[How would you cross puzzle land? Part II]

Not much action since the last hint, so here's another hint.

A slug was sitting in the bottom of a well. One day he crawled up 3 feet. At night, he rested and slid back down 2 feet, so the following morning he was 1 foot up the well. The second day, he crawled up another 3 feet and slid back down another 2 feet that night, so after two days he had netted two feet. How long did it take to make it out of the 30 foot deep well?

Spoiler for Answer:

It took 28 days. After 27 days he had made it 27 feet up, so during day number 28 he crawled 3 feet up to make it out of the well and was done.

[A Dutiful Riddle]

An envelope has five edges when it's open and four when it's closed. It has both the sender and recipient's address. It needs a stamp.

EVEN BIGGER HINT...

You can find the answer in other topics.

This hint made me think of

the dimples mentioned in Shakeepuddn's latest WAI

A ampere

B candela

C kelvin

D kilogram

E meter

F mole

G second

While candela and mole were never used in the people's clues, they would be the SI units listed in alphabetical order.

As far as the solutions to the people's individual puzzles (SI derived units):

Siemens (Clavius' s3 a2 m-2 kg-1)

Ampere (Dave's a)

Newton (Jeane's kg m s-2)

Celcius (Lee's k-273)

Grey (or Sievert) (Yuliana's m2 s-2)

Not any clearer to me after alphabetizing the answers based on the person's name.

It would make Yuliana's "Final" make more sense.

Too bad SANCG, SANCGy, SANCS, and SANCSv aren't French words

So we have

A (Dave's a)

S (Clavius' s3 a2 m-2 kg-1)

C (Lee's k-273)

Gy (or Sv) (Yuliana's m2 s-2)

N (Jeane's kg m s-2)

Since Yuliana's clue was preceded by "Final", maybe we're just taking the "Y"?

How many boxes would there be if we looked for all of the CYANS? Too many to try all of their keys without too many wrong guesses?

[Apocalyptic Riddle]

This just seems to fit too well to be far off

Claws in caves around the globe, (Bats have claws, are in caves, and are found around the globe)

Grabbing weapons, letting go. (At first I was confused - what clawed animals use weapons? But the bats aren't grabbing weapons; the weapons are their claws which are grabbing their perch on the cave and letting go when they're leaving to hunt)

War declared against a tribe— (Some bats are known to hunt other bats.)

Soldiers poised, side-by-side.

Bombs set loose to topple towers, (I certainly don't know of animals that use bombs, but if you interpret this as meaning that the bats themselves ARE the well-aimed bombs which can topple animals that tower much larger than themselves...)

All applaud their well-aimed power.

Oh world unstable, spinning free!

Brought down in sound trajectory! (They definitely use echolocation.)

But now just watch, I bet the real answer is gonna end up being something man-made!

The first word in the step after large, when you're eating, would be

Extra large?

The wind is going where I've been.

The sounds of sirens grow thick and thin.

It struck me then as it strikes me now:

That one thing applies to the crows and my foes:

The crows know what we know.

What do the crows know?

Our opposition trusts what we trust.

What does the opposition trust?

I say that you are...

...a B-17 flying fortress.

The wind is going where you've been because you're a prop-driven aircraft that pushes air behind you (I suppose jets do that also).

The sounds of air raid sirens grow thick & thin.

The German flak panzers struck you then like they strike you now.

The crows know how to fly.

The friggin Nazis trust their guns.

[How would you cross puzzle land? Part II]

All you people who want to pilot a boat of garbage across a river of lava sure are brave! But as the saying goes, it's so crazy it just might work.

At any rate, I guess it's time for that hint I promised earlier.

Three cubes in the lava.

AAAAAAAAAA

AAAAAAAAAA

AAAAAAAAAA

AAAAAAAAAA

AAAAAAAAAA

AAAAAAAAAACCCCCCCCCC

AAAAAAAAAACCCCCCCCCC

AAAAAAAAAACCCCCCCCCC

AAAAAAAAAACCCCCCCCCC

AAAAAAAAAACCCCCCCCCC

BBBBBBBBBBCCCCCCCCCC

BBBBBBBBBBCCCCCCCCCC

BBBBBBBBBBCCCCCCCCCC

BBBBBBBBBBCCCCCCCCCC

BBBBBBBBBBCCCCCCCCCC

BBBBBBBBBB

BBBBBBBBBB

BBBBBBBBBB

BBBBBBBBBB

BBBBBBBBBB

That's why I had to be very careful how I phrased my response to scsw's question on whether you can go diagonally. Technically, you can.

