Podcast – 16: In 80 days

A friend of mine told me that she can walk a mile south, a mile east, a mile north and end up back home. I first thought she lived at the north pole, but she laughed and told me that, since there was no land there, she would be unable to make the walk. She asked me to...

Podcast – 15: Coats of paint

Working alone, I put two coats of paint on a wall, one before lunch and one after. Yesterday, I began at the usual time. Two hours before lunch I was joined by my good friend Aidan, who paints at the rate of 600 sqft per workday, and who left just as the first coat...

Podcast – 14: O gnats, tango!

Earlier this week I was rob…er…exploring tombs and I accidently triggered a trap that locked me in a room. With me are a pair of plates, a few thousand tiny statues of gnats and a puzzle that should lead to my escape. I need to place specific numbers of...

Podcast – 13: Order of operands

Cindy was asked by her teacher to subtract 3 from a certain number and then divide the result by 9. Instead, she subtracted 9 and then divided the result by 3, giving an answer of 43. What would her answer have been had she worked the problem correctly? // //...

Podcast – 12: One light switch

For years you were a lonely prisoner here. But earlier today, you were brought to a courtyard to join the others, where you are all addressed by the Warden. There have been budget cuts, he explains, and the one hundred of you need to leave this facility. Whether you...

Podcast – 11: The loopiest puzzler

I have four lengths of rope. I hold them so that you can see all eight ends, but you can’t tell which end connects to which other end. You pick a pair of ends, and I tie them together. We repeat — you pick, I tie — until we run out of ends. // What’s the...