HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: vreddy@husc3.harvard.edu
Newsgroups: rec.puzzles
Subject: <None>
Date: 27 Aug 92 03:36:52 GMT
Organization: Harvard University Science Center

In article <1992Aug26.215348.4776@noose.ecn.purdue.edu>, berninge@iron.ecn.purdue.edu (James A Berninger) writes:
> In article <12683@grayt> grayt@Software.Mitel.COM (Tom Gray) writes:
>>Can anyone give more examples of audible puzzles like this that
>>rely on the listener trying to make sense of a nonsense question?
> 
> My personal favorite is "Who's buried in Grant's Tomb?"
> Grant and his wife are entombed there, but no one is buried there.
> (I'll probably get flamed for that one.)
> 
> Jim Berninger                   ______ "This is no 'Whoops!'  This is
> B0 w- c- g k s- e r- p          \    /  an 'Aaaaaaaauuuuuggggghhhh!'"
> berninge@cn.ecn.purdue.edu       \  /   - Harvey ("Arnold") Fierstein
> Green Lantern Fan, Extraordinaire \/      "Torch Song Trilogy"

I dunno if this is what you are talking about, but what about the bus-stop
question? You know... a bus stops at the first stop and 5 get on... the next
stop, 2 get on and 3 get off, the next stop, 5 get on abd 1 gets off, etc etc
etc... then the question at the end: How many stops did the bus make?

The people are so preoccupied doing the math, which they are led to believe is
the key to the question, and they are caught without an answer when they
realize the question asked them for something they weren't paying attnetion
to.. :)

-- Venk --
From: jrickard@eoe.co.uk (John Rickard)
Newsgroups: rec.puzzles
Subject: Re: NUMBER CREATION USING FOUR "2"s
Date: 25 Aug 92 18:38:03 GMT
Organization: EO Europe Limited, Cambridge, UK
X-Newsreader: Tin 1.1 PL3

skataba@pbhyf.PacBell.COM (Sam Atabaki) writes:
: 
: Creating numbers using four "2"s and any of mathematical
: operators and symbols
: such as:                                 __
:           +, -, *, /, .(dot), ^(power), V   (square root),
:                           _
:           ! (factorial), .2 (decimal repeatition), ...

A related puzzle:

What property do the numbers listed below share?  They are the only
numbers below 100 that I know to have this property; can you find
any I've missed?

    10, 15, 24, 25, 36, 71
Newsgroups: rec.puzzles
From: cab@col.hp.com (Chris Best)
Subject: Re: <None>
Date: Thu, 27 Aug 1992 16:48:27 GMT
Organization: your service

> >The people are so preoccupied doing the math, which they are led to believe is
> >the key to the question, and they are caught without an answer when they
> >realize the question asked them for something they weren't paying attnetion
> >to.. :)

----------

Something else that uses this sort of distraction -

Ask someone to time you (at something/anything) for 15 seconds.
When they say time's up, ask them what time it is.  Only a very
few will know, even though they were staring at their watch for 
15 seconds!

- - - - - 

And as for that YOLK one, it's even more devious if you do it
like this, where you don't even mention the word 'yolk':

Ask someone to spell 'folk'.  Then 'polka'.  You could scatter 
some 'smoke' or 'joke's in there, as if you're pointing out the 
peculiarities of the E.L.  Now spell the white of an egg.  Not 
many will say 'a-l-b-u-m-e-n' at this point.
Newsgroups: rec.puzzles
From: dwr2560@zeus.tamu.edu (RING, DAVID WAYNE)
Subject: Re: Lewis Carroll sentence
News-Software: VAX/VMS VNEWS 1.41    
Organization: Texas A&M University, Academic Computing Services
Date: Sat, 29 Aug 1992 15:51:00 GMT

tycchow@riesz.mit.edu (Timothy Y. Chow) writes...
>``Never imagine yourself not to be otherwise than what it might appear to
>others that what you were or might have been was not otherwise than what
>you had been would have appeared to them to be otherwise.''
>
>a. "What you were or might have been" and "what you had been" are noun
>clauses and can be replaced by "the queen" and "the king" respectively
>without changing the structure of the sentence.
>b. "Not otherwise than" can be safely deleted.
>c. "It might appear to others" can be replaced by "it seems."
>
>Never imagine yourself to be what it seems that the queen was the king would
>have appeared to them to be otherwise.

