HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: u9211306@cc.uow.edu.au (Elpidio S Jabonete Jr)
Newsgroups: rec.puzzles
Subject: Re: riddle I remember reading as a kid
Date: 30 Aug 92 05:39:59 GMT
Organization: University Of Wollongong

Eric_J_Rainbolt@cup.portal.com writes:

|>  Here's an easy one.  I remember trying to figure this out when
|>  I was a kid.  I think it was in HighLight's Magazine.
|>  There was a villian, a farmer, and his daughter.  The farmer owed
|>  the villian lots of money, but he couldn't pay his debt.  They were all
|>  standing in a street loaded with white and black pebbles.  The villian said,



|> "I will pick up two pebbles, a white and a black one, put it in my hat, and
|> let your daughter choose.  If she pulls a black one, she is mine in payment
|> of your debt, if she chosses white, she is free."  The nervous farmer, not
|> to mention his daughter, agreed to the contract.  When the villian grabbed
|> the stones from the ground, the daughter noticed that he picked up two
|> black stones.  She knew if she refused to choose, the villian would win.
|> What does she do?



	The girl picked up one stone on the hat (even if she knows
    both are black ) !

	Well, the trick is instead of showing what colour of stone she had
   picked up, she says " Look at the hat and see what's left ".

	Obviously, since the villian picked two black stones --the one on the
   hat is a  black one.

	Since they agreed that there would be one black and one white stone,
  -- and because what's left is black stone , it is "clear" that what the
  girl had in her hand is a WHITE STONE !!!

	And they're free !


	-->> E. S. Jabonete , Jr.
             University of Wollongong
             Australia
From: ed@wente.llnl.gov (Ed Suranyi)
Newsgroups: rec.puzzles
Subject: Re: Rhymes
Date: 25 Aug 92 17:27:13 GMT
Organization: UC Davis Dept of Applied Science at LLNL

In article <9820@ncrwat.Waterloo.NCR.COM> tjgerman@ncrwat.Waterloo.NCR.COM (Trevor German) writes:
> orange -> lozange
> angry  -> handy...etc (seems too easy)

Both of these pairs have problems, in each case due to the position
of stress.  "Orange" and "lozange" both have stress on the first
syllable, so they must start rhming from the first vowel sound.  Even
if these vowel sounds were alike (they aren't, quite), there's a major
conflict between the "r" and the "z".

"Angry" and "Handy" also have stress on the first syllable, so we
have the same problem.  Remember, equivalence in weak, unstressed
final syllables is not enough for two words to rhyme.  There must
be some equivalence in a stressed syllable.  Otherwise, people would
say that "party" and "lofty" rhyme, and they obviously don't.

Ed
ed@wente.llnl.gov
Newsgroups: rec.puzzles
From: jkenton@world.std.com (Jeff Kenton)
Subject: Re: word permutations and rotations
Keywords: word permutat rotat
Organization: Kenton Systems Corporation, Weston MA
Date: Thu, 3 Sep 1992 18:03:52 GMT

In article <baljeual.715533050@uther> baljeual@uther.calvin.edu (Alan Baljeu) writes:
>
>
>2. Permutations.  Certain words can be permuted many ways and still produce
>	words.
>
>rats star arts tars tsar
>angel glean angle
>
>"stop" has 6 permutations (you may find them yourself :)
>Can anyone do better?
>


spear, spare, reaps, rapes, pares, pears, parse, apers, apres(French)



-- 
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
=			Jeff Kenton	(617) 894-4508			=
=			    jkenton@world.std.com			=
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: kleber@husc10.harvard.edu (Gwydden)
Newsgroups: rec.puzzles
Subject: Re: Audible Puzzles or Nonsense Questions was Re: Slaughter of the Innocents
Keywords: puzzle
Date: 27 Aug 92 15:52:14 GMT
Article-I.D.: husc10.kleber.714930734
 <1992Aug21.190625.23459@visix.com> <12683@grayt> <1992Aug27.080821.12826@nntp.nta.no>

Quoth Stein Kulseth FBA:

> This one works well in Norway:
>
> "How do you pronounce the capital of USA, 'Nu York' or 'Nju york'?"

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...

