Archives?

[firemeboy]

Here is just a quick thought. We often get reoccurring puzzles in the visitors submitted forum. I don't think that they are too big of a nuisance but I think that often time people post for the first time, and they either get no response, or somebody will post something like, "this puzzle has been posted, refer to the archives". This may be turning away potential future addicts of the GL.

Is it possible to have a place where we could pull out some of the more popular puzzles, and gather them all in one place? I think we could cut out a lot of redundancy just by posting 5-10 puzzles. This would be fun for new members to get to know everybody (by reading the puzzles), and they would also be familiar with some of the puzzles that have been around. They could do all this without having to wade through literally thousands of puzzles, and tens of thousands of posts.

[Soma^3]

If something was done like this, I'd like to nominate the following puzzles to be included:

#1. Gas, Water, Electric (link three houses to the three utilities without crossing lines, etc.)

#2. Draw a line crossing over each line segment only once…

code:

---

-----------------------


|     |         |      |


|     |         |      |


|-----|-----|---|----- |


|           |          |


|           |          |


|           |          |


 -----------------------

---

#3. A hunter travels one mile south, one mile west and one mile north and arrives where he started. He shoots a bear. What color was the bear?

#4. There are three light switches in the basement of a house that control three lightbulbs on the second story of the house. How many trips does it take to figure out which switch controls which bulb?

#5. How many grains of rice if you start with a chessboard and put one grain on the first square, two on the second, 4 on the third, 8 on the forth… etc.?

#6. Riddle: What is more powerful than God; more evil than the devil; rich people need it but poor people have it; and if you eat it you die?

#7. Monty Hall... nuff said...

Any others?

Could we start a thread in a forum and just bump it up whenever some asks one of these? Though, I’m not sure if that’d be the most efficient method. Maybe a “Definitive Thread” could be started for each of these puzzles and links to these threads could be added to the GL homepage? Just brainstorming here…

(Also, I ALMOST think a whole new forum should be created just for discussion on the Monty Hall problem, but then I’d bet all the regulars would do their best to stay out of that forum )

[This message has been edited by Soma^3 (edited 03-15-2000).]

[firemeboy]

I almost would hate to bump up the puzzles, because we don't want people to find the site, get excited, post something, and then get lost, or not know where their post went. I think if we have a site with these popular puzzles (and you have started a great list above), then they could read through them, and we would never even have the problem of them being posted.

The only problem would be getting them to read those puzzles first. But if we were to call the area something that grabs you attention, like GL top 10 puzzles, or something to the like, we may at least cut down the number of re-posts. Not that the reposts are a complete pain, just that I think people get frustrated when they don't see any action on their post.

[Soma^3]

three more add up to ten...

#8. You are in a room with two doors (one that leads out to safety and one the leads to certain death). There are also two people in the room one always lies and one always tells the truth. You don’t know which is which. You are allowed to ask one of them only one yes or no question. What question should you ask to find which door leads to safety?

#9. This sentence is false.
Variation:
The sentence below is true.
The sentence above is false.

#10. Unusual Paragraph (or any of it’s variants)
How quickly can you find out what is unusual about this paragraph? It looks so ordinary that you would think that nothing was wrong with it at all and, in fact, nothing is. But it is unusual. Why? If you study it and think about it you may find out, but I am not going to assist you in any way. You must do it without coaching. No doubt, if you work at it for long, it will dawn on you. Who knows? Go to work and try your skill. Par is about half an hour.
______________
I wasn't going to include the liar/truth-teller and the self-referental sentence paradox at first, because there are some interesting variations that can be created from these ideas, but I think maybe we should list the most common variations.

I think that about covers the most common ones.

[Soma^3]

oh, and I just remembered the "three words that end in -gry" one.

[firemeboy]

I agree to all of the above puzzles. I also agree with Soma about the fact that you can still get clever variations on a theme, but lets get to the variations without having to hear the theme over and over.

Amen on the gry.

[CzarJ]

Amengry?

[HyToFry]

bump.

this would fall in the "Read First" posts... if we had them.