Does it take a plasmid to tell that the last one is

mitochondria?

Hah, I thought that

the bartender pulled out a water gun

Here's what I came up with. I agree with the others who say there's no answer, at least if I'm interpreting the English in this question correctly.

The time they're talking about in the first clause of the brother's statement is:

When I was as old as you were (when I was two years younger than I am now),

When I was as old as you were two years ago,

Brother - TimeAgo = Sister - 2

TimeAgo = Brother - Sister + 2

...you were a third as old as I will be in two year's time

3 (Sister - TimeAgo) = Brother + 2

3 (Sister - Brother + Sister - 2) = Brother + 2

6 Sister - 3 Brother - 6 = Brother + 2

6 Sister - 4 Brother = 8

3 Sister - 2 Brother = 4

The time they're talking about in the first clause of the sister's statement is:

When I am (as old as you were when you were twice as old as I was)

When I am (twice the difference between our ages),

Sister + TimeAhead = 2 (Brother - Sister)

TimeAhead = 2 Brother - 3 Sister

...you will be just a year older than you are

Brother + TimeAhead = Brother + 1

2 Brother - 3 Sister = 1

3 Sister - 2 Brother = -1

Combining the bottom lines from each of the above, 4 = -1

[How would you cross puzzle land? Part II]

[spoiler=Sorry if you dont think im clever ]You simply go back home, the party you were on your way to was cancelled due to a volcano erupting.

LOL! But you won't want to miss this party; there's going to be a carnival in town for part III

[How would you cross puzzle land? Part II]

Can we go diagonal?

In the last spoiler covering loopholes: It's too dangerous to try to carry a big load of garbage across cubes sitting in the lava if they're only touching at the corners, let alone trying to jump with it or throw it or pass it around.

[How would you cross puzzle land? Part II]

LOL, I really liked scsw's catapult, I hadn't thought of that one! IDoNotExist got the idea behind the humorous solution I had in mind. Notice that I always talked about “cubes” of garbage instead of squares. The fun solution doesn't involve dumping the garbage straight into the lava: instead, we're going to build a tower out of garbage cubes about 5 feet away from the river bank, and then topple it into the lava to get an entire garbage bridge formed all at once! It's just a matter of making the eight logicians build a stack of about 50 blocks of garbage, one on top of the other. They can make a garbage ramp to bring the stuff to the top of the tower if necessary.

But once the tower is built, how do we topple it? Might the eight of them not be strong enough to budge it? Perhaps. If that's the case, I ask one of the logicians to stand next to the pile of garbage, on the side facing the lava river, and start pulling bits of stuff out from the bottom garbage cube. Then it's just a matter of time until... JENGA!!! That's another reason why it's important that the logicians aren't very bright : )

A variant on the theme is to build a tower that's just barely teetering on the edge of collapse, like the ones described in this puzzle. Then send a logician to the top, and have him move far enough out on the top cube to send the tower toppling over. He'd be in for a wild ride, but he should land on the opposite bank instead of into the lava, and he will have created the bridge for me. (Maybe he can get IDoNotExist's parachute made out of hats!)

And there's still a solution that addresses the actual logic puzzle. Hint tomorrow if no one's on the other side by then.

[How would you cross puzzle land? Part II]

This picks up where How would you cross puzzle land? left off. You've sold your fox, chicken, and grain from the previous puzzle and collected a handsome profit, which you're now eager to go have some fun with. You're on your way to party in the only nearby town, but you find that your path has been blocked. Where there was once a shallow river bed, there is now a river of flowing magma: a volcano has erupted and ruined your route! It would take a very long time to walk all the way around to the other side of the volcano to get around the river of lava, and also a very long time to walk downstream until the river of lava meets the sea to be quenched, so you decide to try to find a way across.

