## Posts tagged ‘puzzle’

### WODB, Quora Style

The following puzzle was recently posted on Quora:

Which of the following numbers don’t belong: 64, 16, 36, 32, 8, 4?

What I liked about this puzzle was the answer posted by Danny Mittal, a sophomore at the Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology. Danny wrote:

64 doesn’t belong, as it’s the only one that can’t be represented by fewer than 7 binary bits.

36 doesn’t belong, as it’s the only one that isn’t a power of 2.

32 doesn’t belong, as it’s the only one whose number of factors has more than one prime factor.

16 doesn’t belong, as it’s the only one that can be written in the form xy, where x is an integer and y is a number in the list.

8 doesn’t belong, as it’s the only one that doesn’t share a digit with any other number in the list.

4 doesn’t belong, as it’s the only one that’s a factor of all other numbers in the list.

I suspect that Danny has visited Which One Doesn’t Belong or has read Christopher Danielson’s Which One Doesn’t Belong. Or maybe he’s just a math teacher groupie and trolls MTBoS.

But then Jim Simpson pointed out the use of “don’t” in the problem statement, which I had assumed was a grammatical error. Jim interpreted this to mean that there must be two or more numbers that don’t belong for the same reason, and with that interpretation, Jim suggested the answer was 32 and 8, since all of the others are square numbers.

Don’t get me wrong — I don’t think this is a great question. But I love that it was interpreted in many different ways. It could lead to a good classroom conversation, and it makes me consider all sorts of things, not the least of which is standardized assessments. How many times have students gotten the wrong answer for the right reason, because they interpreted an item on a state exam or the SAT differently than the author intended? And how many times have we bored students with antiseptic questions, only because we knew they’d be free from such alternate interpretations? Both scenarios make me sad.

### 2017 KenKen International Championship

If you like puzzles and ping pong, then Pleasantville, NY, was the place to be on December 17.

More than 200 Kenthusiasts — people who love KenKen puzzles — descended on Will Shortz’s Westchester Table Tennis Center for the 2017 KenKen International Championship (or the KKIC, for short). Participants followed 1.5 hours of solving KenKen puzzles with a pizza party and several hours of table tennis.

The competition consisted of three rounds, with the three puzzles in each round slightly larger and more difficult than those from the previous round. Consequently, competitors were given 15, 18, and 20 minutes to complete the puzzles in the first, second, and third rounds, respectively.

Competitors earned 1,000 points for each completely correct puzzle, and 0 points for an incomplete or incorrect puzzle. In addition, a bonus of 5 points was earned for every 10 seconds in which a puzzle was turned in before time was called. So, let’s say you got two of the three puzzles correct and handed in your answers with 30 seconds remaining in the round; then, your score for that round would be

$2 \times 1000 + \frac{30}{10} \times 5 = \bf{2{,}015}$

The leader after the written portion was John Gilling, a data scientist from Brooklyn, whose total score was 10,195. And if you’ve been paying attention, then you know what that means — Gilling earned 9,000 points for completing all of the puzzles correctly, so his time bonus was 1,195 points… which is the amount you’d earn for turning in the puzzles 2,390 seconds (combined) before time was called. The implication? Gilling solved all 9 puzzles from the written rounds — which contained a mix of puzzles from size 5 × 5 to 8 × 8 — in just over 13 minutes.

Wow.

As a result, Gilling, the defending champion, earned a spot in the Championship Round against Tess Mandell, a math teacher from Boston; Ellie Grueskin, a high school senior at The Hackley School; and Michael Holman, a technology consultant. In the final round, each of them attempted a challenging 9 × 9 puzzle, which was displayed on an easel for the crowd to see. Solving a challenging 9 × 9 is tough enough; having to do it as 200 kenthusiasts follow your every move is even tougher.

So, how’d they do? See for yourself…

When the dust settled, Gilling had successfully defended his title. For his efforts, he received a check for \$500. But more importantly, he retained bragging rights for one more year.

John Gilling and his winning KenKen board at the 2017 KKIC

If you think you’ve got what it takes to compete with the best KenKen solvers, try your hand at the 9 × 9 puzzle that was used in the final round. In the video above, you saw how fast Gilling solved it to win the gold. But even the slowest of the four final-round participants finished in under 15 minutes.

