First, I must update Maze of Game's original puzzle problem in the Puzzazz app, where the entire puzzle, a series of rotating wheels, was blank. An email to the Puzzazz company revealed that I was far from the only person with this issue, with a fairly straightforward solution. The issue, it seems, is one of device memory, so close all apps, then reopen only Puzzazz. It worked! I was able to solve the puzzle itself fairly easily. If anyone is stuck, rather than try to make the number of words on the right hand side, try instead to look at what letters commonly come after each other. The left wheel is fixed, the rest are not, so figure out what position on the second wheel makes plausible two letter combinations, and then move to the next wheel. For example, T is more often followed by H than by N. A closer look at the map reveals why she said to go south rather than north - the northern path dead ends quickly just past the 10 in two directions. So, back to the story.
Proceeding from the gluttonous Three of Diamonds, we come next across the Queen of Diamonds, inhabited by a cheerful, Italian weapons seller by the name of Giuseppe. His puzzle consists of seven pairs of words, each of which must be rearranged into intersecting, crossword-style, pairs of weapons. As an added challenge, there is one letter that must be added to each pair to make the whole thing work. It was a lot of fun to work on, especially during some rather longer meetings in which technical difficulties (hello, can you hear me now?!) made concentrating rather useless. I highly recommend them for the start, at least, of all new video conferences. I will not provide the answers to this, but I will give you one bit of a hint - no matter what your apophenic mind is trying to tell you, 'blowgun' is not an answer to the bottom right pair. It's just not. Took me forever to get that out of my brain. From there, you take the added letters to get your key word for the Queen of Diamonds. That word is then plugged into the solution on the King of Diamonds page as the second in a set of couplets, having been the second puzzle in our path. It is transformed, and placed into the 'Queen' slot of the letter set, the last line. So now we have a circled 'Y' to add to our path forward.
Next along our path, being careful to read the multiple paths of joining and checking for dead ends, is the Eight of Diamonds, where we are awaited by arrows, and a math puzzle. Our heroine loses her hat, but the hero grabs the puzzle from the embedded arrow, and proceeds. I will say here that I LOVE math. I love it. But there are again certain assumptions that my brain makes that made this far harder to solve. The first is that beloved Robin of Locksley will hit all his shots. The second was that this was another puzzle that could be solved while waiting for people to figure out their teleconference technology. Apparently I can do word puzzles in that sort of environment, but not math puzzles. As an aside, I'm currently reading a lovely twisty book by the title of Gnomon, by Nick Harkaway, which, among its many fascinating digressions, talks about the physicist Richard Feynman and how he looked at how some people counted in their heads, either by seeing numbers or hearing them. I "hear" them, and apparently that's associated with being far easier to distract with verbal cues when doing math. There's a whole clip on it from Feynman himself on YouTube, if you're curious. It may also be associated with Aphantasia: a condition where one does not possess a functioning mind's eye and cannot voluntarily visualize imagery. Thankfully not a condition I have, as it can be linked with schizophrenia. And, realizing that I digress down rabbit holes almost as much as Gnomon does, which could be why I enjoy it so much, I return to the puzzle.
In the Eight of Diamonds, we have five archers from Robin Hood, himself included, a total score, and a few bits of information, such as each archer took two shots, for a total of ten, that only two shots missed their mark entirely, and a few other points regarding the relationship of the scores. I have already given you one hint - that Robin is one of the ones that missed, which I couldn't accept and still have trouble with. In the end, I found it easier to make an excel sheet, similar to those logic puzzles that we did as kids, where you had to identify which student preferred which course or some such. Yes, I'm a nerd. I'm also going to show my full work on this one - SPOILERS - so be warned and skip past the pictures if you want to work through it yourself.
