I ran a puzzle extravaganza at my school, Mt. St. Mary's University, yesterday afternoon. We ended up with seven teams, six of students and one of faculty. When we ran quiz bowl, we only managed three or four student teams, so this was a great turnout. Teams had about 90 minutes to solve eight puzzles plus a metapuzzle. In the end, nobody got to the meta. The faculty team squeaked out a win, turning in their eighth puzzle just as time was about to be called. The top student team had seven solutions. People seemed to have a good time which was gratifying.

If you'd like to try the puzzles yourself, they are now available in my Google group: groups.google.com/group/squonkpuzzles. There's an explanatory message in the Discussions, and the PDF containing all the puzzles is in the Files section.

Tags: puzzles

Ragnar has rediscovered a certain classic kids' game; we played about ten games this morning and a bunch yesterday. The subtitle of the game is ___ ___ Game, where each blank contains a five-letter word. Move the last letter of the first word to the second position, change it to a K, and you'll get the second word. What's the game, and what are the words?

Bonus hint/puzzle: Ragnar likes to consult a section of the rules labelled P___S CH___. Well, not really, I've replaced the same three-letter sequence with blanks. Can you figure out what it is?

[Edited to remove the problem referred to by Tyger in her comment. Oops.]
[Edited to make it a little easier.]

I know many of you love the home-grown Jeopardy games that come to convention or the crossword tournament. Well, there's a big one starting up on the Jeopardy! message boards this week. The Summer Hiatus Challenge spans Jeopardy's downtime; this year, it's seven weeks, starting this week. Two categories are posted each day; you have two days to submit your answers. Or you can just read the posts and play in your head. Days 1 and 2 of Week 1 are in the books already (I didn't know anything from Day 2), but you can still catch up.

Cecil and I just tried to watch Day Four of Torchwood: Children of Earth. Unfortunately, the recording on the DVR went wonky at 29 minutes in and didn't come back until 59 minutes in. So we gave up on it, not wanting to miss nearly half the episode.

Then we switched to the recording of the latest Doctor Who special, but that was also corrupted. We lost the pre-credits teaser, tried to jump ahead, but hit another bad patch at the next commercial break.

And this comes after losing the last few minutes of The Next Doctor, not realizing it would run so much over the time slot allotted by BBC America.

Sigh.  At least the DVDs for Torchwood and Planet of the Dead come out tomorrow.

1. I got a bill yesterday that came with a scratch-and-sniff card. The card was relevant to the reason for the bill, but it was not an advertisement. It might have been very useful to some people. What was the bill for?

2. Think of two words for something you might hear from a particular kind of entertainer. Put them together, and, phonetically, you'll get the full name of an author and political columnist. What are the words, and who is it?

Edited to add: Correct answers for both puzzles can be found in the comments. Nice job, Jangler and Hathor!

Janders has a cloth book featuring an actual (2-in. long)  teddy bear going through his bedtime ritual. She calls it "Growl-Growl Bear", because, well, that's what bears do. This one actually sings "Lullaby and Goodnight" if you squeeze it. At least while its batteries were strong enough; now it just sounds like it's being strangled. The book also contains pajamas, a toothbrush, and other things you can interact with.

Anyway...Janders came across her book tonight, but Growl-Growl was not nearby. I took a cursory look around our very messy family room and said we might have better luck if we cleaned up a bit. So Janders went into the cloth book and pulled out the "bar of soap" from the bathtub page. She then went around the first floor of our house and started rubbing the bar on every surface or item she could reach. Yes, she was cleaning up.

Eventually we made our way into the living room. There, on the floor, was Growl-Growl Bear. She saw it before I did. She snatched him up and went right back to the family room where we began playing with the cloth book in earnest.

There you go - anecdotal evidence that cleaning up helps you find things. Tell your kids! 

Finals are almost done; if Janders naps this afternoon, I may even be able to finish all the grading I need to do!