Insert a semicolon after 'was' and it's ok.

oz@ursa.sis.yorku.ca (Ozan Yigit) writes:
>>| Never imagine yourself not to be otherwise
>>| than ...
>>|         what it might appear to others
>>|         that ...
>>|                 what [you were or might have been] was not otherwise
>>|                 than ...
>>|                         what [you had been] would have appeared
>>|                         to them [to be otherwise]

I can't understand this.

How about:

	{Never imagine yourself not to be otherwise than} what 'it might
	appear to others that what you were or might have been was not
	otherwise than what you had been' would have appeared to them
	to be otherwise.

	{You are} what 'it seems that you were what you were' would have
	seemed wrong.

If 'what' can mean the same thing as 'such that' then this is ok.

Or:

	Never imagine 'yourself' not to be otherwise than what it might
	appear to others that 'what you were or might have been was not
	otherwise than what you had been' would have appeared to them
	to be otherwise.

	'Yourself' is what it seems 'you were what you were' would have
	seemed.

Dave Ring
dwr2560@zeus.tamu.edu
From: jwr@lentil.princeton.edu (Jaroslaw Tomasz Wroblewski)
Newsgroups: rec.puzzles
Subject: SPIOLER (Re: HINT: 2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,?)
Date: 27 Aug 92 14:30:58 GMT
Distribution: rec
Organization: Princeton University

In article <1992Aug27.062128.7397@wisipc.weizmann.ac.il> dany@marva.wisdom.weizmann.ac.il (Nabutovsky Dan) writes:
:-) >>In article <1992Aug25.120533.24301@wisipc.weizmann.ac.il> I write:
:-) >>   What is the next item in the serie:
:-) >> 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, ?, ...
:-) >
:-) >   This is a well-known serie. In fact, everybody knows it.
:-) >If I'll give you the next item, you should know all others immediately.
:-) >(Of course it is not 12).
:-) >
:-) >   All answers based on sophisticated mathematical rule are
:-) >certainly wrong.

I see nothing sophisticated about the sequence of natural numbers j
such that 210*j+3709 is prime :-) I am sure people run into this sequence
every day :-)

Accordingly the next term is j=15.
We also get primes of this form for the following numbers:
 q=19, k=21, a=22

Did I get it right ?    *:o)
--

Jarek (Jaroslaw Tomasz Wroblewski) ,   E-mail jwr@math.Princeton.EDU
From: ncramer@bbn.com (Nichael Cramer)
Newsgroups: rec.puzzles
Subject: Visual Puns [was: Audible Puzzles ...]
Date: 27 Aug 1992 16:23:20 GMT
Organization: Bolt Beranek and Newman Inc., Cambridge MA
Reply-To: ncramer@labs-n.bbn.com (Nichael Cramer)
NNTP-Posting-Host: bbn.com
Keywords: puzzle


I've always been intrigued by the converse problem: i.e. puns that work
purely on a visual level and that make no sense at all aurally.

The best example I know of is a punk-oid guitar player who worked in the
Austin area in the late 1970's.  He went by the name:

			       brian damage

Now, this is very striking to the eye (at least it's very striking to _my_
eye) particularly if you just glance at the name --e.g. on a poster.  But I
doubt that one person in a hundred would even think twice about it if you
said it aloud.

NICHAEL                                                                __
nichael@bbn.com  --                              Be as Passers-by.  -- IS
From: richard@octel.com (Richard Karasik)
Newsgroups: rec.puzzles
Subject: Blacksmith code
Keywords: word puzzle
Date: 27 Aug 92 20:06:42 GMT
Followup-To: richard@octel.com
Distribution: rec
Organization: Octel Communications Inc., Milpitas Ca.


Im lookingfor another word beside blacksmith that has 10 unique
letters. Typical uses for a word are in "secret" pricing
ie you mark something bh to know you spent 10 doallars on it -hence when people
ask how much it is just add your markup -rather than having to
mark sales prices on everything.

Used car dealers do this a lot -the price they will accept is 
usually on the sticker somewhere as blacksmith code.

