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Getting Ready For Summer
Monday, May 28, 2007
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Those who have been around the Puzzler Sites for awhile know that when summer hits, I "disappear" for a few weeks. This summer I'm going to be "camp pastor" at several different camps over the course of a month and a half.
What does that mean for the sites? It means that, although I will be checking in on the sites regularly, you shouldn't expect to see any new puzzles appear on the site for the next few months. Here is a little bit of information about the sites to get you through the summer...
BrainFood
The BrainFood Page is about to shut down for the summer; this week's puzzle is the very last one before summer vacation. The next puzzle will appear in September. If you would like to be reminded when the BrainFood page has new puzzles again, you can either use the "subscribe" link to put the BrainFood puzzles into your favorite feed reader, or you can email me(dtwitchell@virtu-software.com). Be sure to specify that you're emailing me because you want to be reminded when BrainFood is back online.
 | Click the email icon to send me an email asking to be put on the BrainFood reminder list. |
On that subject, I haven't decided what sorts of puzzles I'm going to do next fall, so if you have any ideas, drop me an email!
Entrapment Puzzle
If you missed the previous post in this blog, there is a new game on The Problem Site. The game is called ENTRAPMENT, and the goal of the game is to "trap" each of the computer's red dots between your gray dots. Sounds simple, right? Especially when I tell you that you can move your dots, but the computer doesn't move its dots, right?
Turns out it's a little more complex than that, and I won't say any more, except to tell you to go check it out, and also to show you a screenshot of a completed puzzle:
Tile Puzzler
I'm very excited to see the sheer number of puzzles which have been created/solved at Tile Puzzler, since the site went online a few months ago. I think we now have enough puzzles that I can select the cream of the crop and start a "Daily Puzzle" competition complete with high score list (but, unlike Quote Puzzler, without prizes). If you would like to be notified when the daily Tile Puzzler competition starts up, send me an email.
| Click the email icon to send me an email asking to be put on the Tile Puzzler notification list. |
Also, feel free to continue adding puzzles througout the summer. Who knows - some of your puzzles may make it into the competition!
Note: During the summer months you can expect that creation of Tri Puzzles, FreeStyle Puzzles, and Overlap Puzzles will be restricted to members only. This is to keep the site from being flooded with pathetically easy or painfully impossible puzzles. If you want to create these style puzzles, just create a member account and login!
The Puzzler Store
This site will be getting a major overhaul towards the end of the summer; I am putting together a team of product reviewers who are going to be writing reviews of puzzle/educational products. Some of these reviewers are already receiving products directly from publishers to review for this site. Coming in the fall you can expect to see reviews of several math and science tutorial DVDs, and probably a variety of other products.
The Problem Site
As you may have noticed, all the puzzler sites (Tile Puzzler, Quote Puzzler and The Puzzler Store) have very similar page layouts - same color scheme, same background image, same border styles, etc. The Problem Site is, strictly speaking, the very first of the puzzler sites, yet it has a very different layout.
I've been toying with the idea of rebuilding the site layout so it matches the other sites. Any opinions?Labels: brainfood, entrapment, puzzler-store, theproblemsite, tile-puzzler
posted by Douglas Twitchell at
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Entrapment: A Sneak Preview
Friday, May 25, 2007
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Here's something special, just for the readers of this blog. A new puzzle is coming at The Problem Site. The name of the game is "ENTRAPMENT", because the goal is to "trap" the computer's red dots between your own gray dots.
ENTRAPMENT
How do you trap the computer's dot? By placing two of yours on either side of it, in such a way that if you drew a line connecting your two dots, the computer's dot would lie on the midpoint. To say it differently, the computer's dots have to be halfway between two of yours.
Sounds easy, right? Well, you might think so, until you see a puzzle like the one below, in which the computer has eight dots, and you only have five dots with which to trap his!
This new puzzle is not yet linked into The Problem Site, so only readers of this blog will get this sneak preview before the game goes live.
ENTRAPMENTLabels: geometry, puzzle
posted by Douglas Twitchell at
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Extra Special Puzzles At Tile Puzzler
Sunday, May 20, 2007
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I decided to take a closer look at what's going on at the Tile Puzzler website - do a little "digging" into the puzzle database too see what interesting things I could find.
Some of the things are interesting only to me (like, there are 153 registered users, and 82.6% of all puzzles were created by anonymous visitors). Others might be interesting to the readers of this blog. And at the end I'll give you a challenging puzzle to look at.
First, would you like to know which puzzle has been solved the most times? It's this one: teeth. Not surprising - it's a Tri Puzzler, and it only has four blocks. And, it is currently at the top of the Easiest Puzzles List. Another fun fact that probably no one but me cares about, but I thought it was interesting that 87.8% of all visitors who started the puzzle finished it.
You might want to compare that with Xandria's Semi Tree puzzle, which until just recently occupied the position of "Most Difficult" puzzle on the site. 9.2% of the people who start that puzzle actually carry through until the end.
