Archive | Puzzles

Check out my crossword in today’s New York Times. You can see the Puzzleblogger’s name on it if you look really closely. The theme relates to something that all you puzzle-oriented people should be pretty familiar with. You can do it online here, but you’ll need a crossword account (different from the regular NY Times […]

When I started constructing crosswords for the Times, friends began to ask me what constitutes “cheating” when you’re solving a crossword puzzle. I’m not sure why making the puzzles (or even being a regular solver of them) renders me an expert, but I’ve tried to supply answers over the years, and I’ve gotten to the […]

Sometimes, in idle moments, I notice patterns in numbers I see, for instance phone numbers. For some reason, they especially relate to sums and differences and multiples of 9. (Is it just me, or do others do this, too?) So, if I see a number that starts with 357, I might observe that 7+5-3 = […]

My puzzle challenge for you today comes in 76 parts and can be found in today’s New York Times (p. E4 in the New York edition). I wrote it to coincide with Bastille Day. Enjoy!

Consider yesterday’s puzzle: What are the highest-grossing movies set in (1) North America, (2) Latin America, (3) Europe, (4) Asia, (5) Africa, and (6) Australia? Now solve it for U.S. grosses, adjusted for inflation. I used the table here; I hope it has the right data and the right adjustments. Also, for purposes of this […]

My former student Kevan Choset poses the following puzzle: What are the highest-grossing movies set in (1) North America, (2) Latin America, (3) Europe, (4) Asia, (5) Africa, and (6) Australia [UPDATE: and (7) Antarctica]? For the picky: I’m using U.S. [UPDATE: I originally erroneously said worldwide] grosses, in nominal dollars (not adjusted for inflation), […]

My friend and colleague Stephen Bainbridge writes: [W]e have a WSJ($) column today by former Joe Lieberman aide Dan Gerstein, who explains that “the Democrats Are Losing the Culture Wars” because they have: … a profound aversion to making moral judgments. And that’s the nub of the values problem for Democrats today. We don’t hesitate […]

___ John Paul John Paul John Paul. Thanks to the puzzle’s author, my former student Kevan Choset. (Show the answer.) Pius. To see why, go here and look at the last several items on the list. (Hide the answer.)

Justice X uses Y more often than the other Justices do, and the name of Y is closely related to X’s ethnicity. What are X and Y? (Note that the answer requires pretty close familiarity with the Court’s work product. And, yes, I know there are several possible answers, of various levels of seriousness. I […]

Alice, who is in an Atlantic seaboard state (one of the states of the USA, that is) is talking on the phone to Bob, who is in a Pacific seaboard state (again, one of the states of the USA). “What time is there?,” Alice says. Bob gives the correct time where he is. “Funny, it’s […]

A certain kind of war is 153, sort of. And a bit less than 2.72 is 10,000,000. How? (Show a hint.) THE PUZZLES COME FROM BLOG 95, SORT OF. (Hide the hint.) (Show the answers.) CIVIL = 104 + 49. E = MC2. VC = 95. (Hide the answers.)

So here’s a little puzzle I thought up yesterday — which sets of currently existing countries or dependencies share the same last five letters (but do not share the entire last word)? (Yes, that’s an imperfect proxy for rhyming, but that’s the question.) So Uruguay / Paraguay and Armenia / Slovenia don’t quite work, since […]

My former student Kevan Choset, who’s a puzzle buff, sent along this item: What common food item is composed of two words, each the name of a very prominent University? No need to e-mail me; the answer is below. (Click here for the answer.) Brown Rice. (hide)

In the UCLA Math Department’s basement, there are 100 lockers, numbered 1 to 100; the summer break also happens to be exactly 100 days long; and even the janitors are interested in numbers. On the first day of summer, all the lockers are unlocked. The janitor then walks by and, for every locker, locks it […]

preferably ones who remember his books even more carefully than I do, The Scrivener has a puzzle. (Note that, as later post makes clear, he’s looking for someone besides the obvious Enoch Root.)