Now Im looking for another word with similar properties -and
have become stumped.

Please mail to me and I will summarize.
RIchard
-- 
|UUCP  richard@octel.com                 VOICE (HEY YOU!) or 408 321 6372
| 
|             Speaker for the dead - among them:
|                 Liberty, Justice, Freedom
From: gjm11@cus.cam.ac.uk (G.J. McCaughan)
Newsgroups: rec.puzzles
Subject: Re: 4 color atlas
Date: 2 Sep 92 01:37:26 GMT
Organization: U of Cambridge, England

In article <1992Sep1.181038.27830@athena.cs.uga.edu>, DEANRE@bscf.uga.edu (ROBIN DEAN) writes:

>      QUESTION:::
> 
>     Has it ever been proved that with only 4 colors any planar map
> can be colored in such a way so that no two countries that touch
> will have the same color?
> 
>      My math teacher presented our class with this problem back in
> 1977 and at that time he said it had not been either proven nor
> disproven.  (Apparently at one time there was a reward for the person
> who could find a map that needed 5 colors.)

The 4-colour theorem was "proved" in 197x by Appel, Haken and their computer.
The proof goes like this:

  Consider the following list (of about 2000 maps, some rather nasty).
  <list follows> 
  Then any minimal [i.e. smallest possible number of countries] map which
  can't be coloured using only 4 colours must contain one of these maps.
  <proof follows. The proof is very long and tedious>
  But any map containing one of these which can't be coloured using only
  4 colours can be modified to give a smaller map which still can't be
  coloured using only 4 colours.
  <proof follows. The proof is quite long and tedious>
  Now if there were any non-4-colourable map, consider a smallest one;
  it contains one of the maps in the list, so it can be shrunk; this
  contradicts the requirement that it was smallest possible. So there
  are no non-4-colourable maps at all.

The computer is needed to find the list of about 2000 maps, and to carry out
the proofs in <...>. (The techniques used for those proofs were worked out by
humans, but carrying them out in detail requires a computer because it's just
too complicated and long for a human.)

Provided their program didn't have bugs in it, what they produced really does
amount to a proof of the result; or at least it would if they also included
some appropriate "tracing" output from the computer program showing its working,
as it were.

The proof has been checked by other people (with computers, but running different
programs and working independently) since, so there is no longer any real doubt
that it is correct. There are still some people who don't like the idea of a
proof that is so complicated it requires a computer not only to find it but to
do it, though.
Newsgroups: rec.puzzles
From: billg@bony1.bony.com (Bill Gripp)
Subject: Re: Audible Puzzles or Nonsense Questions
Organization: LA&W RR
Date: Tue, 1 Sep 92 15:53:03 GMT

In article <1992Aug28.174241.1290@ultra.com> wayne@ultra.com (Wayne Hathaway) writes:
>Hope this hasn't been mentioned yet ...
>
>My personal favorite in this genre is:
>
>    How do you pronounce C-H-O, [pause], P-H-O, [pause], U-S-E?
>
>Not many people will recognize the word as chophouse!


Similarly,

How do you pronounce T-W-A?
                     T-W-E?
                     T-W-I?
                     T-W-O?

Many will say twoh not 2.

Newsgroups: rec.puzzles
From: jesperse@nas.nasa.gov (Dennis Jespersen)
Subject: Rhyming orange, silver, and purple
Organization: Computational Fluid Dynamics Branch, NASA Ames Research Center
Date: 28 Aug 92 10:51:44


Finding an English rhyme for the word orange comes up in John Barth's
novel "The Sot-Weed Factor", where this task puts an abrupt end to a
rhyming contest. (I think it's "orange" that's to be rhymed, if not
it's "silver".)

A number of years ago while doing a 600-mile solo drive (with no FM
radio and no tape deck) I set myself the task of making limericks that
included rhymes for "orange", "silver", and "purple".  You might wish
to amuse yourself with this task before seeing what I came up with.

Spoilers ahead:


There once was a man, who though hated,
An expert at citrus was rated.
Once I gave him an orange,
He: one sniff, then "'Tis foreign,
Jaffa is where it originated."

(Of course you have to read the last two lines pretty fast.)

