The Dawn Treader

Take your time and pay attention to details.

Snail Riddle

A snail is at the bottom of a well and wants to get out.  He manages to crawl up the wall 3 feet each day, but at night he must rest ( after all that work during the day ) and so he slips back down 2 feet.  If the well is 30 feet deep, How long will it take him to get out?

Worm Riddle

On a shelf in the library, there is a 3 book set of almanacs labeled volume 1, volume 2 and volume 3. Each book is 2 1/2 inches thick, the pages being 2 inches thick and each cover is 1/4 inch thick.  A bookworm starts eating its way from the 1st page of volume 1 and stops at the last page of volume 3.  How far did the bookworm travel?

Number Riddle

What is the largest possible number you can write using only 2 single digit numbers - just 2 numbers, no other mathematical symbols?

Ok, time to sharpen some thinking skills.  See who can get all three of these the fastest.

The hobo riddle

Because cigars cannot be entirely smoked, a hobo who collects cigar butts can make a cigar to smoke out of every 5 butts that he finds. Today, he has collected 25 cigar butts. How many cigars will he be able to smoke?

The lady riddle

Someone at a party introduces you to your mother's only sister's husband's sister in law.  He has no brothers.  What do you call this lady?

The word riddle

What English word can have 4 of its 5 letters removed and still retain it's original pronunciation?

Textual criticism is the practice of reconstructing original documents using copies.  It is the basis for reconstructing works of literature that have been handed down to us from antiquity.

Documents are passed down through history in a pattern that resembles a family tree.

For example, the original gets copied to copy A, copy B, and copy C.  Assume that copy A picks up a small error during the copying process.  Then, copy A gets copied to copy A1 and copy A2.  Both A1 and A2 pick up the small error that was in copy A.  Copies A1 and A2 may have new errors introduced themselves.  Over the centuries, a family tree of manuscripts emerges.  By looking closely at the variants of the manuscripts, you can actually begin to trace the lineage and family tree of a given document.

To give you a flavor of what it is like to be a textual critic, I took an original sentence from a famous document written in the 17th century and made three copies.  I intentionally introduced copy errors into all three children documents.  Then, I took each of the three children and made two copies each.  Each new copy picked up additional errors.  The result is six corrupted documents.

Your job is to reconstruct the original sentence using six corrupted copies.

I gave this exact assignment to four small teams of high schoolers.  Two of the teams were able to reconstruct the original document perfectly in 10 minutes.  The other two missed by one word.  See how you can do.

Akers, Bradley, Capper and Darby, whose first names are Greta, Harry, Isabel and Joseph, all flew from one city to another yesterday afternoon.  All flights were primarily east to west or west to east, rather than north to south or south to north.

The cities left were Chicago, Minneapolis, San Francisco, and Washington, D.C.  The cities arrived at were Detroit, New York City, St. Louis and Tacoma.  The times the flights left were 2:45, 3:10, 3:45 and 4:15 in their respective time zones.

The flight to St. Louis left at a later time than the flight from San Francisco but at an earlier time than the flight to New York City.  Akers' flight, unlike Isabel's, was from east to west.  Darby's flight, which left at a later time than the flight to New York City left, was shorter than Harry's flight but longer than the flight from Chicago.  Converting all departure times to eastern standard time, Capper's flight left the latest.  Joseph did not go to Tacoma.

Match them up.

If Einstein was right that only 2 percent of the world's population could solve his logic puzzle, then that says a lot about the readers of The Dawn Treader.

You all are a bright bunch.

Paul was the winner.  He answered correctly at 9:59 am.  That was quick.

Enough with the mental push-ups.  Time for a mental marathon.

The legend on this next riddle is that Albert Einstein formulated it in the late 1800s and made the brash claim that 98 percent of the world's population could not solve it.

My hunch is that a large component of the 2 percent who can solve it read The Dawn Treader.

Now, stretch out thoroughly.  I don't want anyone pulling any mental muscles.  Warning, it will take some time and a sound strategy to solve.  There really is a solution, btw.  No tricks.  And don't use Google to cheat either.  We already covered why it was wrong to cheat earlier on the DT.

Dawn Treader readers did well on this one.  Stephen was the official winner.  He broke the tape with the correct answer at 2:00 pm.

It only takes one coin to solve the problem.

More aerobics for your mind.  First with the right answer wins.

There are three clay containers. One of them has only pennies from the year 2005 in it, one has only pennies from the year 1975 in it, and the third has an equal number of each. They are labeled "2005," "1975" and "mixed," however, you know that the labels have been switched, so that each container is marked incorrectly. Can you properly label the containers without looking in them, and only pulling one coin out from one container?

I had lots of responses to the canoe riddle.  Excellent participation!  Click below for the solution.

God gives us minds and wants us to develop them.  In that spirit, solve this puzzle and post your answers.  First correct answer wins.  I will post the comments once I get the fifth response.  Hurry and answer.

There are four people in an adventure race that need to get across a lake. They have a small canoe. The rules say that only the slowest person in the canoe can paddle, only one or two can be in the canoe at a time, and they must all cross in the canoe. From practice, they know that:

Ann can paddle across in 1 minute.

Bill can paddle across in 2 minutes.

Sue can paddle across in 5 minutes.

Mike can paddle across in 10 minutes.

How do they get everyone across the river in the fastest time without breaking the rules?

Note: Don't click the comments for help.  See if you can solve this on your own!