BEGIN SPOILERS
Here's the full detail: We have Robin Hood, Friar Tuck, Allan-A-Dale, Little John, and Will Scarlet, all shooting at a target with the options of 100 (bulls-eye), 67, 37, 17, and missing entirely at 0. We know two arrows missed their marks. Having coded in the basics - checks for total score (671), checks for some of the more easily programmable (X is greater than Y, X is greater than Y or Z but not both Y or Z, X is even or odd), I had to start on the logic itself. The first is that Little John's total score is exactly 70 more than Friar Tuck's single arrow. So, make a chart of all the possible outcomes, then identify where a total score is greater than one single shot. The only case in which this is possible is Little John with a score total of 137 (bulls-eye and 37) and one of Friar Tuck's shots hitting 67, first out from the bulls-eye. So, that gets plugged in. Our current tally is 204, far from our total score.
Next we see that Friar Tuck's score is either 100 more than Will Scarlet OR 100 more than Allan-A-Dale's. Not both. Given that we know that Friar Tuck's first arrow was a 67, when we look at the table of possible outcomes, the only way for him to be exactly 100 higher than anyone else, while maintaining his odd-numbered total, is to shoot 100 on his second arrow, for a total score of 167, not bad Friar Tuck! (Note that the knowledge of odd vs. even here is important, as he could have shot another 67, bringing him to 134, which is 100 more than someone who shot 17 both times, but we discard that as an even number). In addition, we know that this means that EITHER Will Scarlet or Allan-a-Dale missed an arrow and had a total score of 67. However, from the odd/even breakdown, we know that Allan-A-Dale has an even score, so it couldn't be him. That leaves us with Will Scarlet at a total of 67 points, missing one shot entirely. That gets plugged in. Our Total is now 371, and with 300 points left we haven't filled in anything for Allan or Robin. Plus, we know that between them they have one missed shot.
Start with Robin. From the clues, we know that his score is even, and he has to be within 50 points of Little John, whose score we now know is 137. So, that gives us a range from 187 to 87. Poor Robin did not shoot a perfect game after all - no 200 for him. Given that we have 300 points to deliver amongst three shots, we have to have someone with a perfect game at this point, which means that Allan-a-Dale, rather than Robin, must have shot 200, while Robin shot the bull's eye with one, and missed entirely with the other. Maybe Marian blew in Robin's ear?
In order to get this part of the King's puzzle, we take the winner's name, and in the third couplet are told to take one of each unique letter, reshuffling to get something meaning burdened. Slotting that in this time to the Eight of Diamonds slot finds us an E to add to our overall key.
Proceeding from the gluttonous Three of Diamonds, we come next across the Queen of Diamonds, inhabited by a cheerful, Italian weapons seller by the name of Giuseppe. His puzzle consists of seven pairs of words, each of which must be rearranged into intersecting, crossword-style, pairs of weapons. As an added challenge, there is one letter that must be added to each pair to make the whole thing work. It was a lot of fun to work on, especially during some rather longer meetings in which technical difficulties (hello, can you hear me now?!) made concentrating rather useless. I highly recommend them for the start, at least, of all new video conferences. I will not provide the answers to this, but I will give you one bit of a hint - no matter what your apophenic mind is trying to tell you, 'blowgun' is not an answer to the bottom right pair. It's just not. Took me forever to get that out of my brain. From there, you take the added letters to get your key word for the Queen of Diamonds. That word is then plugged into the solution on the King of Diamonds page as the second in a set of couplets, having been the second puzzle in our path. It is transformed, and placed into the 'Queen' slot of the letter set, the last line. So now we have a circled 'Y' to add to our path forward.
