Latest news with #puzzlers
The Guardian
09-06-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Can you solve it? The deductive decade – ten years of Monday puzzles
Forgive me the indulgence of celebrating ten years of this column. Toot toot! I began posting biweekly brainteasers at the end of May 2015, originally addressing you folk as 'guzzlers' – Guardian puzzlers. The cringy coinage didn't stick, but the column did, and here we are a decade and 260 columns later. Some data. Total page views are now 38 million, which averages out at about 150,000 views per puzzle – a whopping number, I'd say. Thanks to everyone for the encouragement and support. For today's offerings I decided to go back through the archive and repost ten of my favourites. Some may be familiar, others not. Please graze, maybe even guzzle – and here's to the next ten years! 1. Bat and ball Three friends (A, B and C) are playing ping pong. They play the usual way: the winner stays on, and the loser waits their turn again. At the end of the day, they summarise the number of games that each of them played: A played 10 B played 15 C played 17. Who lost the second game? 2. Tricky trams Why are the tram's overhead cables positioned to make a zigzag, rather than straight line? 3. Read the question 3. What is never odd or even? 4. Catch the cat A straight corridor has 7 doors along one side. Behind one of the doors sits a cat. Your mission is to find the cat by opening the correct door. Each day you can open only one door. If the cat is there, you win. If the cat is not there, the door closes, and you must wait until the next day before you can open a door again. If the cat was always to sit behind the same door, you would be able to find it in at most seven days, by opening each door in turn. But this mischievous moggy is restless. Every night it moves randomly either one door to the left or one to the right. Although if it is behind the first or last door, it has only one option for where it can move. How many days do you now need to make sure you can catch the cat? 5. Mystery number I have a ten digit number, abcdefghij. Each of the digits is different, and a is divisible by 1 ab is divisible by 2 abc is divisible by 3 abcd is divisible by 4 abcde is divisible by 5 abcdef is divisible by 6 abcdefg is divisible by 7 abcdefgh is divisible by 8 abcdefghi is divisible by 9 abcdefghij is divisible by 10 What's my number? [To clarify: a, b, c, d, e, f, g, h, i, and j are all single digits. Each digit from 0 to 9 is represented by exactly one letter. The number abcdefghij is a ten-digit number whose first digit is a, second digit is b, and so on. It does not mean that you multiply a x b x c x…] 6. Disappearing cub This picture has not been doctored. Explain why the reflection has a yellow lion cub. 7. Crazy triangle Show that there is a triangle, the sum of whose three heights is less than 1mm, that has an area greater than the surface of the Earth (510m km2). 8. Deck dilemma Your friend chooses at random a card from a standard deck of 52 cards, and keeps this card concealed. You have to guess which of the 52 cards it is. Before your guess, you can ask your friend one of the following three questions: is the card red? is the card a face card? (Jack, Queen or King) is the card the ace of spades? Your friend will answer truthfully. What question would you ask that gives you the best chance of guessing the correct card? 9. The question with no question (a) All of the following. (b) None of the following. (c) Some of the following. (d) All of the above. (e) None of the above. [Just to reassure you, nothing has been omitted here.] 10. Triangle fold Find a way to fold a square piece of paper into an equilateral triangle. The triangle can be of any size. I'll be back at 5pm UK with the solutions. PLEASE NO SPOILERS Instead please recommend your favourites from the 260 you have read here over the years. Sources: 1. Adrian Paenza, 2. Kvantik magaizine, 3. Des MacHale, 4. New York Times. 5. John Conway, 6. Matt Pritchard, 7. Trần Phương, 8. Henk Tijms, 9. Parabola, 10. The Paper Puzzle Book. I've been setting a puzzle here on alternate Mondays since 2015. I'm always on the look-out for great puzzles. If you would like to suggest one, email me.
The Sun
31-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Sun
You have the eyes of the hawk if you can spot all five missing objects in this infuriatingly tricky brainteaser
With the Premier League finishing this week, anticipation rises for the Fifa Club World Cup starting on the 14th June. This new football puzzle is keeping fans busy; even the most eagle-eyed are struggling to spot the hidden items. The puzzle, created and distributed by Live Football Tickets, challenges readers to find the five football items hidden in a busy stadium - and even the most seasoned puzzlers are struggling. Hidden in the busy scene is a mascot, a stretcher, a cheerleader, a trophy and a football. According to the creators, it takes 1 minute and 23 seconds on average to solve. Still can't find them all? Not to panic, you can find the solved brainteaser below! Certain brainteasers and optical illusions, particularly those that involve patterns or sequences, can help strengthen both short-term and long-term memory. By working through puzzles on a regular basis, you will actively engage the brain's memory systems and directly improve your future attempts at visual challenges. Many brainteasers, like this one, require challengers thinking outside the box. This improves creative problem-solving skills by encouraging the brain to come up with innovative solutions. How can optical illusions and brainteasers help me? Engaging in activities like solving optical illusions and brainteasers can have many cognitive benefits as it can stimulate various brain regions. Some benefits include: 99 percent of people can't find the hidden objects in under 20 seconds - are you up to the challenge It also translates to real-life situations where you might need to approach challenges in new and inventive ways. If you're after another brainteaser to challenge yourself, try this one - as apparently only those with a high IQ are able to find the heart hidden among the spring flowers. Or you can have a go at figuring out the hidden message in this band's cover art that has confused fans for years. Lastly, puzzle fanatics have been left scratching their heads trying to find the lost feather in just 12 seconds.
