Monday Puzzle SOLUTION: A Lady Never Tells...

Mrs. Perkins is 45. Her husband is 54.

UPDATE: Reader "Eye of the Frog" posted an excellent solution to this in the comments of the original puzzle.

App O' The Mornin': Ingenious

I could write about only Reiner Knizia Apps for two weeks and still not cover them all.  The man isn't just a prolific designer, but his games and uniquely well-suited to the App format.

Among Knizia’s dominoes variants, Ingenious is probably the most famous. Tiles are comprised of two conjoined hexagons, with each bearing one of 6 colored symbols. Players earn points by laying tiles on an Agon board to create lines of matching colors. The unusual scoring mechanism means that “highest lowest score” wins. Thus, the person with the highest score for their weakest color is the victor.

For instance, if your lowest scoring color is green with 5 points, and someone else has a lowest scoring color of red for 6 points, then they win. This creates unusual strategies for tile placement and even blocking.

The iPhone/Touch version is a straightforward and effective port of the original game, with an AI that should give even seasoned players a fine challenge. A solitaire variant is also included, as you compete against yourself for highest score.

Dr. Johnson on Cards

"I am sorry I have not learned to play at cards. It is very useful in life: it generates kindness and consolidates society."

Samuel Johnson, from Tour to the Hebrides (November 11, 1773)

Monday Puzzle: A Lady Never Tells Her Age

One day at the hairdresser, a beautician asked stately Mrs. Perkins how old she was. Mrs. P. glared at the woman over her glasses, and said "If you reverse the figures of my husband's age, you shall have mind."

This didn't satisfy the young woman at all, who said, "I don't know how old your husband is."

"I am younger than he. The difference between our ages is one-eleventh of their sum."

Mrs. P. thought this would confuse the hairdresser so much that she'd drop the subject, but the young woman did some quick calculations, smiled, and said, "I wouldn't worry about it, dear. You look very good for a woman of your age."

How old is Mrs Perkins?

App O' The Mornin': Carcassonne

Among Eurogame-to-App conversions, Carcassonne now leads the pack. I still have some serious Catan-love, but there’s no denying that Carcassonne is the most feature-rich and wholly satisfying port of a classic design.

The feature-set reads like a wish-list of everything you’d want in this kind of App. There are 8 different AI players, a new solitaire mode, local network play over Bluetooth or Wi-Fi, Internet multiplayer via live-gaming sessions or email, a matchmaking service, an Elo ratings system, and in-game chat. If it added app-to-Facebook support (a la Scrabble) I’d probably never stop playing it.

This is precisely what every game should offer: a full suite of single- and multiplayer options, smoothly integrated with the game and the device. It works like a dream. You can connect to someone with a local device, or someone who’s on the internet. You can even hop into the lobby and it will match you with another player, often in less than 30 seconds. This is awesome squared.

The implementation of the game itself is also quite strong. Carcassonne was always going to be one of those games that challenged the small screen of a mobile device. Its tendency to spread across the table makes it though to fit in a small space. The App version does a fair job of managing this, by zooming in and out, and clearly marking any block where tile placement is legal. Each fresh tile appears in a little banner to the right of the screen, and after it’s placed you have an option to put a follower in any legal space. Tile sprawl simply never seems to be a problem, since you can view the board at different sized, and easily move the screen around.

Players new to Carcassonne won’t have any trouble learning it from the App. There’s a complete rules set for both standard and solitaire versions, as well as narrated interactive tutorials. The initial release is still plain-vanilla Carcassonne, but there’s no reason at all that the multiple expansion packs and variants couldn’t be added at a later date. I’d pay for them. (Well, some of them: you can keep Catapult.)

The App was developed by The Coding Monkeys, and you can bet I’ll be looking for anything they do in the future.

Another Neat Item From The Games We Play

I have a few items like this in my collection. Books of etiquette and decorum always explained how to amuse guests in socially acceptable ways. Most their ideas were utterly daft.

I like "Third, That the real object of the amusement shall be gained, namely, that all shall be amused." (Click on the picture to see it full size.)

(From Louis, S.L. Decorum: a Practical Treatise on Etiquette and Dress of the Best American Society. New York: Union Publishing House, 1882.)

Friday Puzzle SOLUTION: The Stopped Clock

Mr. Leen winds his clock before he leaves, and notes the time. Although the time is incorrect, the clock will now track his time away from the house.

When he arrives at Mr. Been's, he notes the correct time.

When he leaves Mr. Been's he notes the time once more. Thus, he knows how long he has been there, and the precise time upon his departure.

When he checks his own clock, all Mr. Leen has to do is subtract the time he spent at Mr. Been's. This gives him his total walking time. If he halves this, he then has the total time it takes to make the trip one-way. He adds this time to the time he noted on Mr. Been's clock upon leaving, and he gets the current time.

For example: He sets his own (incorrect) clock to 12:00, walks to Mr. Been's, and notes that the accurate time is 10:30. He spends 2 hours there, and upon leaving notes that the time is 12:30.

