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Celebrating Puzzles
Doofus writes "The New York Times is running an article, Celebrating puzzles, that is about a puzzle exhibit opening at the Lilly Library at Indiana University. The primary collector, a Mr. Slocum, has been collecting interesting and challenging 3D puzzles for many years, and has helped to curate the exhibition. The article describes one variation of the towers of Hanoi puzzle that involves 65 rings and has a mind-blowing 18,446,744,073,709,551,616 moves in a perfect solution. A twist on the standard museum exhibition — the puzzles on exhibit are stored each night in drawers — that must be puzzled open by the first visitors the following morning."
I like making the patrons open up the shop, but I wonder if part of the puzzle is for them to figure out that they must do so?
"You're young, you're drunk, you're in bed, you have knives; shit happens." -- Angelina Jolie
"Perhaps the most famous class of physics-based puzzles is one of the most ancient: puzzle vessels. Usually built in the form of a cup or a jug, these vessels offer the challenge that one must drink from them, or fill them up, without spilling any liquid"
I think I came across one of these last night in the pub. The funny thing was it seemed to get more difficult as the night went on.
Sig (appended to the end of comments you post, 120 chars)
> A twist on the standard museum exhibition - the puzzles on exhibit are stored each night in drawers
> - that must be puzzled open by the first visitors the following morning."
Wow, that sounds as original and...uh..fun...as those tedious games where you get crappy cars/characters until you've played for ages and improved them. As a paying customer/gamer I expect to be having fun straight out of the box. I guess if I visit this place I'll turn up in the afternoon and hope some sad bastards got there early!
The 65 ring puzzle is claimed to take what turns out to be exactly 2^64 moves. This makes some sense sense for a recursive puzzle, since we could be in a situation where the two ring puzzle finishes in 1 move and each additional ring doubles the length.
2 1 moves to solve?
However, it's not consistent with the 9 move puzzle, which is supposed to require 341 (2^8+2^6+2^4+2^2+1) moves. Perhaps the 65 ring puzzle instead requires 2^64+2^62+2^60+...+2^2+1=24,595,658,764,946,068,8
http://www.geek.com/techupdate/jul99/pacman.htm/
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
42.
Figure out why hot dogs come in packages of 8 whereas hot dog buns come in packages of 6.
A mathematical analysis can be found here with some cool pictures, but it doesn't explain the rules, unfortunately.
Rhymes that keep their secrets will unfold behind the clouds.There upon the rainbow is the answer to a neverending story
a better one involves a lemon and a jug of water.
place the lemon in the jug of water and put some coins in the bottom as enticement, now go around the bar offering anyone the pot if they can balance any coin on the lemon but they loose if it falls into the jug.
just dont buy flat lemons!
(in the case of a sinking lemon - english ones float - add salt to the jug as needed)
FTA: "...A perfect solution in that case would take 18,446,744,073,709,551,616 moves, Mr. Slocum said..." Remarkable Mr. Slocum actually managed to pronounce this...
Nowhere in the Bible could the church leaders of Salem find a prohibition against puzzles, and in the absence of a "no," they filled the gap with a resounding "yes."
I thought all the monsters and vampires would keep the folks busy?
liqbase
Actually, that show aired in the US for several years on PBS. It is probably still TV today.
When it comes to pastry theft, I take the cake.
http://www.gravitation3d.com/magiccube5d/
Five dimensional rubix cube. That has actually been completed.
Goten Xiao
And for several centuries on dutch TV as well. That and 'keeping up appearances'.
molmod.com - computing tips from a molecular modeling
0, mod 2.
I hadn't a clue what a Slocum puzzle was when I first heard about this. However, Wikipedia to the rescue: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerry_Slocum
e .htm. It's a frustratingly sweet way to waste yet another workday. :)
Also, there is a page where you can play many different Slocum puzzles while you're supposed to be working: http://www.puzzleworld.org/SlidingBlockPuzzles/ab
The Chinese Rings puzzle is not a variant of the Towers of Hanoi. It's this.
_ puzzle.html
http://www.puzzles.ca/puzzle_data_3/chinese_rings
They are both recursive puzzles, but that's where the similarity ends.
You have our sincerest apologies.
Damn, I'm tempted to jump on plane. If we the /. readers all let the Museum of Science know of our interest (information@mos.org) maybe we can make something happen.
Yeah, and I've totally got an extra fifty six billion years to spend doing it.
Well, since I overloaded the + operator, that truly is a puzzle!!!
Yes, quite. Unfortunately, there are people like Hyacinth Bucket in the UK.
We call them "Daily Mail readers".
women
It requires an infinte number of correct moves to solve. Also, the correct sequence changes according to mood, surrounding, etc.
$1,000,000 reward for anyone who can correctly solve this puzzle.
When I have a kid, I want to put him in one of those strollers for twins and then run around the mall looking frantic.
Kind of reminds me of programming CORBA.
A=B=1
:p
A^2=AB
A^2-B^2=AB-B^2
(A-B)(A+B)=B(A-B)
(A+B)=B
B+B=B
1+1=1
Right?
"There are people who do not love their fellow human being, and I _hate_ people like that!" - Tom Lehrer
Wow.
"the puzzles on exhibit are stored each night in drawers -- that must be puzzled open by the first visitors the following morning"
"Puzzled open"? What? So now "puzzle" has become a verb that is essentially a redundant synonym for.... "solve"? *sigh*
Will Shortz, puzzler extraordinaire for the NYT, selected such optional courses in college that he actually invented the Puzzle Major curriculum, I'm not sure if he's still the only one who's done it. When Shortz took over the NYT crossword, it was an arid, stodgy affair, but he soon transformed it into a lively feature.
As a sidenote, the Monday crossword is quite easy and usually solved quickly. Tuesday is a little bit tougher and so on, until you get to the wickedly difficult Saturday edition. And then, of course, the stellar Sunday Edition. This approach has created legions of crossword junkies, allowing them to start easy and work their way up the ladder. How does it work? When you begin solving Monday crosswords, you won't touch Friday, but when you reach the point where can solve Friday, Monday editions will only suffice as a quick aperitif when there's nothing better to do.
Which brings me to a secondary point: I call Ethan Hawke's bullgashitza on the film Waking Life, where he says that they did an experiment with the NYT crossword, making people solve day-old puzzles, so the result was that more participants were able to solve day-old puzzles. The conclusion? That the answers are floating around in the collective consciousness, and you can just pluck them up out of thin air. Yeah, right. Looks like somebody didn't do their research properly.
I leave y'all with a little puzzle I learned a couple of weeks ago. Replace the # sign with the correct mathematical functions, so that all statements are accurate. Good luck and have fun!
1 # 1 # 1 = 6
2 # 2 # 2 = 6
3 # 3 # 3 = 6
4 # 4 # 4 = 6
5 # 5 # 5 = 6
6 # 6 # 6 = 6
7 # 7 # 7 = 6
8 # 8 # 8 = 6
9 # 9 # 9 = 6
Lil' Thindime, lilting a lacrimose lament, krashes the kwaint konfines of Kokonino Kounty
I believe you can still register on the site, get a key to the codex, and solve away at your leisure...