Puzzles

Puzzles are an ancient art of testing people’s intellect, knowledge, and intelligence. There are several categories of puzzles, such as mathematical puzzles, crossword puzzles, number puzzles, logical puzzles, or old-school woodblock or paper piece puzzles. The term “puzzle” was coined in 16th century England with meaning unknown. Later, the meaning changed to “perplexing problem.”

Different kinds of Puzzles

The first documented puzzle in history was a collection of riddles from western Europe. There were also some great puzzles from folklore, especially from Greek mythology. The Sphinx puzzle is one example. In Greek myth, the Sphinx was described as a merciless mythical creature that guarded the ancient city of Thebes and asked every traveler a riddle. The riddle was “which creature has one voice yet becomes four-footed, three-footed, and two-footed?” The answer to this riddle is human, as it crawled in childhood and walked with a stick in old age.

Mathematical puzzles

Mathematical puzzles are an integral part of recreational mathematics. Young students often perceive maths as a complex and tough topic, but that is untrue, and math can be fun also. Math puzzles also come in many varieties, from simple number and symbol puzzles to complex problems. For example, a simple symbol puzzle looks like,

2    1  6  6 x 6 = 38

So, the order of the answers is * (multiplication), + (addition), and * (multiplication).

In mathematical puzzles, the rule of BODMAS is applied. This suggests the sequence of mathematical application that is “Bracket of division, multiplication, addition, and subtraction”.

This is a number puzzle to determine a natural positive integer that after multiplication shows a right circular shift from the right. An example of such a number is

4 * 128205 = 512820, so 128205 is a parasitic number.

The Monkey & Coconut Puzzle- This puzzle includes five sailors and a monkey living on a deserted island who divide a pile of coconuts. The problem is that the first man divides the pile into five equal shares, leaving the last coconut for the monkey, and takes away his share. This process is repeated by all 5 men. Finally, the group divided the pile into five equal parts, and there was no leftover. The question is, what was the number of coconuts that were there in the beginning?

Solution: if the number of coconuts is not a fraction and the coconuts were divided into six equal parts, then there must be 5 x 6 = 15,625 coconuts present in the pile. In the last round, every sailor will receive 1024 coconuts. No smaller number will result in it coming out every time. So, in the problem, 15,625 or any multiple of 15,625 will satisfy all the conditions. This also indicates that the number of coconuts in the original pile was slightly smaller than 15,625, but it can’t be ever as small as 10, 15, or 20, and all these conditions make this problem more complicated.

Water pouring puzzle: This is a mathematical puzzle that includes some water jugs that contain an integer amount of water. The problem asks the number of steps required to pour water from jugs (either filling or emptying the jugs) to reach the goal state. For example, let’s assume three jugs can contain 8, 5, and 3 litres of water. Initially, one of the jugs is filled with 8 litres and the rest are empty. The goal is to fill two jugs with 4 litres of water, with the last being empty.

Solution The stages to reach the goal is

• The first two jugs are filled with 3 litres and 5 litres of water, with the last being empty
• Next, the three jugs are filled with 3, 2, and 3 litres of water
• After that, the two jugs are filled with 6 and 2 litres of water, the third being empty
• Next, the first and third jugs are filled with 6 and 2 litres of water, respectively, and the second one is emptied
• Then the three containers are filled with 1, 5, and 2 litres of water, consecutively
• Later, the three jugs are filled with 1, 4, and 3 litres of water
• In the end, the water from the last container is poured into the first one, thus reaching the goal

Puzzles with answers

A fascinating puzzle called “verbal arithmetic” includes mathematical equations where unknown numbers are represented by alphabets. One of the examples of this kind of puzzle is,

M O N E Y = S E N D + M O R E

The solution to this puzzle is O = 0, M = 1, Y = 2, E = 5, N = 6, D = 7, R = 8, and S = 9. Verbal arithmetic is used to teach algebra to young students.

There are some interesting word puzzles too. For example, a riddle goes on like, “You bury me when I am alive, you dig me up when I die. What am I?” The answer is “plant.”

Conclusion

A puzzle is a wonderful brain-storming exercise and also has many benefits. Some puzzles have a historical legacy and have yet to be solved. But people try to solve puzzles for recreational purposes, often for fun.