When he arrives home, his own clock reads 3:00. Three hours have passed since he left the house.

Two hours were spent at Mr. Been's, which means that 1 hour was spent walking round trip. Thus, one leg of the trip takes 30 minutes. Since he left Mr. Been's at 12:30, he sets his clock for 1:00.

The Games We Play

Paradigms and Pastimes: Games We Play is a fine online collection of art featuring antique games and manuscripts. It appears to be a zombie site left over from an exhibit at Cornell in 2004. No matter: it's a terrific glimpse into the impressive game collection at Cornell's Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections.

Friday Puzzle: The Stopped Clock

Mr. Leen is the most punctual man in town. Every day, he takes the same walk, and has such a regular pace that he passes the same landmarks at exactly the same time.

One day, he returns home to find that his servant has forgotten to wind the clock. Since his watch is broken, he is unable to set the correct time.

However, he has a solution. His friend Mr. Been has recently moved to town. He decides to walk to Mr. Been's, pay his first call at his friend's new lodging, and see what time it is.

After spending a hearty afternoon of fellowship, he returns to set his clock. Although he had never made the trip to visit Mr. Been before, and thus has no idea how long the walk takes, he is able to set his own clock correctly.

How does he do it?

Thursday Puzzle SOLUTION: Judkins's Cattle

Dudeney's solution:

"As there were five droves with an equal number of animals in each drove, the number must be divisible by 5; and as every one of the eight dealers bought the same number of animals, the number must be divisible by 8. Therefore the number must be a multiple of 40. The highest possible multiple of 40 that will work will be found to be 120, and this number could be made up in one of two ways—1 ox, 23 pigs, and 96 sheep, or 3 oxen, 8 pigs, and 109 sheep. But the first is excluded by the statement that the animals consisted of 'oxen, pigs, and sheep,' because a single ox is not oxen. Therefore the second grouping is the correct answer."

App O' The Mornin': Knights of Charlemagne

Reiner Knizia has a few core design ideas that he’s revisited (repeatedly) over the years. Some people complain that he’s just doing retreads of his own material, but close examination reveals this isn’t quite so. He often tweaks and re-themes an old design, but something fresh usually emerges. Standard card games like Rummy, 500, and Gin are all the same basic game, yet each plays differently. The same nuances emerge with many of Knizia’s design.

Also, a lot of those games go out of print. Knights of Charlemagne was only released 4 years ago, and it’s no longer available. It was really just a tweaked re-theming of a Knizia design from 1995, called Tabula Rasa. It, too, is long out of print.

But Knizia has two games that never go out of print: Lost Cities and Battleline. In keeping with our theme, Battleline itself was a new version of Schotten-Totten. Are you still following me?

All of these games have Rummy as their bedrock: you’re drawing cards in order to collect certain suits. The fun is in their special rules, themes, and nuances. Knights of Charlemagne is a close cousin of Battleline, and if you’re looking for a Battleline-type experience on your iPhone, this is the game to get.

Play is very simple. Players are dealt cards numbered 1 to 5, in 5 different colors. A row of ten tiles divides the two players: 5 numbered tiles, and 5 colored tiles. Players place cards on either the matching color or number to “claim” that tile. When the game ends, the person who has the most cards on a tile earns points for it. Although the cards are bit too small, this is still a clean, fast-playing implantation of classic style of game.

Knizia is heavily represented on the App store, with more games arriving at a steady clip. The latest are High Society and Medici. I’ll be taking a look at all of them in the upcoming weeks.

Thursday Puzzle: Judkins's Cattle

Another one from Dudeney:

"Hiram B. Judkins, a cattle-dealer of Texas, had five droves of animals, consisting of oxen, pigs, and sheep, with the same number of animals in each drove. One morning he sold all that he had to eight dealers. Each dealer bought the same number of animals, paying seventeen dollars for each ox, four dollars for each pig, and two dollars for each sheep; and Hiram received in all three hundred and one dollars. What is the greatest number of animals he could have had? And how many would there be of each kind?"

Wednesday Puzzle SOLUTION: Closing the Gap

Always look for the simple solution. Ignore meaningless numbers. In this case, that number is the distance traveled.

All you need to do is figure out the rate of closure in miles-per-minute, and you have the distance the rockets will be one minute before they collide. The rockets are closing at a total rate of 24,000 miles-per-hour. This translates to 400 miles-per-minute, which means they will be 400 miles apart one minute before they collide.

App O' The Mornin': Oregon Trail

If you ever wonder what a kid up grew up in the 1980s might find nostalgic, then wonder no more. Just Google the phrase "You have died of dysentery," and you have your answer. (Also: Smurfs, GI Joe, and that show set in a high-school; you remember the one.)

Oregon Trail was the first computer gaming experience for many kids in 1980s, because someone managed to convince the schools that it was this new thing called "edutainement": it's edumacation, but in an entertaining way! Thus, they became the first generation to use computer technology for dubious educational purposes.