Now purple:


If you're sick from a drink that was purple,
You are liable to find that a burp'll
Make you feel all right
Help you sleep through the night,
At least a burp'll be better than another slurp'll.


Finally silver:


A rater who worked for a mine,
The states metal ranks to assign,
Said: "If you're looking for silver,
You may seek though you will, Ver-
mont's at the end of the line."
--
Dennis Jespersen                Voice: (415) 604-6742                      
MS 202A-1		        FAX:   (415) 604-1095                      
NASA Ames Research Center       email: jesperse@rft28.nas.nasa.gov         
Moffett Field, CA 94035-1000    We have met the enemy and he is us. -- Pogo
Newsgroups: rec.puzzles,sci.math
From: karr@cs.cornell.edu (David Karr)
Subject: Re: Solitaire games
Organization: Cornell Univ. CS Dept, Ithaca NY 14853
Date: Sun, 30 Aug 1992 02:02:18 GMT

In article <1992Aug28.063728.20792@dde.dk> ct@dde.dk (Claus Tondering) writes:
>What do you do when you are bored? [...] But you have a pencil
>and a pad of paper...

In boring meetings, I used to work out powers of e to many decimal places
using the classic series, or similar numerical problems.  Theorems of
physics are good, too:  for example, why are there five Lagrange points
in a two-body system and EXACTLY where are they located?

One of my colleagues just used to bring a cryptic crossword to the
meeting, but the problem with that method is you have to predict the
need in advance and bring the crossword with you.

-- David Karr (karr@cs.cornell.edu)
From: vreddy@das.harvard.edu (Venkatesh Reddy)
Newsgroups: rec.puzzles
Subject: Re: Audible Puzzles or Nonsense Questions
Date: 27 Aug 92 17:24:12 GMT
Organization: Aiken Computation Lab, Harvard University

In article <1992Aug27.170458.24814@col.hp.com>, cab@col.hp.com (Chris Best) writes:
|> > OK, Jeff <snicker, snicker>, how about the capital of Kentucky:
|> > Lew-ee-ville, or Lew-is-ville.
|> 
|> ----------
|> 
|> To be frank, I'm not sure either one is correct...

Although Louisville isn't the capital (as we all know because the joke
wouldn't be a joke otherwise), Chris is right... the pronunciation,
to be anal here, is actually Looville, not Lew-ee-ville.
Newsgroups: rec.puzzles
From: singley@helix.nih.gov (Erick D. Singley)
Subject: Re: Visual Puns [was: Audible Puzzles ...]
Keywords: puzzle
Organization: (National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD)
Distribution: usa
Date: Wed, 2 Sep 1992 21:47:03 GMT

My favortie eye bender was a sign in a dept store that read:
Going all
 out for a
buisness sale

And people wonder how this store was going out of buisness for so long...

erick
From: leue@crd.ge.com (Bill Leue)
Newsgroups: rec.puzzles
Subject: Re: Spoiler to the Bug Wedding
Date: 3 Sep 92 12:55:05 GMT
Reply-To: leue@crd.ge.com
Organization: General Electric Research & Development

In article 4877@ncsu.edu, mgtaylor@eos.ncsu.edu (Mary Molly G Taylor) writes:
>
>_THE BUG WEDDING_
>
>1.  Who was the bride?
>Black Widow
>June Bug

	My choice here was "damselfly".

-Bill Leue
leue@crd.ge.com
From: PANDERSON@OAVAX.CSUCHICO.EDU
Newsgroups: rec.puzzles
Subject: Four of a kind
Date: 27 Aug 92 18:32:58 GMT
Organization: California State University, Chico

I came across a puzzle over 20 years ago and lost the book it was in 
before reading the solution. I remeber it from time to time and have never 
solved it. Can anyone help?

Take four numbers and writ them down beside each other. e.g.

5   3   17   34

Find the difference between each number and the number to its right. In 
the case of the fourth number find the difference between it and the first 
number( that is in this case between 17 and 21). Continue to do this and 
you will always come to four of the smae number. This apparently only 
works with four number.

Example:

5   3  17   34
2   14  17  29
12  3    12  27
9   9     15  15
0   6      0    6
6   6      6    6

Can anyone help?