--Michael Kleber                "I don't have an overactive imagination...
  kleber@husc.harvard.edu        I have an underactive reality..."  --EG
Newsgroups: rec.puzzles
From: kumar@ug.cs.dal.ca (kumar yelubandi)
Subject: 2 by four (and a free-for-all on operators    :)   )
Organization: Math, Stats & CS, Dalhousie University, Halifax, NS, Canada
Date: Thu, 27 Aug 1992 08:11:31 GMT



	how about these:


	41 =  arcsin(sqrt(2)/2)  -  2^2


	67 =  arcsin(sqrt(2)/2)  +  22

	70 =  arcsin(sqrt(2)/2)  +  .2^(-2)

	
	92 =  [arcsin(sqrt(2)/2)]*2  +  2



	990  =   [arcsin(sqrt(2)/2)]*[22]  



anyways, those should get you started off....
-- 
                                  *******************************************
   Kumar Yelubandi                 **  I don't believe in a lot           **
   (good wines > good times!)      **  of things. And I quit thinking     **
   ...in the year 2525...          **  six years ago, so...DON'T BOTHER ME!!!
From: kml@cellar.org (John Galt)
Newsgroups: rec.puzzles
Subject: Re: riddle I remember reading as a kid
Date: 31 Aug 92 18:24:27 GMT
Organization: The Cellar BBS and public access system

IQTI400@INDYCMS.IUPUI.EDU (macphil) writes:
> another good example is the one of two sons fighting over who had the
> slower horse (as in "mine is slower than yours")...just as they were
> about to come to blows over a method to prove it, a wizened
> old man approached them, suggested a simple method and they were
> able to resolve their disagreement.  What did he suggest?





<SPOILER ALERT>








He suggests that they each ride the other's horse.



Note: the message you are about to post will be sent to thousands of machines
and will be read by thousands, if not tens of thousands of people worldwide.
Be sure you know what you are doing.

Never stopped me before.

  kml%cellar@tredysvr.tredydev.unisys.com - My other account is a Mercedes.
From: vreddy@das.harvard.edu (Venkatesh Reddy)
Newsgroups: rec.puzzles
Subject: Re: Audible Puzzles or Nonsense Questions was  Re: Slaughter of the Innocents
Keywords: puzzle
Date: 27 Aug 92 14:17:33 GMT
Organization: Aiken Computation Lab, Harvard University

In article <1992Aug27.080821.12826@nntp.nta.no>, stein@hal.nta.no (Stein Kulseth FBA) writes:
|> This one works well in Norway:
|> 
|> "How do you pronounce the capital of USA, 'Nu York' or 'Nju york'?"
|> 
|> -- 
|> stein.kulseth@nta.no (Norwegian Telecom Research)
|>    'When murders are committed by mathematics, they can be solved by
|>    mathematics. Most of them aren't, and this one wasn't'
|>    - Nick Charles (Dashiell Hammett's "The Thin Man")

Surprisingly, the folowing just like that works here in the US:

How do you pronounce the capital of Louisiana? New Orlins, or New Orleeens?

-- Venk --
Newsgroups: rec.puzzles
From: IQTI400@INDYCMS.IUPUI.EDU (macphil)
Subject: Re: riddle I remember reading as a kid
Organization: IUPUI
Date: Sat, 29 Aug 1992 22:27:35 GMT

In article <64901@cup.portal.com>
Eric_J_Rainbolt@cup.portal.com writes:
 
btw, it's not a riddle, at least not in the standard sense.
From: karr@cs.cornell.edu (David Karr)
Subject: Re: Penny in a bottle <SPOILER>
Organization: Cornell Univ. CS Dept, Ithaca NY 14853
Date: Thu, 27 Aug 1992 20:37:08 GMT

In article <2406@tymix.Tymnet.COM> filfeit@rael.Tymnet.COM 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)?

A solution that doesn't damage any of the components in any way:




<SPOILER>



Push the cork further into the bottle until it falls all the way in
and rattles about inside.  You have not removed it from the bottle
but neither is it blocking the opening.  Now shake the bottle upside
down until the penny falls out (which it will whenever it reaches the
constriction of the neck ahead of the cork).