Of course, those who scoff at its educational qualities probably only remember what "dysentery" is because they played this. In truth, there is an element of history and decision-making that made it more informative than most games, and those qualities were improved as the original was enhanced and expanded over the years.

Believe it or not, Oregon Trail is almost 40 years old. Although most gamers of a certain age are probably familiar with the Apple, Commodore, or PC versions, the original game was created back in 1971. It’s been reinvented for new systems ever since, without losing any of its quirky charm or educational value.

The App updating of this classic has captured all of its strange humor and educational content. Gameplay breaks down into a few simple categories: setting a pace for your travel, managing food stores, making decisions about when to stop or who to help along the way, and completing various mini-games such as hunting or fishing.

If you go too fast, and little Mary might break a leg or the wagon may lose a wheel. Go too slow, and you might run out of food. Do you let that rather scruffy-looking old-timer hitch a ride, or pass him by? At certain points, kids can learn a bit about the land and how people survive, or stop to talk with a young Abraham Lincoln. And, yes, the family can still get dysentery.


This isn't just a retro blast for Millennials. Any kid, and most adults, will find this entertaining.

Wednesday Puzzle: Closing the Gap

Two rockets are fired at each other from 3465 miles away.

One rocket travels at 11,000 miles per hour. The other travels at 13,000 miles per hour.

Without doing calculations on paper, can you tell how far apart will they be one minute before they hit each other?

Tuesday Puzzle SOLUTION: Sequencing

If you didn't get it, that means you're over-thinking again.

O T T F F S S . . .

One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six, Seven.

Thus, the next three letters are ... E N T.

Eight, Nine, Ten.

ThinkFun Has a Blog

After I posted today's App O' The Mornin' about Rush Hour, I discovered that ThinkFun keeps a very nice blog, run by Charlotte, their head of Education and New Media. As you might expect, she writes about ThinkFun products, but also about the intersection of education and play. There's a lot more here than just promos for ThinkFun products, with good posts about teaching, parenting, and puzzling.

I've been a big fan of their puzzles for a long time. Some of them always come along on vacation with us. If you don't have any in your collection, you really should pick up a few.

(I still haven't gotten used to referring to "Binary Arts" as "ThinkFun." I liked the old name better.)

App O' The Mornin': Rush Hour

If you don’t already have some version of the original Rush Hour, you really should find one. Now that ThinkFun (formerly Binary Arts) has found widespread distribution, you can pick one up in just about any book or discount store, and nothing quite beats playing with the original.

Rush Hour is played on a simple 6x6 plastic grid filled with little cars. The cars take up either 2 or 3 spaces, and must be slid in such a way that a red car has a clear path to the only exit. Cards instruct you how to set up each puzzle, with solutions ranging from a few moves to several dozen. It’s a game that can be simple enough for a kindergartener and complex enough for a puzzle master. It may be only a variant on the classic sliding-tile puzzles, but it’s a slick, engrossing one.

If you’re already familiar with the original game, all I really need to say is: “It’s Rush Hour! In app form!”

ThinkFun’s first foray into the world of iPhone/Touch is a straight-up port of their classic sliding puzzle game. There are no surprises here: slide the vehicles to get the red car to the exit in as few moves as possible. Actually, there is a one big surprise: the game contains a whopping 2,500 puzzles, split evenly among Easy, Medium, Hard, and Expert levels.

The puzzles can be played in any order, and each one records the Squares Moved, Previous Record, and Minimum Possible score. The complete game costs $1, while Rush Hour Free offers 70 puzzles as a taste, just like drug dealers do!

As an alternative for kids, check out Wriggle, which comes in both full and free versions. The mechanics are a little bit different, since you’re moving fuzzy worms rather than cars, but the puzzle style is very similar
.

A Note About Puzzles

I'm going to be running one puzzle a day for the next couple of weeks. Puzzles will go up at 11am, and solutions will go up at the same time the following day. Please follow us on Facebook, Twitter, Google Friend Connect, or RSS in order to get the daily puzzle and the solution.

Some of these are classics, and some of them are my variations or adaptations of classic ideas. Some of them have been around so long no one even knows who first came up with them. If I know an actual source, I will credit it, but some are just things I remember from a lifetime of reading.

Martin Gardner: 1914 - 2010

A few people, such as Sam Loyd, Henry Dudeney, and Martin Gardner, are responsible for publishing many of the best-known puzzles for the first time. Dover Books prints a number of these collections in cheap editions, and they are a goldmine of information and ideas. (See Amazon link below.)

Sadly, Martin Gardner recently passed away. He was a longtime contributor to Games Magazine and an inspiration to many math, logic, and puzzle buffs. He was a true polymath, and his work embraced everything from debunking of pseudoscience; to mathematics, games, and puzzles; to literary criticism.

Bonus Martin Gardner puzzle: what is significant about the number 8,549,176,320? (HT: NY Times)

Tuesday Puzzle: Sequencing

What are the next three letters in the sequence?

O T T F F S S . . .