It’s been a while since I did a post on a type of puzzle, so I thought I’d write about logic puzzles.  Of course, all puzzles require a bit of logic, but the puzzles that I’m referring to here take a particular form.  There’s a certain number of people (about 5) with a certain number of characteristics.  We are then given a series of statements followed by a question.  You know how this goes:

The clown with red hair is standing next to the one who smells like lemons.  The clown with the polka-dot tie is not wearing yellow shoes.  Which clown speaks German? (Not a real puzzle.  Don’t try to solve it.)

In my sidebar I’ve provided links to a couple of sites that provide these kinds of puzzles.  The Logic Zone has by far the best organized collection, with several puzzles classified as easy, medium, or hard.  Judy’s Logic Problems is also quite nice.  It’s got more of a feel of a personal homepage but there are some good puzzles there too.  Finally, I thought I’d link to Mystery Master, a piece of software that can solve all logic problems.  This link is included in case you get really frustrated.

The “restoration” puzzles are becoming more complex. While I managed to solve some of the early challenges just by trial and error, more bits of debris means more possible moves and it’s becoming difficult to test all possibilites. As a result, I’m starting to see the puzzle better. Particularly, I’m beginning to notice when a potential move would leave a debris cluster isolated with no possible future moves using that cluster. I think that “restoration” may be my favorite challenge.

The question today again involves translation, but of a code not a language. Here, you’ll be helped out quite a bit if you’ve actually read The Da Vinci Code.

Justice Peter Smith has explained the code that was embedding in his ruling concerning the plagiarism allegations against Dan Brown. Smith apparently has no love of crosswords or sudoku, but is a major history buff. The link above will tell you the full text of his encoded message, but it relates to the historic launching of the HMS Dreadnought, 100 years ago.

The second “symbol” challenge is a harder 5X5 sudoku, meaning that the last “symbol” challenge will probably be the 6X6 sudoku.

The question today asks you to translate a word. Wait… doesn’t Google have a translation service? Actually, I just happened to know what the word meant.

For the second “geography” challenge, the jigsaw puzzle isn’t particularly more difficult but the follow-up questions are. After assembling the pieces, we’re given an anagram to solve that reveals the location of a museum in that city. Honestly, the anagram is difficult and I didn’t solve it. I was able to guess the city because I have a pretty good idea which four cities will be featured and the available letters for the anagram really only lends itself to one of them.

After guessing the city, the anagram is unscrambled and I’m told to locate the location on the map which is marked by a hidden Greek Cross. It’s actually hidden quite well and I had to look on a tourist map of the city to get a general idea of where to look before I could find it.

Fans of cryptograms will certainly like Cryptograma which offers puzzles in both English and Spanish.  The puzzle here is implemented with a slick flash interface and instead of a letter for letter substitution, each letter is represented by a different symbol.  Highlighting a symbol and pressing a letter key automatically substitutes that letter for any occurence of the symbol.  There also seems to be a fairly large stock of quotes, so that you can play multiple times with different puzzles.

Judge Peter Smith who presided over the case of Baigent and Leigh vs. Random House, concerning alleged plagiarism in The Da Vinci Code, embedded a puzzle in his ruling. The full text of the ruling can be found here. Some industrious slashdot poster has already taken the first step in solving it.

The “chess” puzzles appear to be getting more challenging by adding more pieces.  If you’re playing by answering the questions, it’s probably no more difficult.  But if you’re playing according to the way suggested by the puzzle’s designer, Wei-Hwa Huang, (thanks to Derrick for mentioning this in the comments) more peices means more possible moves to consider adding considerable complexity to the puzzle.

The puzzle for day 10 is the second “observation” puzzle. This time around, the video is the “Meet Silas” video. Oddly enough, all of the questions can actually be answered by watching the video and, more or less, actually require you to watch the video. In the last “observation” challenge, two of the questions could be answered without watching the video, if you had seen the movie.

These “observation” challenges may be the least interesting of the challenges in the quest. It’ll be interesting to see if, in future weeks, we’re asked to look for things that are more truly hidden.

Warning: The comment section of this post contains answers to today’s challenge.

This weeks wordstream puzzle features the knights of the round table. Conviently timed to coincide with the Da Vinci Code Grail Quest.

pdf solution

The second “curator” puzzle was about the same difficulty as the first. There were some hooks that didn’t need to be used, which added a little bit more complexity but not very much. There are still very few ways that you can fit large rectangular objects in a fixed space.

The trivia question today was peripherally related to The Da Vinci Code. The one that I answered concerned a real person mentioned in the book, though I don’t believe the answer can actually be found there. But that’s what wikipedia is for.

I found this video through the Passion for Puzzles blog. It’s a hi-larious music video about sudoku obsession. Passion for puzzles points to where you can find the video on YouTube, but you can also view the video on the Sudoku Song blog (I recommend going to the blog.)

The blog includes a band bio and lyrics. Here’s a sample:

Let’s Sudoku, let’s Sudoku,

Crosswords just won’t do,

You’ll know why our thumbs evolved,

When you get your puzzle solved.

Of course, reading the lyrics is no match for watching the video, which just gets progressively more absurd. Enjoy!

Found through Media Week: BBC Worldwide is planning to publish a new puzzle magazine in June.  The magazine will be called Mind Games and will be related to a BBC show of the same name.  (I know nothing about the show, being from the US, but there’s a link for it here.)

I think that this might be another sign of the increasing popularity of puzzles (which seems to be hitting the UK harder than the US right now.)  In any case, it’s pretty fun news.

The second time through the “restoration” puzzle was significantly more difficult. There was more debris on the painting requiring you to think ahead a little more. It’s probably best at this point to start thinking about strategies for solving this puzzle and practicing the puzzle a couple more times after solving because these are only going to get harder.

The trivia question today requires you to find a book by ISBN. (Wow! I bet Google Books would be perfect for that.) Hmm… I wonder if more trivia questions this week will be so well suited to a specific Google service.

This week’s puzzle has fewer clues, but still doesn’t have the difficulty that I would like to see. I’m planning to try one more in the 10X10 format and then try some 15X15 puzzles.

Also, this week, I have a pdf for the mochikoro puzzle. And the solution is here.