What Am I?

I am greater than God, and more evil than the devil. Poor people have me. Rich people want me. And if you eat me, you’ll die. What am I?

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Nothing.

January 28, 2006January 14, 2013 | Puzzles

A Penny Saved

Suppose you put a coin into an empty bottle and then insert a cork in the bottle’s opening. How could you retrieve the coin without breaking the bottle or pulling out the cork?

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Push the cork into the bottle.

January 18, 2006January 14, 2013 | Puzzles

“The Four Sevens”

Another puzzle from Henry Ernest Dudeney:

“In the illustration Professor Rackbrane is seen demonstrating one of the little posers with which he is accustomed to entertain his class. He believes that by taking his pupils off the beaten tracks he is the better able to secure their attention, and to induce original and ingenious methods of thought. He has, it will be seen, just shown how four 5’s may be written with simple arithmetical signs so as to represent 100. Every juvenile reader will see at a glance that his example is quite correct. Now, what he wants you to do is this: Arrange four 7’s (neither more nor less) with arithmetical signs so that they shall represent 100. If he had said we were to use four 9’s we might at once have written 99 9/9, but the four 7’s call for rather more ingenuity. Can you discover the little trick?”

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Dudeney writes, “The way to write four sevens with simple arithmetical signs so that they represent 100 is as follows:” 7/.7 x 7/.7 = 100. “Of course the fraction, 7 over decimal 7, equals 7 divided by 7/10, which is the same as 70 divided by 7, or 10. Then 10 multiplied by 10 is 100, and there you are! It will be seen that this solution applies equally to any number whatever that you may substitute for 7.”

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December 31, 2005January 14, 2013 | Puzzles

One Lump or Two?

How can you put 10 lumps of sugar into three cups so there is an odd number of lumps in each cup?

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Put five lumps in the first cup, two in the second, and three in the third. Then sit the third cup in the second cup.

December 20, 2005January 14, 2013 | Puzzles

Source Forge

One of these Vermeers is a forgery. Which is it?

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The image on the right, The Supper at Emmaus, was created by Dutch forger Han van Meegeren. A perfectionist, van Meegeren would find a 17th-century canvas to paint on, create his own paints, and use Vermeer’s style of brush. Afterward he would bake the finished painting, roll it over a drum to crack it somewhat, and wash it in black ink to fill in the cracks. Van Meegeren was wildly successful with this method, producing seven fake Vermeers between 1938 and 1945 that sold for millions of guilders. When he finally confessed, the police didn’t believe him — he had to create an entirely new painting to convince them.

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December 12, 2005January 14, 2013 | Art · Crime · Puzzles

The Bridges of Konigsberg

In old Konigsberg there were seven bridges:

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Konigsberg_bridges.png — Image: Wikimedia Commons

Villagers used to wonder: Is it possible to leave your door, walk through the town, and return home having crossed each bridge exactly once?

Swiss mathematician Leonhard Euler had to invent graph theory to answer the question rigorously, but there’s a fairly intuitive informal proof. Can you find it?

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No, it’s not possible. An “Euler circuit” is possible only if every bank and island is served by an even number of bridgeheads. Otherwise you’ll eventually get stranded or find yourself unable to return home. You can prove this to yourself — draw a map as complex as you like and try it out.

December 1, 2005July 17, 2013 | Puzzles · Science & Math

An International Riddle

The following riddles have the same answer. What is it?

Scotland: “What is it that hangs high, and cries sore, has a head and no hair?”
Wales: “I saw some object near to a town, in a very finely made palace between earth and heaven. It has a fine tail which almost reaches to the ground, and its tongue hangs in a very large skull. It spends most of its time in silence, but sometimes it calls its friends together.”
France: “The more one pulls it, the more it cries out.”
Lithuania: “A horse with a silver tail neighs on a high hill.”
Serbia: “A dead mare doesn’t neigh, but when somebody pulls it by the tail, it neighs so that all men can hear it.”
Newfoundland: “Round as a hoop, deep as a pail, never sings out till it’s caught by the tail.”
Chile: “Señora Carolina likes to live in a high house, and if they pull her feet, she disturbs the inhabitants.”

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A bell in a tower. Bonus factoid: The heaviest bell in Britain is not Big Ben but “Great Paul,” of St. Paul’s Cathedral. It weighs 37,483 pounds.

November 19, 2005January 14, 2013 | Puzzles

“The Dovetailed Block”

Another puzzle from Henry Ernest Dudeney:

“Here is a curious mechanical puzzle that was given to me some years ago, but I cannot say who first invented it. It consists of two solid blocks of wood securely dovetailed together. On the other two vertical sides that are not visible the appearance is precisely the same as on those shown. How were the pieces put together?”

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“The mystery is made clear by the illustration. It will be seen at once how the two pieces slide together in a diagonal direction.” “When I published this little puzzle in a London newspaper I received (though they were unsolicited) quite a stack of models, in oak, in teak, in mahogany, rosewood, satinwood, elm, and deal; some half a foot in length, and others varying in size right down to a delicate little model about half an inch square. It seemed to create considerable interest.”

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November 2, 2005January 14, 2013 | Puzzles

The Beale Ciphers

A secret hoard of $20 million in gold and silver lies buried somewhere near Roanoke, Va. That’s according to a coded message left by adventurer Thomas Jefferson Beale in the 1820s:

I have deposited in the county of Bedford, about four miles from Buford’s, in an excavation or vault, six feet below the surface of the ground, the following articles, belonging jointly to the parties whose names are given in number “3,” herewith:

The first deposit consisted of one thousand and fourteen pounds of gold, and three thousand eight hundred and twelve pounds of silver, deposited November, 1819. The second was made December, 1821, and consisted of nineteen hundred and seven pounds of gold, and twelve hundred and eighty-eight pounds of silver; also jewels, obtained in St. Louis in exchange for silver to save transportation, and valued at US$13,000.

The above is securely packed in iron pots, with iron covers. The vault is roughly lined with stone, and the vessels rest on solid stone, and are covered with others. Paper number “1” describes the exact locality of the vault, so that no difficulty will be had in finding it.

Unfortunately, no one has been able to decipher paper “1” or “3”, and a hundred years’ digging has turned up nothing. Is it a hoax? Who knows?

October 4, 2005January 23, 2007 | History · Hoaxes · Puzzles

A CIA Mystery

This is a little embarrassing — the CIA is having trouble decrypting a sculpture on its own grounds.

The piece, called Kryptos, was dedicated 15 years ago by American artist James Sanborn. It’s inscribed with four different messages, each encrypted with a different cipher. Sanborn would say only that the sculpture contains a riddle within a riddle, which will be solvable only after the four passages have been decrypted. He gave the complete solution to CIA director William H. Webster, who has passed it on to his successors.

The first three messages have been solved by CIA analysts, but the fourth — and the final riddle — remains open.

If you don’t want to work on this yourself, you can wait for Da Vinci Code author Dan Brown — reportedly it’s the subject of his next book.

September 28, 2005March 8, 2011 | Oddities · Puzzles