Every year I write about latest MIT Mystery Hunt puzzles that might be appealing to mathematicians. Before diving into mathy puzzles, I would like to mention two special ones:
- Fortune Cookies—Our team laughed at this one.
- No Clue Crossword—Our team was puzzled by this one.
Unfortunately math wasn’t prominent this year:
- Food Court—This is a probability puzzle that is surprisingly uninspiring. There is no mystery: the puzzle page contains a list of probability problems of several famous types. But this puzzles can find great use in probability classes.
- Torsion Twirl—Mixture of dancing and equations. I love it.
- People Mover—Logical deduction at the first stage.
On the other hand, Nikoli-type puzzles were represented very well:
- The Ferris of Them All—Several different Nikoli puzzles on a wheel.
- Toddler Tilt—Not exactly a Nicoli puzzle, but some weird logic on a grid, some music too.
- The Dollhouse Tour—Not exactly a Nicoli puzzle, but some weird logic on a grid, some pictures too.
- The Nauseator—The first part of the puzzle is a huge nonogram.
- Domino Maze—A non-trivial Thinkfun puzzle.
- Backlot—Finding a path on a grid with a fractal structure.
- Whale—Variation on Rush Hour.
Some computer sciency puzzles:
- Hackin’ the Beanstalk—Hidden algorithms.
- Turtle—LogoWriter.
- Bear—Origami.
Cryptography:
- The Scottish Display—You are given trigrams.
- Pig—The pigpen cypher.
- ANDARAC—You are given gibberish looking telegrams.
A couple of puzzles with the mathy side hidden:
- Tunnel of Love.
- Pied Piper—A puzzle type that I like and promoted is hidden here.
from Tanya Khovanova's Math Blog https://ift.tt/2Z6clYd
tanyakh
Post a Comment