same with the coke bottle thing and the Bond girls one, though billl would soon have them both eating out of his hand, the silver tongued divil

[Jack of Hearts]

Thanks Mick. Going to start writing some goofy puzzles for fun now (it's summer before college and a full time job for another six weeks or so...).

Hopefully it'll be entertaining with a lovely rind of clever...






J

[MarkBastable]

To the title of which Kurt Vonnegut novel might the following lead you?

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
Four Quartets
Mr Balcony
Necronomicon
One Way Pendulum
The Cop and the Anthem
The Coral Island
The Gift of the Magi
The Great Gatsby
The Meaning of Meaning
The Waste Land
The House at Pooh Corner
Tulips and Chimneys

[Jack of Hearts]

SPOILER ALERT FOR "CAT'S CRADLE"


Didn't really like Vonnegut, and it's been about four years since having read it... so this is probably a bad guess, but Cat's Cradle? And here's why (this reader cannot make all the clues fit, but an interesting amount anyway):

The scene where the novel affiliates with its title is on a balcony.

Cat's Cradle is a children's string game and pendulum is part of the sequence.

In the novel, the narrator visits tropical locales (Coral Island).

The entire work had the undertones of the examination of meaning (aren't the final pages when the narrator encounters the Siddharta-like teacher... it's been so long)?

The Waste Land because the island that narrator visits is destroyed and he encounters the aforementioned teacher in the ruins of it?

Necronomicon, or some ancient deadly artifact, seems oddly pertinent (major plot point?) but it's just out of reach of memory. Having read most of Vonnegut's work at once really blended the material together. And the whole experience was like taking bad medicine anyway.

No real idea, but it was fun guessing.

Also, if the guess was correct but the rationale completely off, let's just call it wrong so we can appreciate the real solution if others can get it (no points for random luck).






J