Again, wow.

Finally, I’d be failing as a father if I didn’t mention that my sons Alex and Eli competed in the Delta (age 10 and under) division. Though bested by Aritro Chatterjee, a brilliant young man who earned a trip to the 2017 KKIC by winning the UAE KenKen Championship, Eli took the silver, and Alex brought home the bronze. They’re shown in the photos below with Bob Fuhrer, the president of Nextoy, LLC, the KenKen company and host of the KKIC.

#proudpapa

For more KenKen puzzles, check out www.kenken.com, or see my series of posts, A Week of KenKen.

### Is Your Gödel Too Tight?

I don’t care what Stevie Nicks says, thunder does not only happen when it’s raining. And sorry, Kelly Clarkson, I’m not standing at your door because I’m sorry.

Logical fallacies are rampant in song lyrics. (Don’t even get me started.) I’m therefore hopeful that you won’t attempt to channel your inner songwriter while trying to solve the following logic puzzles, arranged roughly in order of difficulty.

Here’s Looking at You

Jack is looking at Anne, and Anne is looking at George. Jack is married, George is not. Is a married person looking at an unmarried person?

Beer is Proof that God Loves Us

Three people walk into a bar, and the bartender asks, “Would all of you like a beer?” The first says, “I don’t know.” The second says, “I don’t know.” The third emphatically replies, “Yes!”

Why was the third one able to respond in the affirmative?

Five to the Third

A five-digit number is equal to the sum of its digits raised to the third power. Alphametically,

CUBED = (C + U + B + E + D)3

What is the five-digit number?

Martin Gardner’s Children

I ran into an old friend, and I asked about her family. “How old are your three kids now?”

She said the product of their ages was 36. I replied, “Sorry, I still don’t know how old they are.”

She then said, “Well, the sum of their ages is the same as the house number across the street.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I still don’t know how old they are.”

Finally, she told me that the oldest one has red hair, and I finally realized their ages.

How old are my friend’s children?

If At First You Don’t Succeed…

If you take a positive integer, multiply its digits to obtain a second number, multiply all of the digits of the second number to obtain a third number, and so on, the persistence of a number is the number of steps required to reduce it to a single-digit number by repeating this process. For example, 77 has a persistence of four because it requires four steps to reduce it to a single digit: 77-49-36-18-8. The smallest number of persistence one is 10, the smallest of persistence two is 25, the smallest of persistence three is 39, and the smaller of persistence four is 77.

What is the smallest number of persistence five?

The Hardest Logic Puzzle Ever

Three gods A, B, and C are called, in no particular order, True, False, and Random. True always speaks truly, False always speaks falsely, but whether Random speaks truly or falsely is a completely random matter. Your task is to determine the identities of A, B, and C by asking three yes-no questions; each question must be put to exactly one god. The gods understand English, but will answer all questions in their own language, in which the words for yes and no are da and ja, in some order. You do not know which word means which.

(This puzzle is attributed to Raymond Smullyan, but the twist of not knowing which word means which was apparently added by computer scientist John McCarthy.)

### Number Challenge from Will Shortz and NPR

Typically, the NPR Sunday Puzzle involves a word-based challenge, but this week’s challenge was a number puzzle.

[This challenge] comes from Zack Guido, who’s the author of the book Of Course! The Greatest Collection of Riddles & Brain Teasers for Expanding Your Mind. Write down the equation

65 – 43 = 21

You’ll notice that this is not correct. 65 minus 43 equals 22, not 21. The object is to move exactly two of the digits to create a correct equation. There is no trick in the puzzle’s wording. In the answer, the minus and equal signs do not move.

Seemed like an appropriate one to share with the MJ4MF audience. Enjoy!

### Our Library’s Summer Math Contest

Every summer, our local library runs a contest called The Great Big Brain Game. Young patrons who solve all of the weekly puzzles receive a prize. The second puzzle for Summer 2017 looked like a typical math competition problem:

Last weekend, the weather was perfect, so you decided to go to Cherry Hill Park. When you got there, you saw that half of Falls Church was at the park, too! In addition to all the people on the playground, there were a total of 13 kids riding bicycles and tricycles. If the total number of wheels was 30, how many tricycles were there?