Nearby, you see a bunch of logicians, none of whom are very short. You can tell they're logicians because they're sitting around wearing different colored hats and not saying anything. You also notice that from the time you spot them in the distance to the time you've walked up next to them, none of them have blurted out the color of their hats. You therefore conclude that these logicians aren't exactly the brightest bulbs in the chandelier.

"Hey, can you guys give me a hand" you ask. One of the six logicians sitting outside snaps back, "Bah, we have no time for non-intellectuals like yourself. Bother neither us, nor the rest of our logician group who are inside our headquarters over there." You look toward the building he pointed to, and notice that one of the light bulbs is burned out. Getting an idea, you ask "Tell me, O logician, is the number of members in your group prime, or not?" He looks at you inquisitively and hesitantly replies "Our number is not prime." "Then there are eight among you" you state triumphantly.

There were six logicians outside, and you know from his statement that there are more logicians inside. Since there are not a prime number of logicians, there must be a total of either 8, 9, 10, 12, etc. However, a light bulb is burned out and has not been changed. So there must be a total of 8.

It would take 3 college students to change a bulb: one to hold the bulb and two to spin the ladder underneath him. But it takes three times as many logicians because for every logician who does something, you need two others to sit around with black hats and not say anything.

This is an important point: for those of you who didn't see the first story, you tend to solve problems by being both a little bit of a logician and a little bit of a wise-guy.

Amazed at your deductive powers, the logicians offer to aid your quest to cross the river of lava. One of them offers: "We could dismantle our headquarters and use the planks of wood to build a bridge, although no single plank is long enough to make it across and we have no good means of fastening them together." You take one look at their termite-infested hovel and decline. You then notice a horrid smell and ask them what it is. "Oh, that" one replies "is our garbage heap. We could never deduce a fair way of allocating garbage disposal duties, so it just piled up outside."

NOW FOR THE PUZZLE: You find that each logician (and yourself) can pick up a pile of garbage and dump it somewhere in 1 minute. Each pile makes a 5 foot cube that can serve as a bridge over the lava. But once placed in the lava, such a cube will be consumed after 3 minutes.

You can draw the river divided into 5 foot squares with a number representing how long the garbage placed there has left before it's destroyed. Starting off with no garbage in the river, if you're on the left edge and trying to get to the right edge, you could have a logician set off to dump some garbage in spot X. The picture below shows that a logician is in the process of placing a cube, which will be ready for use as a bridge one minute later.

000000000000000000000000000

X00000000000000000000000000

000000000000000000000000000

Now, using the garbage as a bridge, he can dump some more garbage further in as the original bunch of garbage begins to decay.

000000000000000000000000000

3X0000000000000000000000000

000000000000000000000000000

And continue to build

000000000000000000000000000

23X000000000000000000000000

000000000000000000000000000

On the next round he could try...

000000000000000000000000000

123X00000000000000000000000

000000000000000000000000000

...but if he dumped garbage there, he would then be trapped on the following island.

000000000000000000000000000

012300000000000000000000000

000000000000000000000000000

One more important point: no one can dump garbage on an area of the river that has been filled earlier on: the molten garbage underneath would not be a stable foundation. If you had the situation shown two pictures above this, you could not have someone dump garbage where the 1 is to make

000000000000000000000000000

312300000000000000000000000

000000000000000000000000000

on the next round.

The pile of available garbage is practically infinite for the purposes of this puzzle. The width of the river is 220 feet (= 44 cubes of size 5 feet). You have disposed of the logicians' hats, so you can enlist the aid of all eight of them at once. How would you get across? (There are actually TWO answers that I have in mind, one of which is very logically-mined.)

And finally, to get rid of some of the trivial solutions:

It's too dangerous to try to carry a big load of garbage across cubes sitting in the lava if they're only touching at the corners, let alone trying to jump with it or throw it or pass it around. No one is coordinated enough to dump garbage in the lava in any configuration other than a 5 foot cube. (Definitely not a 220 foot x 1 inch tightrope!) People can't carry out actions instantaneously or within milliseconds or anything – give them a full minute to do their jobs, don't send them across at the very instant a block is dissolving, and don't send them over cubes that are in the process of being placed in the lava: the newly placed cubes won't be ready for use until the minute when they're being placed is finished. (That's why in the pictures above I used an “X” to mean that a block of garbage is being placed here during the current minute and will be ready on the next minute.) The lava will eat small channels in and flow through the bases of the piles of garbage, so you can't build a dam to preserve the garbage downstream.

