In our ceremony programs, we challenged you to some puzzles. Here are the much-anticipated solutions!
The following puzzles have two-word answers, where the first word is the same as the second word with the first letter removed. The first one is done for you.
- dish that's never on time — late plate
- evidence of a fender bender — car scar
- status of a not-quite-finished novel — ending pending
- gratitude for increased income — raise praise
- the more recent noisy interruption — latter clatter
- fear of making a mistake — error terror
- spirit who welcomes you into his haunted home — host ghost
- street with many event spaces — venue avenue
- characteristic feature of roller skate sneakers — heel wheel
- mild case of a plant disease — light blight
- outdoor space where large boats play — ark park
- angry plunderer — irate pirate
- a banister in pain — ailing railing
Fill in the blanks so the following sentence becomes true:
This sentence contains __ 0's, __ 1's, __ 2's, __ 3's, __ 4's, __ 5's, __ 6's, __ 7's, __ 8's, and __ 9's.
There are a lot of correct ways to fill in the blanks, the easiest of which is:
This sentence contains 1 0's, 11 1's, 2 2's, 1 3's, 1 4's, 1 5's, 1 6's, 1 7's, 1 8's, and 1 9's.
You can check that this makes the sentence true, and thankfully we weren't asked for grammatical correctness. Another solution is:
This sentence contains 1 0's, 7 1's, 3 2's, 2 3's, 1 4's, 1 5's, 1 6's, 2 7's, 1 8's and 1 9's.
If you're a real overachiever (or a mathematician), you can try finding a description of all the solutions. I won't be able to tell you if you're right, though.
If we write the date using two digits for the month, two digits for the day, and four digits for the year, what is the next chronological date that can be written without using any digit more than once?
06-17-2345 (June 17, 2345)
Here's why: There are only twelve choices for the month, so let's start there. The month cannot be November, because that uses 1 twice. The month is either December (12), or it uses the 0. If the month is December, then we use the 1 and 2 in the month, which means the earliest possible date looks like: 12-XX-3XXX.
Let's see if we can do better if the month is not December. Then the month uses the 0 digit and one other digit, which we will delay finding until later. Let's now consider the day, which is also pretty restricted. The day must start with a 1, 2, or 3, since it cannot start with a 0. We'd like to save as many of these small numbers as possible for the year, as that's most important in determining which future date comes next. We know that the first digit of the year cannot be 1 because we are looking for a date in the future. So any date of this form is out: 0X-XX-1XXX. The first digit of the year could be a 2, and that would be optimal, since we've shown it can't be anything smaller.
In that case, we'd want the second digit of the year to be the smallest digit we haven't yet used. Well, so far we've just used the 0 and 2 because our date looks like this: 0X-XX-2XXX. So the best we can do is put our 1 in the second digit of the year: 0X-XX-21XX. This creates a problem, however. There is no day we could possibly fill in, because we've used the 0, 1, and 2, and the only days of the month that start with 3 are 30 and 31. Both of these use a number we've already counted somewhere else. This all means that we can't have a 1 in the second digit of the year. Well, short of that, our next best bet is to try a 3 in the second digit of the year, as we've either used all the smaller numbers or have shown that they don't work. This makes our date look like: 0X-XX-23XX. This could work, and if it did, we would need to have a day that starts with the digit 1, as we've used the 0, 2, and 3 elsewhere, and there's no such thing as the 47th day of April. So our date actually looks like: 0X-1X-23XX.
The smallest number we can use for the third digit of the year is a 4, as all the smaller ones have been used: 0X-1X-234X. The smallest number we can use for the fourth digit of the year is now a 5, as all the smaller ones have been used: 0X-1X-2345. We should fill in the remaining positions with digits as small as possible. Since the month is more important than the day in determining which date comes next, we should use the 6 in the month, as it's the smallest unused digit: 06-1X-2345. Finally, we fill in the last position with the smallest unused digit, a 7, giving our answer: 06-17-2345.
What do these three things have in common?
- a mystery, a crossword puzzle, Parker Brothers — clue
- lily, bachelor, shoulder — pad
- Christmas, Joshua, apple — tree
- scrimmage, questioning, credit — line
- chicken, sticky, butter — fingers
- onion, Olympics, wedding — rings
- heart, body builder, gas station attendant — they pump
- Superman, Massachusetts, Jersey shore — capes
- Ford motor company, Nebraska, a penny — Lincoln
- checks, bad TV shows, stamps — canceled
Each letter stands for a word. The first one is done for you.
- 24 H in a D — 24 hours in a day
- 26 L of the A — 26 letters of the alphabet
- 7 W of the W — 7 wonders of the world
- 12 S of the Z — 12 signs of the zodiac
- 52 C in a D (W J) — 52 cards in a deck (without jokers)
- 13 S in the U S F — 13 stripes in the United States flag
- 90 D in a R A — 90 degrees in a right angle
- 3 B M (S H T R) — 3 blind mice (see how they run)
- 32 is the T in D F at which W F — 32 is the temperature in degrees Fahrenheit at which water freezes
- 7 B in the H P S — 7 books in the Harry Potter series
- 29 D in F in a L Y — 29 days in February in a leap year
- 8 S on a S S — 8 sides on a stop sign
- 1 O G E 4 Y — 1 Olympic Games every 4 years (A few astute guests pointed out that this should really have been 2 O G E 4 Y, or perhaps 1 W O G E 4 Y or 1 S O G E 4 Y.)
- 8 B in a B — 8 bits in a byte
- 7 D S — 7 deadly sins
- S W and the 7 D — Snow White and the Seven Dwarves
- 3 S — L, C, and M — 3 Stooges — Larry, Curly, and Moe
- the S R of -1 is an I N — the square root of -1 is an imaginary number
- 99 B of B on the W — 99 bottles of beer on the wall