A tricycle has 3 wheels. (Duh.)

1. I dislike using “you” in math problems. I believe it’s a turn-off to students who can’t see themselves in the situation described. There are enough reasons that kids don’t like math. Why give them another reason to shut down by telling them that they went somewhere they didn’t want to go or that they did something they didn’t want to do?
2. Word problems are not real-world just because they use a local context, and this one is no exception. This problem attempts to show an application for a system of linear equations, but true real-world problems don’t have all the information neatly packaged like this.
3. Wouldn’t the person posing this problem already have access to the information they seek? That is, if she counted the number of kids riding bikes and the total number of wheels, couldn’t she have just counted the number of bicycles and tricycles instead? It has always struck me as strange when the (implied) narrator of a math problem wants you to figure out something they already know.

All that said, this was meant to be a fun puzzle for a summer contest, and I don’t mean to scold the library. I don’t know that I’d use this puzzle in a classroom — at least, not presented exactly like this — but I love that kids in my town have an opportunity to do some math in June, July, and August.

Now, I’ll offer some comments on the solution. In particular, the solution provided by the library was different than the method used by one of my sons. Here’s what the library did:

Imagine that all 13 kids were on bicycles with 2 wheels. That would be a total of 26 wheels. But since 30 wheels are needed, there are 4 extra wheels. If you add each of those extra wheels to a bicycle, that’ll create 4 tricycles, leaving 9 bicycles. So, there must have been 4 tricycles at Cherry Hill Park.

And here’s what my son did:

If you can’t see what he wrote, he created a system of two equations and then solved it:

2a + 3b = 30
a + b = 13

a + 2b = 17
13 – b + 2b = 17
b = 4

2a + 12 = 30
2a = 18
a = 9

That’s all well and good. In fact, it’s perfect if you want to assess my son’s ability to translate a problem and solve a system of equations. But I have to admit, I was a little disappointed. What bums me out is that he went straight to a symbolic algorithm instead of considering alternatives.

I think I know the reason for this. This past year, my son was in a pull-out math program, in which he studied math with someone other than his regular classroom teacher. In this special class, the teacher focused on preparing him to take Algebra II in sixth grade when he enters middle school. Consequently, students in the pull-out class spent the past year learning basic algebra. My fear is that they focused almost exclusively on symbolic manipulation and, as my former boss liked to say, “Algebra teachers are too symbol-minded.”

A key trait of effective problem solvers is flexibility. That type of flexibility comes from solving many problems and filling your toolbox with a variety of strategies. My worry — and this isn’t just a concern for my son, but for every math student in the country — is that students learn algorithms at the expense of more useful problem-solving heuristics. What happens when my son is presented with a problem that can’t be translated into a system of linear equations? Will he know what to do when he doesn’t know what to do?

The previous pull-out teacher said that when she presented my sons with problems that they didn’t know how to solve, their eyes would light up. They liked the challenge of doing something they hadn’t done before. I’m hopeful that this enthusiasm isn’t lost as they proceed to higher levels of mathematics.

### Friday Word Puzzle

Sometimes, a small word is contained in a longer word. For example, you can see the three-letter word rid tucked nicely inside Friday in the title for this post, and zip can be found in the middle of marzipan.

Some folks have told me that the following word-in-a-word is particularly appropriate for this blog…

…since my puns put the UGH in LAUGHTER.

Words within words are the basis of today’s puzzle.

Complete each of the nine words below by placing a three-letter word in the blank. The three-letter words that you use all belong to the same category. But there is a tenth three-letter word from the same category that is not used below. What is the category, and what is the missing word?

