January 9, 2017


ALL DRESSED

At the burger joint, 80 people bought a single burger in the last hour.  Among these people, 60 added mustard, 65 added pickles, 70 added onions, and 75 added ketchup to their burger.  What is the least number of burgers that had all four toppings?
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There are two methods...
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Answer: 30 burgers

Method 1:  Put ketchup on 75 burgers, leaving 5 burgers plain.  Now add onions to 70 burgers, filling the 5 plain burgers and 65 of the ketchup burgers.  This leaves 15 burgers missing one of the two ingredients so far.  Put pickles on all of those 15 burgers and on 50 of the two-topping burgers.  Now we have 30 burgers with fewer than three toppings.  Put mustard on those 30, and then mustard on 30 of the three-topping burgers, making a minimum of 30 burgers with four toppings.

Method 2:  The total number of toppings is 69+65+70+75=270.  Put three different toppings on each of the 80 burgers.  This leaves 270-(3x80)=30 toppings unused.  These 30 toppings will go on 30 burgers that don't have that topping, making 30 the minimum number of burgers with four toppings.

Whew.

January 8, 2017

HERE'S A TWIST

In this word ladder, go from BEND to SWAY in five steps, changing one letter at a time to form a common English word at each step.  We found four solutions.

BEND

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SWAY

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BEND, bead, beat, seat, swat, SWAY
BEND, bent, beat, seat, swat, SWAY
BEND, bent, sent, seat, swat, SWAY
BEND, send, sent, seat, swat, SWAY

January 7, 2017

Insert the letters A to J, one per square, so that no two consecutive letters in alphabetical order are in squares that touch in any way, even at a corner.  Three letters have been placed to get you started.

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January 6, 2017


Solve this crossword, entering each six-letter answer, letter by letter, in alphabetical order: left to right for the Across answers, and top to bottom for the Downs.

ACROSS:
1. Sounded the horn
7. Tied up in the harbor
8. More optimistic
9. Repeats verbatim
10. Keyboard user
11. The lap of _______ (comfort)

DOWN:
1. Safe to swallow
2. Sentence ender
3. Islamic temple
4. Eviction
5. Obtain by coercion
6. Sticky-sweet, like waffle topping



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Read the directions carefully.  Scratch paper might come in handy.
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ACROSS:  1. beeped. 7. moored. 8. rosier. 9. quotes. 10. typist. 11. luxury.
DOWN:  1. edible. 2. period. 3. mosque. 4. ouster. 5. extort. 6. syrupy.



The grid should look like this:

January 5, 2017

Place stars in six cells of this grid so that every row, every column, and every outlined region contains exactly one star.  Stars must never be located in adjacent cells, not even diagonally.

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January 4, 2017.  Sorry for the delay, I was doing my good deed for the year this week ;-) 

TIMES SQUARE

Each of the letters used in this word square represents a different digit, 1 through 8.  The numbers beside and below the grid show the result of multiplying the values of the letters in each row and column.  Determine the values of the letters and fill the empty grid with the corresponding numbers.

Answers below:
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Hint:  In the third column, O must be either 2 or 5.
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January 3, 2017.  This one is fun and a nice change after yesterday's nasty mathy.

Baby Steps

Print the word LULLABY.  Change all of the L's to N's.  Change the U to a Q.  Move the second-to-last letter to a position between two identical letters.  Change the first letter to an M and change the last letter to an F.  Insert an R before the second N.  Move the first letter so it becomes the second-to-last letter.  Delete the A.  Move all of the letters one position forward in the alphabet (A becomes B, B becomes C, etc.).  Insert a K and a space after the C.

What is the punny result?

Answer below:
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LULLABY
NUNNABY
NQNNABY
NQNBNAY
MQNBNAF
MQNBRNAF
QNBRNAMF
QNBRBMF
ROCSONG 
ROCK SONG