Interesting, doog and dab are backwards for good and bad.

I came up with a different solution than reaymond, but that's because we had different interpretations of #4's statement. If BOTH 1 is a dab and 2 is a doog, is #4's satement true? I said yes, reaymond said no, so we're probably both correct depending on how you interpret it.

This is going to be a long explanation, but I'm going to explain a way to approach these problems in general that helps me make sure I'm not leaving anything out. First off, we know that one of the three maps is true and the rest are false. I'll denote the three possible situations as

{ X , Y , Z }

Person 1 made a statement that is either true or false. Before I start considering what he actually said, I'll just say that for each of the three possibilities above, #1 might have been either been True or False, giving the possible combinations of

{ X 1T , X 1F , Y 1T , Y 1F , Z 1T , Z 1F }

Now since #1 said that X is the correct map, we can clearly get rid of X 1F , Y 1T , & Z 1T so we're left with

{ X 1T , Y 1F , Z 1F }

Now #2 said that Y is the correct map. Without much difficulty we can see that the possibilities are now

{ X 1T 2F , Y 1F 2T , Z 1F 2F }

Next, #3 said that #1 and #2 are not both dabs; that is, they're not both false. So...

{ X 1T 2F 3T , Y 1F 2T 3T , Z 1F 2F 3F }

#4 said that either #1 is False or #2 is True. I'm assuming that #4's statement would be true if both #1 is False and #2 is True; correct me if I'm wrong about that. Anyway, the possibilities are

{ X 1T 2F 3T 4F , Y 1F 2T 3T 4T , Z 1F 2F 3F 4T }

Finally, #5 made a self-referential statement, so I'll take a little longer with that one and consider each of the three possibilities above and whether #5 could be True or False with each of them. First, if X is the right map:

X 1T 2F 3T 4F 5T means that either #3 = #4 or 5F, neither of which works

X 1T 2F 3T 4F 5F means that both #3 not = #4 and 5T, the last part means this doesn't work

Now if Y is the right map:

Y 1F 2T 3T 4T 5T means that either #3 = #4 or 5F. This works because #3 does = #4

Y 1F 2T 3T 4T 5F means that both #3 not = #4 and 5T, neither of which works

And if Z is the right map:

Z 1F 2F 3F 4T 5T means that either #3 = #4 or 5F, neither of which works

Z 1F 2F 3F 4T 5F means that both #3 not = #4 and 5T, the last part means this doesn't work

So the only answer that works is Y 1F 2T 3T 4T 5T, and Y is the right map.

The second day is Saturday, so he's not drinking 3 beers after work that day.

But he's still a lightweight for only drinking two beers on a weekend.

... playing an RPG! Which one it is, I have no idea though.

Although I suppose that RPGs don't let you control just ANYone in their universe, just the good guys.

I'm afraid that a VERY similar riddle has already been posted here at Hotel Bill. I can't blame you for not finding the earlier post by searching the archive, though -- the old post was about people staying at a hotel instead of getting drinks at a bar.

Good riddle, though!

[How would you cross puzzle land?]

Aww, no one else is going to post a wiseguy answer? Ok...

[spoiler='Here's how I would do it

']First, since there's a 20 L jug and a 5 L jug, hopefully that means my measurements won't need to be any more precise than 5 L to get the machine to work safely. Also, the scale said 83 kg and not 83.0 kg, so I only know that the weight is somewhere between 82.5 and 83.5: if the solution requires more accuracy than that, then I'm out of luck no matter what I do.

But I'd still try to play it as safe as I could. I'd first fill the counterweight with 80 L. Then I'd fill the 5 L jug and take advantage of the fact that 1 L of water is about as much as I can drink in one sitting without really pushing myself overboard. After drinking about 1 L (aiming toward the high end with my estimate – better to go over rather than under as you'll see in a moment) I would pour the rest in the counterweight to bring it to 84 L (= 84 kg). Since I just drank a liter of water, the weight of myself and the goods is now 84 kg instead of 83. Now I load up the basket with myself and my goods, and prepare to release the break, but first...

