Discuss Desk Drawers here

[Sofis]

Puzzle Link.

[SaberKitty]

left top: unifying theme: plural?
envelopes
stamps
matches
paper towels

left bottom: unifying theme: prime number of vowlels?
letter opener
pencils
radio
extension cord

right top: unifying theme: double letters
ballpoint pen
magnifying glass
scissors
diskettes

right bottom: unifying theme: prime number of letters?
paper
mittens
cookies
Bible

ok, i only think i have one of them- the obvious top right drawer


-SK

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one can always be hopeful...

[The Cruciverbalist]

Top Left Drawer: Products that are made from wood or wood pulp?
Bottom Right Drawer: Words whose first three letters are also words?



[This message has been edited by The Cruciverbalist (edited 03-09-2003 04:42 PM).]

[Dastal]

What about length of the descriptor? It seems to me that the bold is suposed to draw us away from soemthing.

[Celt]

How about :

Top drawers : Things I use most often.
Bottom Drawers : Things I us least often.

Right Drawers : Things I need only one hand for (i.e. right hand). Bible doesn't fit this unless I'm using it for some reason other than reading it. (eg. squash bugs)
Left Drawers : Things I need both hands/left hand for. Pencils don't comply here unless they need sharpening.

[Sofis]

Argh. I knew there was something I forgot. I meant to mention, that the drawers are complementary: the connnecting property of the upper left drawer is the opposite of the lower left drawer, and likewise for the right side.

Edit: I should really refresh the thread before posting when it was several hours since I first loaded it. This post (and the change in the text of the puzzle) was mostly in reply to SaberKitty (rather than Celt).

[This message has been edited by Sofis (edited 03-10-2003 05:26 PM).]

[aqua]

A guess about the right top:
* It contains things that are not flexible (The disk is a 3.5" one)
* All things in its opposite (right down) are flexible - uuh, as much as a packet of cookies is flexible ? Depending on how old they are ?
* The left ones both contain a mix of flexible and inflexible materials.

[referee]

Are they also complementary in the other direction? ie top left vs top right.

[Sofis]

No.

[DropOfaHat]

Hmmm... OK, just some rambling thoughts...

Seems that the upper left items all do (or certainly could) come in contact with WATER as a normal part of their existence - envelopes & stamps are licked (well, not self-adhesive stamps, but come on), matches can be doused to put them out & paper towels can clean up water; half of the bottom left things should not come in contact with water (radio & extension cord), but pencils & a letter opener don't have too much trouble with water, so maybe I've got nothing.

Upper right items all have something ROUND - ball in pen point, disk in diskette, lens of glass, & screw in scissors. Problem is, there's not much inherently non-round in the bottom items - in fact cookies are round. So again, maybe I've got bupkus...

[Timo_Tuokkola]

Left Top: Things that are only used once
Left Bottom: Things that can be reused many times

[DropOfaHat]

Some more random thoughts - with the exception of the diskettes (a pretty big exception, I grant you) everything in the upper right drawer can (potentially) be found on a Swiss army knife. Also, perhap smore significantly, all the items (still on upper right) are improvements on existing inventions. Can't say how the lower right items are the opposite of that, but...

Why do I get the feeling that (as pointed out by CELT above, before we knew left didn't have relationship to right) "handed-ness" has something to do with this?

[Peekay]

I like Timo's suggestion for the left, it seems to work well.
My thoughts on the right side:
Top: Things not made from organic materials. Only metal and plastic it seems, assuming the ink in the pen is not organic based.
Bottom: Things made from organic materials. Wood pulp in the papaer and bible (and the leather covering on the bible), wool mittens, and the sugar in the cookies (as well as all the other stuff that make cookies taste so great. mmm - partially hydrogenated soybean oil.)

[ZutAlors!]

right top: Multiple pairs of repeated letters
ballpoint pen (Two l's, two p's, two n's)
magnifying glass (Two i's, two s's, three g's, two n's, two i's, two a's)
scissors (Four s's [two pair, right?])
diskettes (Two e's, two t's, two s's)

right bottom: Exactly one pair of repeated letters
paper (Two p's)
mittens (Two t's)
cookies (Two o's)
Bible (Two b's)

Even if this isn't right, the fact that the RB drawer is filled with shorter words than the RT drawer leads me to believe that the differentiation is based on the words as opposed to the items, and that the RB drawer is lacking something that exists in the RT drawer.

[DropOfaHat]

Hmm, I like your theory, Zut - I just hope the "fingerless" desciptor for the mittens is meant to be ignored, otherwise it wrecks your hypothesis!!

[Viral_Infection]

I was thinking something along the lines of "usedness"

Top Left being things that are unused
Bottom Left being things are used somewhat often

Top Right being things that have some good use
While Bottom Right containing things with no real use

[What if...]

Fingerless doesn't matter if we assume the bold type is supposed to help instead of hurt our guesses.