Now here's the thing that I found most interesting. In order to be listed as one of the "Hardest" puzzles on the site, a puzzle has to be solved at least five times. Why? Because I didn't want "new" puzzles to show up on that list before plenty of people had a chance to solve them.
But one side effect of that is that there are MANY puzzles which are so hard they never even made it to the minimum required in order to be listed. What is the percentage of attempts-to-solutions for these puzzles?
Well compared to "teeth" at 87.8%, and "Semi Tree" at 9.2%, this one: Free Style Square has a 0.26% solution rate!
Amazing, huh?
So this is your challenge. How many of you can solve this puzzle? I'm curious to see if at least five people can solve this before the week is over. If you solve it, post a comment here to let me know!
Puzzle Challenge: Free Style Square
posted by Douglas Twitchell at
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Contest Problem Book V
Tuesday, May 15, 2007
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This post is for the math "geeks" among us. From time to time I am hired to write or proofread competition math problems for various math competition leagues (I'm currently in the midst of writing 9 competitions, 11 problems each), so I need to keep some math problem books around, partly to keep my math brain active (as opposed to my "other" brain, which I use here: Site that requires my "other brain") and partly for inspiration.
Recently I picked up some books of math problems, and found one of them to be quite valuable:
The Contest Problem Book V
The Contest Problem Book V contains problems from the AHSME (American High School Mathematics Examination) and the AIME (American Invitational Mathematics Examination) from the years 1983 to 1988. I was in high school during those years, so as I look at both the AHSME and AIME problems, I find myself thinking: I remember doing those competitions!
These are great problems with a lot of variation in difficulty level (try some of the beginning problems in the AHSME competitions, and then compare them to the problems in the AIME competitions!). One thing that the Amazon reviews and information never mentioned was a really interesting section in the middle of the book titled Dropped Problems. These are problems which were written for the AHSME, but were never used, either because they were flawed, or because the solution was "guessable", or for other reasons. There is also a solution section for these problems, with comments about why they weren't used.
That feature alone makes this problem book a unique and fascinating read.
Purchase The Contest Problem Book V at The Puzzler Store
Or you can purchase from Amazon.com:
Labels: math, math contest
posted by Douglas Twitchell at
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BrainFood: Creating a puzzle
Monday, May 14, 2007
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The Brainfood Puzzles section of The Problem Site is a popular spot on the site; although only two or three people post solutions each week, there is a much larger group of visitors who return every week to read the new puzzle (and presumably check the previous week's solution!)
If you haven't checked out the Brainfood Page, this year the puzzles have been word associations. I give three or four words, and you must figure out what other word can be used in conjunction with these words. Don't understand? Well, here's an example:
The three words: HORSE, FOOTBALL, MERCY
The solution is: QUARTER
Why? Because you can have a QUARTER HORSE, football games have QUARTERS, and to GIVE QUARTER is to grant mercy.
(This particular puzzle can be found here: Horse, Football, Mercy Puzzle)
Today, Ruth (one of the members who posts solutions regularly) asked: How do you come up with these?
The answer to that question is: I work backwards. I start with a solution, and then try to come up with a few phrases that make use of the word.
For example, the day I came up with the QUARTER puzzle, I was sitting in my office, and there was a quarter (25 cents) on my desk. So I thought, "In what other contexts (besides money) do we use the word 'quarter'?"
The answers were pretty obvious - you often hear of Quarter Horses, and of course, many sporting events have quarters. "Giving Quarter" or "Granting Quarter" was a phrase I had heard (or read) many times. It turned out, though, that many solvers had never heard the phrase, so they had a much harder time with the puzzle.
This is one of the things that makes the Brainfood puzzles so interesting; you don't need a specialized knowledge in any area to solve them, but having a broad knowledge base in many subjects will be very helpful.
Ruth's other question was this: Do you think that language is so inventive that you could do this with any three words and enough time?
And my answer to that question is: if we tried it, and were stubborn and patient enough to work away at it, I think we would be very surprised at the number of solutions we could come up with! I'm often surprised by the alternate solutions which visitors come up with. When people come up with alternate solutions that work as well as my own solution, I generally post the alternate solutions in the "Solutions" section.
Here's an example that had alternate solutions by Ruth and yoi55: Hole, Push, Hook Puzzle.Labels: brainfood, brainteasers, theproblemsite
posted by Douglas Twitchell at
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Puzzler Sites Blog
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It seems a bit pointless to me to have a blog at The Problem Site and another blog at Tile Puzzler, when I could have one single blog providing information about all of the puzzler sites.
Thus, I'm introducing The Puzzler Sites Blog - a blog which will provide information about new features on all the Puzzler Sites. Currently this includes:
The Problem Site
Tile Puzzler
Quote Puzzler
New features, new games, and new product reviews will all be posted here.
posted by Douglas Twitchell at
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The Puzzler Blog gives information about what's new at Virtu Software's puzzle sites.
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