Peter Anderson
panderson@oavax.csuchico.edu
From: arndt@c3consult.comm.se (Arndt Jonasson)
Newsgroups: rec.puzzles
Subject: Re: Audible Puzzles or Nonsense Questions
Date: 28 Aug 92 10:00:01 GMT
	<1992Aug21.190625.23459@visix.com> <12683@grayt>
	<1992Aug27.080821.12826@nntp.nta.no> <kleber.714930734@husc10>
Organization: Communicator C3Consult AB


Michael Kleber:
>   Or, along the same lines,
>
>   "Which is correct:
>    The yolk (pause) of the eggs (pause) *is* white
>   or
>    The yolk (pause) of the eggs (pause) *are* white
>   ?"
>
>   people get caught up trying to resolve the number disagreement, and
>   miss that the yolk is yellow...

Here is a similar thing I was once exposed to. Keep in mind that the
Swedish word for "fork" is "gaffel" and there is no such word as
"graffel":

Q: Say "graffel"
A: graffel
Q: Say "graffel, graffel"
A: graffel, graffel
Q: graffel, graffel, graffel		(lots of different intonations)
A: graffel, graffel, graffel
Q: graffel, graffel
A: graffel, graffel
Q: What do you eat soup with?
A: gaffel ... (!)

The answerer tries very hard not to say "graffel", and says "gaffel",
realising two seconds later that that is not what you eat soup with.

I guess one could modify it for English; turn "fork" into "fnork",
perhaps?

--
Arndt Jonasson				Communicator C3Consult AB
arndt@c3consult.comm.se
From: tdh@ksr.com (Dave Hudson)
Newsgroups: rec.puzzles
Subject: Re: 4 color atlas
Date: 3 Sep 92 14:20:50 EDT
Organization: Kendall Square Research, Waltham MA

>     Has it ever been proved that with only 4 colors any planar map
> can be colored in such a way so that no two countries that touch
> will have the same color?

This formulation of the assertion is false, for countries can be
discontiguous, and a counterexample is trivial.

				David Hudson
Newsgroups: rec.puzzles
From: cfarmer@ncsa.uiuc.edu (Chuck Farmer)
Subject: Re: Logic Problem: On the cards (SOLUTION)
Followup-To: rec.puzzles
Organization: NCSA
Date: Wed, 2 Sep 1992 21:52:32 GMT

In article <BtxBry.8tM@usenet.ucs.indiana.edu>,
bodom@silver.ucs.indiana.edu (Brian Odom) wrote:
> 
> Parentheses refer to the premise numbers in the problem.
> 
> In (4) there is a jack of spades, in (5) there is an ace of spades.  By (9), 
> there are four different suits at each table, so there are only 2 spades.
> So, the black queen is the queen of clubs (7).  Arlene is holding the lowest
> club (6), so she has the jack of clubs.

(Rest of solution deleted.) 
How can you make this assumtion? Why can't the queen of clubs be the the
lowest club. Can make the rest of the solution work without this condition.


Thanks
Chuck
cfarmer@ncsa.uiuc.edu


Only a fool is sure - Moe Howard
From: rsakella@p4.cs.man.ac.uk (Rizos Sakellariou)
Newsgroups: rec.puzzles
Subject: Re: NUMBER CREATION USING FOUR "2"s
Date: 29 Aug 92 23:44:35 GMT

>Creating numbers using four "2"s and any of mathematical
>operators and symbols
>such as:                                 __
>          +, -, *, /, .(dot), ^(power), V   (square root),
>                          _
>          ! (factorial), .2 (decimal repeatition), ...

Some new numbers :
                _
 99 = sqrt((22/.2)^2)
              _
106 = (2+2)!/.2 - 2
               _   _
109 = ((2+2)!+.2)/.2

222 = sqrt(222^2)
                         _      _
540 = (2 + sqrt(2)/sqrt(.2))! /.2
           _
990 = 22/(.2 - .2)
   
                       _
Let x = (sqrt(2)/sqrt(.2))!! = 720

146 = x*.2 + 2
         _
158 = x*.2 - 2
               _
160 = sqrt((x*.2)^2)
                  _
270 = sqrt(x/.2)/.2
             _
304 = x*(.2+.2)
            _
648 = x*.2/.2
              _
800 = (x/.2)*.2
From: grue@cs.uq.oz.au (Pauli)
Newsgroups: rec.puzzles
Subject: Re: Nerd words
Date: 24 Aug 92 01:38:22 GMT
Reply-To: grue@cs.uq.oz.au

linden@positive.Eng.Sun.COM (Peter van der Linden) writes:

>I am looking for two words that, when catenated together
>form a third word, with opposite meaning to the first word.