Next along our path, being careful to read the multiple paths of joining and checking for dead ends, is the Eight of Diamonds, where we are awaited by arrows, and a math puzzle. Our heroine loses her hat, but the hero grabs the puzzle from the embedded arrow, and proceeds. I will say here that I LOVE math. I love it. But there are again certain assumptions that my brain makes that made this far harder to solve. The first is that beloved Robin of Locksley will hit all his shots. The second was that this was another puzzle that could be solved while waiting for people to figure out their teleconference technology. Apparently I can do word puzzles in that sort of environment, but not math puzzles. As an aside, I'm currently reading a lovely twisty book by the title of Gnomon, by Nick Harkaway, which, among its many fascinating digressions, talks about the physicist Richard Feynman and how he looked at how some people counted in their heads, either by seeing numbers or hearing them. I "hear" them, and apparently that's associated with being far easier to distract with verbal cues when doing math. There's a whole clip on it from Feynman himself on YouTube, if you're curious. It may also be associated with Aphantasia: a condition where one does not possess a functioning mind's eye and cannot voluntarily visualize imagery. Thankfully not a condition I have, as it can be linked with schizophrenia. And, realizing that I digress down rabbit holes almost as much as Gnomon does, which could be why I enjoy it so much, I return to the puzzle.
In the Eight of Diamonds, we have five archers from Robin Hood, himself included, a total score, and a few bits of information, such as each archer took two shots, for a total of ten, that only two shots missed their mark entirely, and a few other points regarding the relationship of the scores. I have already given you one hint - that Robin is one of the ones that missed, which I couldn't accept and still have trouble with. In the end, I found it easier to make an excel sheet, similar to those logic puzzles that we did as kids, where you had to identify which student preferred which course or some such. Yes, I'm a nerd. I'm also going to show my full work on this one - SPOILERS - so be warned and skip past the pictures if you want to work through it yourself.
BEGIN SPOILERS
Here's the full detail: We have Robin Hood, Friar Tuck, Allan-A-Dale, Little John, and Will Scarlet, all shooting at a target with the options of 100 (bulls-eye), 67, 37, 17, and missing entirely at 0. We know two arrows missed their marks. Having coded in the basics - checks for total score (671), checks for some of the more easily programmable (X is greater than Y, X is greater than Y or Z but not both Y or Z, X is even or odd), I had to start on the logic itself. The first is that Little John's total score is exactly 70 more than Friar Tuck's single arrow. So, make a chart of all the possible outcomes, then identify where a total score is greater than one single shot. The only case in which this is possible is Little John with a score total of 137 (bulls-eye and 37) and one of Friar Tuck's shots hitting 67, first out from the bulls-eye. So, that gets plugged in. Our current tally is 204, far from our total score.
Next we see that Friar Tuck's score is either 100 more than Will Scarlet OR 100 more than Allan-A-Dale's. Not both. Given that we know that Friar Tuck's first arrow was a 67, when we look at the table of possible outcomes, the only way for him to be exactly 100 higher than anyone else, while maintaining his odd-numbered total, is to shoot 100 on his second arrow, for a total score of 167, not bad Friar Tuck! (Note that the knowledge of odd vs. even here is important, as he could have shot another 67, bringing him to 134, which is 100 more than someone who shot 17 both times, but we discard that as an even number). In addition, we know that this means that EITHER Will Scarlet or Allan-a-Dale missed an arrow and had a total score of 67. However, from the odd/even breakdown, we know that Allan-A-Dale has an even score, so it couldn't be him. That leaves us with Will Scarlet at a total of 67 points, missing one shot entirely. That gets plugged in. Our Total is now 371, and with 300 points left we haven't filled in anything for Allan or Robin. Plus, we know that between them they have one missed shot.
Start with Robin. From the clues, we know that his score is even, and he has to be within 50 points of Little John, whose score we now know is 137. So, that gives us a range from 187 to 87. Poor Robin did not shoot a perfect game after all - no 200 for him. Given that we have 300 points to deliver amongst three shots, we have to have someone with a perfect game at this point, which means that Allan-a-Dale, rather than Robin, must have shot 200, while Robin shot the bull's eye with one, and missed entirely with the other. Maybe Marian blew in Robin's ear?
In order to get this part of the King's puzzle, we take the winner's name, and in the third couplet are told to take one of each unique letter, reshuffling to get something meaning burdened. Slotting that in this time to the Eight of Diamonds slot finds us an E to add to our overall key.
No comments:
Post a Comment