Puzzles and Games Answers

1. The title of the puzzle is the key to the answer. Each die that has a circle in the middle is a “rose.” If it does not have a circle in the middle, it is not a rose. Every circle surrounding the middle circle is a “petal.” The number you should insert for each round is the total number of “petals,” that is, the total number of circles that surround a middle circle. If a die does not have a middle circle, none of its other circles count as petals.

2. T. These letters are each the first letter of the normal sequence of numbers starting with one. Because the letter before the blank space represents the number nine, the following letter will be T, the first letter of “ten.”

3. There are seven possibilities of hat-distribution:

1. RRW
2. RWR
3. RWW
4. WRR
5. WRW
6. WWR
7. WWW

For the first kid all but 4th suit the situation.
For the second kid 2nd situation is excluded but also 6th, because in this case he would know he has white hat, for if he would have red hat (4) the first kid would have known he has white hat.
So, for the third kid 1st, 3rd, 5th and 7th remain possible, but in all these cases she wears white hat. Hence she can tell the color of her hat even if blindfolded.

4. The blind man should verbally ask for it.

5. This is an interesting puzzle, and doubtless some readers may come to different conclusions, but I personally think that there is more than one problem with the student’s reasoning. First, by ruling out every day of the week as a day when he could potentially walk in not knowing the test was that day, he was setting himself up for that very scenario: that is, if he says, “It is impossible for the professor to do what he said he would do,” he will therefore conclude that none of these days will have the test. Thus, he could receive the test on any of the days and be surprised by it. Second, he made a slight error in his reasoning about how it could not be any of the days of the week. He ruled out Friday, and then said, “If I don’t get the exam by the end of Wednesday, then I’ll know on Thursday morning that this must be the last day.” (Thus ruling out Thursday) But here he is assuming that he will not receive the test by the end of Wednesday. What if, come Wednesday, he receives it? This would mean that when he walked into class that morning, he would not know if it was that day that he would have it or not.

Because it is imperative in his argument that he not receive the test Wednesday, so he can rule out Thursday (and then proceed to rule out Wednesday), if he were to receive the test Wednesday it would destroy the rest of his argument. And third, he was forgetting something very important: that morning, when he had walked into the classroom, the student did not know about the scenario at all: thus, in his reasoning he forgot to consider this fact and was caught off guard by the professor’s examination.

6. There are 3 people.
One is a father [and a grandfather].
One is a son [of the grandfather] and a father [of the grandson].
One is a son [and a grandson of the grandfather]

7. The solution lies in the double meaning of one of the words in the puzzle. The cabin is the cabin of an airplane, and the man died in a crash.

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