...I unzip my pants.

As scsw pointed out, if the pulley system is very low resistance, then I might end up plummeting down in virtual free-fall and not have the time and coordination to make adjustments. However, if I were quite startled by going into free-fall, and if I just drank a liter of water, then my natural reflexes would take care of releasing the extra weight over the side without any coordinated action on my part. As long as my pants are unzipped, that is.

[How would you cross puzzle land?]

Holy cow, Grayven, too bad I can't quote your signature in this response but CONGRATULATIONS!

There have been some good ideas so far, I think I'll hold off on posting what I had in mind and leave some time for more to come in. After all, any problem that depends on trickery is bound to have multiple good answers. But for those of you who wanted to send the goods up alone and uncontrolled to be collected later at the top, your stuff would run a big larceny risk.

To the person on the left: "If I were to ask you whether or not the person in the middle is the random answerer, what would your response be?"

If the answer was "no", ask the person in the middle: "If I were to ask you whether the road to my right is the way to heaven, what would your response be?"

If the first answer was "yes", ask the second question to the person on the other end instead.

If the response to the second question was "yes", then take the road to your right. If it was "no", then take the road to your left.

Open the second spoiler if you need to see my logic.

First off, for anyone who hasn't seen this trick before, the reason why I'm asking "If I were to ask you ___, what would your response be?" is because you can ask such a question to either the truth teller or the liar and get a "truthful" response. That's because the liar would lie if you just asked the question outright, but since you're asking how he would respond if you asked the question, he has to lie about what his lying response would be; sort of giving a double negative to a yes/no question to yield the truth.

The whole point of the first question is to make sure that you're NOT asking the second question to the random answerer. If the person you asked the first question to was either the truth teller or the liar, then they will reveal whether or not the person in the middle is the random answerer. If the middle guy IS NOT the random answerer, ask him the second question. If the middle guy IS the random answerer, ask the second question to the guy at the other end.

But what if the guy you asked the first question to was the random answerer? Well then, it doesn't matter what he answered, you're still going to ask the second question to the liar or the truth teller either way.

[How would you cross puzzle land?]

Clarification:

Remember, the path took you halfway up the cliff face, which is where all this machinery is. The brakes are currently on, allowing you to fill the counterweight and then board the basket before releasing the brakes.

[How would you cross puzzle land?]

In your travels, you come to a crossroads with two men who only answer yes/no questions, one of whom always tells the truth and another always lies. You are about to make short work of the puzzle, but then you notice that there are actually dozens of possible paths out from the crossroads. Mildly flustered, you turn to one of the men and ask, “If I were to ask the other fellow what your answer to this question is, would he say 'yes'?” After thinking a moment and stuttering a bit, the man's head explodes. The remaining one is so scared witless that he gives you directions, and you know that even if he were the liar he would at this point not dare to cross you. (He volunteers something along the lines of, “If you were to ask me which way you wanted to go, I'd say that way.”)

You then come across a river, a fox, a chicken, a bag of grain, and a rowboat that can only carry you and one piece of cargo. Since crossing the river in a rowboat is a lot of work, you take off a shoelace and use it to muzzle the chicken, and then get everything across in five crossings instead of seven. You recover your shoelace with a bit of chicken spit (not misspelled) and continue onward.

You bring your fox, chicken, and grain to a sheer cliff face. The path takes you to a spot halfway up, and at the top is the market where you want to sell them. The cliff has a pulley mechanism with a basket to bring up you and your goods, and a counterweight container to be filled with water, along with a warning: "Fill the counterweight with too little water and you'll go crashing down. Fill it with too much water and you'll be hurled up out of control. Fill it just right, and a small push will take you safely to the top. Be sure you're balanced before releasing the brakes! The empty counterweight container weighs just as much as the empty basket." You weigh yourself and your goods on an electric scale and it reads 83 kg, and runs out of power and shuts down immediately afterward. There is a 20 L jug and a 5 L jug and a waterfall to fill them with. How do you get up the cliff? (Remember from the previous two encounters that you're a bit of a wise-a**.)