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Getting Ready For School...
Wednesday, August 15, 2007
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As many of you know, I've been away from the computer for the last six weeks, as I've been traveling around the state speaking at different camps (Camp Fairhaven, Blueberry Mountain, Camp Berea, and Camp Good News).
Now I'm back...sort of.
I'm taking a little bit of time off, and included in that time off I have gallbladder surgery scheduled for next Tuesday (the 21st).
As I look at all the things I want to do, and all the things I need to do, I'm afraid that some features I wanted to implement on the puzzler sites this fall may need to wait a while.
But the real critical thing is...
I need to get BrainFood Problems written for the coming year, because there's a pile of people chomping at the bit to get new riddles.
People seem to be enjoying the "Word Association" riddles, so I think I'll do those for another semester.
If you would like to help, scan through the previous Brainfood puzzles to get an idea of how the "Word Association" puzzles work, and then if you come up with any of your own, send me an email: dtwitchell@virtu-software.com
Thanks!Labels: brainfood, brainteasers
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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