>Examples:
>            NOT  +  ABLE  =  NOTABLE
>            CHILD + LESS  =  CHILDLESS

>One way of looking at this puzzle is to consider that it is
>looking for a negator that is a suffix, not a prefix.

>I had a hell of a time trying to get the Unix toolkit to
>generate lists of candidate words (i.e. catenate pairs of words
>and check if it's in the dictionary).  Ideas here?

I just wrote a simple program to search all possible pairs of
sub words of a given word while checking if they are legal words.

I've also run a large dictionary through it and there are many too
many to check by hand (>100 000 pairs).  You might want to check words
ending with 'less' as a start.  There are lots of such words and I'm
sure some will be good enough (I can get a list of 600 or so very easily)


While I was doing this I thought of a new puzzle.  Define a word to be
pairable if there exist two words that can be concatenated to form the
original word.  Lots of these kinds of words exist.  However, what
is the most pairable word?  (i.e. the word that can be formed from the
most pairs of other words).  Does there exist a word such that every
possible pair of sub words is legal?  (i.e. if the word is n letters
long, find n-1 pairs).






        						Pauli

Paul Dale                       | grue@cs.uq.oz.au
Department of Computer Science  | +61 7 365 2445
University of Queensland        |
Australia, 4072                 | Did you know that there are 41 two letter
                                |     words containing the letter 'a'?
--
From: naraht@drycas.club.cc.cmu.edu (Randolph J. Finder)
Newsgroups: rec.puzzles
Subject: penny hex symmetry II
Date: 1 Sep 92 05:16:31 GMT
Organization: Carnegie Mellon Computer Club

-- 
(naraht@drycas.club.cc.cmu.edu)	| Leadership,Friendship, and Service
(vri_rjfin@dmis.ha.osd.mil)	|          Alpha Phi Omega
(tnc!m0039@uunet.uu.net)	| National (Co-ed) Service Fraternity
"Service to others is the rent that we pay for living on the planet"(quote?)
From: jesse@uts.amdahl.com (Jesse Mundis)
Newsgroups: rec.puzzles
Subject: Re: Penny in a bottle
Date: 27 Aug 92 20:32:53 GMT
Organization: Amdahl Corporation, Sunnyvale CA

moon@mozart.llnl.gov (Steven Moon) writes:

>In article <2406@tymix.Tymnet.COM>, filfeit@rael.Tymnet.COM (Fil Feit) writes:
>|> You have a wine bottle with a penny inside and it is closed with a cork.
>|> 
>|> How can you get the penny without removing the cork (or breaking the bottle)?
>|> 
>|> --f2

[ideas about cutting and melting bottle deleted]

Burn the cork out. (We didn't remove it, and we didn't break the bottle...
depending on your definition of 'remove')

Or, again working on the definition of "remove,"  Insert corkscrew into cork,
anchor corkscrew to stationary massive object, and pull on the bottle.  You
have not removed the cork from the bottle, you have removed the bottle from
around the cork (which is not forbidden by the problem descritption)

Or, just shake the bottle until the penny falls out of the hole in the bottom 
of the bottle which the original poster forgot to mention was there.

Or, heat just the mouth of the bottle until the glass is soft enough to work,
then enlarge the mouth, being carful not to "break the bottle" and not to
"remove the cork."  Cool it off, and retrieve the penny around the cork.
(a modification of the melt the bottle suggestion)

I'd like to hear what the original poster had in mind.
-- 
    Jesse Mundis     |      Amdahl Corporation       | Freedom is just chaos
jesse@uts.amdahl.com | 1250 East Arques Ave  M/S 316 | with better lighting.
   (408) 746-4796    |   Sunnyvale,  CA 94088-3470   |    -Alan Dean Foster 

#include <Disclaimer.standard>
Newsgroups: rec.puzzles