As usual, I gave bonus questions on nearly all my finals. In my Discrete Math class, I reused an NPR puzzle from a couple of years ago - come up with ten different math expressions totalling 8. Each expression should use exactly one two, exactly one seven, and exactly one other digit. Furthermore, this extra digit must be different in each expression. You can use decimal points (to make .2), but you can't make multi-digit numbers (27 or 7.3 or 127). Allowable operations are addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, and exponentiation; use parentheses as much as you like. Thanks for the idea, Willz! None of the kids got all ten, by the way.

In two other classes, I asked them to list as many board/card/role-playing/party games as they could with each one having to begin with a different letter of the alphabet. The high score there was 17.

And here's my bonus from my AI class, which I haven't graded yet: [Edited to add: There are spoilers for this one in the comments. Beware!]

Each of the strings below represents a well-known work of fiction (book, film, or television series) that contains a robot or computer that could be said to be artificially intelligent. In each title, each vowel (a, e, i, o, u, and y) has been replaced with a v, each consonant has been replaced with a c, and each digit has been replaced with a #. Punctuation and capitalization have been preserved. So, for example, the classic short story collection (or not-so-classic Will Smith film) I, Robot would appear as V, Cvcvc. For each title you correctly decipher, you get one bonus point. If you solve them all, you get an additional ten bonus points (for a total of 25). To help, the list is in dictionary order. Have fun!

 

1.   ####: V Ccvcv Vcvccvv (book/movie)

2.   Vccvcvcvvc Vccvccvcvccv: V.V. (movie)

3.   Cvcccvccvc Cvcvccvcv (TV)

4.   Ccvcv Cvccvc (movie)

5.   Cvcc Cvcvcc vc ccv ##cc Cvccvcv (TV)

6.   Cvcvcvcv (TV)

7.   Ccvccc Cvcvc (TV)

8.   Ccvc Ccvc: Ccv Cvcc Cvcvcvcvvc (TV)

9.   Ccvc Cvcc Vcvcvcv VC: V Cvc Cvcv (movie)

10.                     Cvccvcvcvc #: Cvcccvcc Cvv (movie)

11.                     Ccv Cvccccvcvc’c Cvvcv cv ccv Cvcvcv (book/movie)

12.                     Ccv Cvccvcc (TV)

13.                     Ccv Cvccvc Cvcvcvcvvcc (movie)

14.                     Ccvc (movie)

15.                     CvcCvcvc (movie)

Tags: puzzles

Cecil decided to get me a larger present than usual for my birthday this year. FedEx delivered it today, and she was so excited she gave it to me right away - a Nintendo Wii. As soon as Janders goes to bed, I'm tearing it open.

But now the question is: what games should I get for it? Any suggestions? I'd also appreciate any advice on games Ragnar might like. They've played DDR in PE at school, so something like that would be good for him.

I just finished Terry Pratchett's latest novel as an audiobook (read by Discworld expert Stephen Briggs). I had reservations going in. It's not a Discworld story. Plus it's a "young adult" novel, and I hadn't been too keen on his other entries in the kidlit genre.

In the end, it turns out that it may be his best novel ever. The story is exciting, the humor is spot-on, and it explores very interesting philosophical themes on religion and culture clashes. I thought Briggs did a great job with the narration. If you've never read Pratchett before, and even if you have, go read this book.

Nearly every Wednesday, Ken Jennings posts a wordplay puzzle or two on his blog, similar in style to Willz's NPR challenge. Usually I have no idea of the answer.

So I was pretty excited this week when Ken posted the following:

Take an eight-letter word that’s central to the study of calculus. It can be anagrammed into another eight-letter word that’s central to the study of trigonometry.

Ha! I know this one. In fact, I discovered it independently last spring and contributed it to our department's 200-question puzzle contest to commemorate the Mount's bicentennial. So take that, Jenni... What? There's more?

It can also be anagrammed into a third word: a participle whose noun form is central to the study of set theory. What are the words?

Oh. That would be... Um....  Sigh.