April Puzzles

I made these puzzles for Science Coffeehouse and were released on April Fools Day. Needless to say there will be some relation between the day and the puzzles. Don’t look at the solutions before trying though, they are not very difficult! I received some input for puzzle number three from Prannay Khosla.

Puzzle 1

Puzzle 2

You have an important homework to hand over tomorrow, but because you are stuck here at SCH, you can’t write it out. So you explain the ideas to your friend and ask him to type it out and you come here to hang out with the cool guys. After a week, when in true IITK style you will have completely forgotten what the homework is all about, you enbe handed it back with a note to see the instructor. There will be gibberish on the paper:

You will recall your friend saying that he is a lousy typist, but you didn’t think he could be so bad! You will quickly figure out that he pressed one key among the intended key and its immediate neighbours. The spaces are correct, for he didn’t miss that gigantic key, and so are the numbers, for he loves math. You will need to quickly decipher what you wanted to say, for your marks will depend on you telling your professor what you wanted to say.

Puzzle 3

You are chilling on a long weekend, and because you are hungry you decide to make a sandwich. You reach for your jar of mayonnaise and lo and behold a resident of the exotic planet of Xnorlax who you had never before had the privilege of coming across. Before you can introduce yourself, the Xnorlaxian challenges to a duel of wits. Needless to say, you (being very proud of your wits) agree.

The Xnorlaxian claims that xe (the only pronoun Xnorlaxians accept) has a better calculator than yours. You disagree, and you immediately want to see what the calculator is. Xe agrees, and xir calculator is shown below. There are two keys you don’t recognise and xe immediately notices. Xe says xe’s going to show you the power of the calculator. You can see all that xe does and the results.

\[21 + 34 + 29 << 2 + 25 >> 1 + 3 << 1 + 4 - 459 >> 3 = 8\] \[13 << 1 + 45 << 1 - 50 >> 2 + 3 >> 1 << 2 + 30 >> 1 = 23\]

You suddenly claim that you can do the same using your calculator. Xe gives you the following calculation - can you quickly use your calculator to figure out what the calculation below should give?

\[22 + 33 << 1 + 50 >> 1 + 130 << 1 + 9 = ????\]

Puzzle 4

You are an assistant to the brilliant spy Eleanor Shadymiss and you are on the field trying to track the movements of the great aviator Eadwaerd Shackleplane who you suspect may be up to some illegal business. You come across an interesting piece of paper among his navigation charts and now you and Elli (as Ms Shadymiss likes to call herself) must glean some information from it. You can clearly see that some squares are important, but you need to figure out which one is the secret location!

Puzzle 5

In the beginning there was the Word. This Word gave rise to everything around us. Series of great people have roamed the surface of the earth, inspired by the Word. Of all of them, we remember very few. Puzzles the mind, does it not? You may be the one humanity will remember. Have you the spark that will ensure that we do? Been to places, have you? April be this month. Fooled be he who will not believe it! You need to be the very first to be remembered though, like the great Neil Armstrong, or Newton, or Romulus or Hannibal. Have the courage to act. A mind of your own. Date after date will remember you for that. Time will never forget you. And you will be famous! Location after location will have monuments built in your remembrance. Though the path is complicated, persevere! Be brave, be strong, and come to the place you have discovered! There will we be, waiting to discover you!

Solutions!!!

To be updated soon…