1. OB _ _ _ D
2. C _ _ _ PY
3. M _ _ _ OT
4. PH _ _ _ M
5. H _ _ _ SE
6. VE _ _ _ D
7. CA _ _ _ OU
8. EL _ _ _ SE
9. LE _ _ _ E

When I started to create this puzzle, I was hoping to give you a similar list in which a short math word was found in a longer word. I found several, but they seem pretty darn hard, and the missing words aren’t always obviously mathy. But for fun, you can try your hand at these, too…

1. D _ _ _ Y
2. AS _ _  _ E
3. SE _ _ _ H
4. BU _ _ _ _ SS
5. EL _ _ _ _ TH
6. C _ _ _ _ RA
7. RU _ _ _ _ NT
8. SH _ _ _ _ BLE
9. BRA _ _ _ _ ILD
10. HU _ _ _ _ D
11. PR _ _ _ _ _ IFY
12. RE _ _ _ _ NT
13. WA _ _ _ _ ELON
14. DE _ _ _ _ OR
15. HO _ _ _ _ SS
16. H _ _ _ _ HOG
17. IM _ _ _ _ ST

1. OB eye D
2. C hip PY
3. M arm OT
4. PH leg M
5. H ear SE
6. VE toe D
7. CA rib OU
8. EL lip SE
9. LE gum E

The three-letter words are all parts of the body. The tenth word in that category is jaw, which never appears in the interior of a longer word (only at the beginning or end, such as jawbone or lockjaw).

2. AS sum E
3. SE arc H
4. BU sine SS
5. EL even TH
6. C hole RA
7. RU dime NT
8. SH area BLE
9. BRA inch ILD
10. HU more D
11. PR equal IFY
12. RE side NT
13. WA term ELON
14. DE mean OR
15. HO line SS
16. H edge HOG
17. IM mode ST

### Dos Equis XX Math Puzzles

No, the title of this post does not refer to the beer. Though it may be the most interesting blog post in the world.

It refers to the date, 10/10, which — at least this year — is the second day of National Metric Week. It would also be written in Roman numerals as X/X, hence the title of this post.

For today, I have not one, not two, but three puzzles for you. I’m providing them to you well in advance of October 10, though, in case you’re one of those clever types who wants to use these puzzles on the actual date… this will give you time to plan.

The first is a garden-variety math problem based on the date (including the year).

Today is 10/10/16. What is the area of a triangle whose three sides measure 10 cm, 10 cm, and 16 cm?

Hint: A triangle appearing in an analogous problem exactly four years ago would have had the same area.

The next two puzzles may be a little more fun for the less mathy among us — though I’m not sure that any such people read this blog.

Create a list of words, the first with 2 letters, the second with 3 letters, and so on, continuing as long as you can, where each word ends with the letter X. Scoring is triangular: Add the number of letters in all the words that you create until your first omission. For instance, if you got words with 2, 3, 4, 5, and 8 letters, then your score would be 2 + 3 + 4 + 5 = 14; you wouldn’t get credit for the 8-letter word since you hadn’t found any 6- or 7-letter words.

2 letters: _________________________
3 letters: _________________________
4 letters: _________________________
5 letters: _________________________
6 letters: _________________________
7 letters: _________________________
8 letters: _________________________
9 letters: _________________________
10 letters: _________________________
11 letters: _________________________
12 letters: _________________________
13 letters: _________________________
14 letters: _________________________

Note: There are answer blanks above for words up to 14 letters, because — you guessed it — the longest English word that ends with an X contains 14 letters.

The third and final puzzle is a variation on the second.

How many words can you think of that contain the letter X twice? (Zoiks!) Scoring: Ten points for the first one, and a bazillion points for each one thereafter — this is hard! Good luck!

If you’re in desperate need of help, you can access my list of words for both puzzles — of which I’m fairly proud, since my list of words that end in X include math words for 2 through 10 letters — or do a search at www.morewords.com.

The Math Jokes 4 Mathy Folks blog is an online extension to the book Math Jokes 4 Mathy Folks. The blog contains jokes submitted by readers, new jokes discovered by the author, details about speaking appearances and workshops, and other random bits of information that might be interesting to the strange folks who like math jokes.

## MJ4MF (offline version)

Math Jokes 4 Mathy Folks is available from Amazon, Borders, Barnes & Noble, NCTM, Robert D. Reed Publishers, and other purveyors of exceptional literature.