-- David Karr (karr@cs.cornell.edu)




Newsgroups: rec.puzzles
From: jkenton@world.std.com (Jeff Kenton)
Subject: Re: Idle Minds (circle chopping)
Organization: Kenton Systems Corporation, Weston MA
Date: Thu, 3 Sep 1992 18:12:54 GMT

In article <mrios.7291@meltdown.chi.il.us> mrios@meltdown.chi.il.us (Michael Rios) writes:
>Hi everyone.  I was just trying to get to sleep a few nights ago and came up
>with these.  I have the answers to most of them now, but the later ones elude
>me.
>
>1. We'll begin at the beginning.  One straight line can, at best, divide a     
>  circle into two parts.  Two straight lines can, at best, divide a circle   
>into four parts.  Three straight lines give, at best, seven parts.  How   
>about 4 straight lines?  5?  n?

	n * (n + 1) / 2 + 1
>
>2. One straight line, properly placed, can divide a circle into two equal   
>parts.  Now imagine a line with a right angled bend in it (or two             
>perpendicular rays at a common origin, if you wish 8-).  Can this angled      
>line be placed within the circle so as to divide it into two parts of equal
>   area?

	There's always the degenerate case with the common origin
	on the circle and one leg tangent to the circle.

	In addition, if you start with the angle (origin) at the
	center of the circle it divides the circle into 1/4 and 3/4.
	If you move it in the direction it points it will divide
	the circle into 2 equal parts before the origin crosses out
	of the circle.
>
>3. Three straight lines divide a circle into seven pieces at best.  Can the    
>  lines be placed such that all the pieces have equal areas?
>

	Too lazy to calculate this one out, but each line has 4
	parts of the circle on one side and 3 on the other.  If
	the parts are to be equal that's 4/7 on one side and 3/7
	on the other.  This plus symmetry arguments force the
	placement of all 3 lines (to within rotations).  I don't
	believe the 7 areas are equal.


-- 
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
=			Jeff Kenton	(617) 894-4508			=
=			    jkenton@world.std.com			=
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: widenius@klaava.Helsinki.FI (Risto Widenius)
Newsgroups: rec.puzzles
Subject: Re: Penny in a bottle
Date: 27 Aug 92 22:09:21 GMT
Organization: University of Helsinki

In <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)?

Sell it to the next-door-kid for a penny.

rw
From: asymes@nl.oracle.com (Andy Symes)
Newsgroups: rec.puzzles
Subject: Re: HINT: 2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,? SPOILER
Date: 28 Aug 92 12:09:39 GMT
Organization: Oracle Europe

It was quite amusing to see people come up with sophisticated mathematical rules
for the next item (and note: I deliberately did not say 'number').

Solution, after some blank lines:





























































2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,J !!!

Of course, the rest are Q,K,A !!!
This would apply if you are a Poker player. If your game is Whist, you might
have to _start_ with 'A', but that would rather give the game away,
wouldn't it?

--
Andy Symes.
Standard disclaimers, etc.

Newsgroups: rec.puzzles
From: mannj@acf9.nyu.edu (Jordan Mann)
Subject: Re: Scrabble score 1669
Organization: New York University
Date: Wed, 26 Aug 1992 17:11:05 GMT

grue@cs.uq.oz.au (Pauli) writes:

>Is this a new record for the highest scrabble score
>in a single turn (in a legal position)?

>The board is:

>    P s y C h o A N a l Y Z i n G 
>    r e . r . e x o n . w i t . r 
>    e . . o . . . o . . . n . . a 
>    j . . q u i d s . . . k . . t 
>    u . . u . . . p . . . i m p i 
>    d . . e . . . h . . . e . . f 
>    g o a t . . . e . . . r . . i 
>    i . . e . . .<r>. . . . . . c 
>    n . . d . . . e . . . . . . a 
>    g . . . . . . s w i f t l e t 
>    . . . . . . . . . . . . . . i 
>    . . . . . . . . . . . . . . o 
>    . . . . . . . . . . . . . . n 
>    . . . . . . . . . . . . . . s 
>    . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 


>And the capital letters in the top row are our suggested
>play.  The P, the N and the G are on triple word score
>squares and the C and the Z are on double letter score
>ones.


>The scoring (capital letters are double value):

>psyChoanalyZing 51*3*3*3
>prejudging      22*3
>noospheres      15*3
>gratifications  20*3
>Zinkier         30
>Croqueted       24
>ax              9
>yw              8

>7 letter bonus  50
>--------------------
>Total:          1669

I don't have a dictionary handy, but are yw, al, oe, ho, sy, se and impi
really words?  Those are all "words" that either you create with your move
or are on the board before your move.  After all, you say this move is in a
legal position.

>Pauli & Warwick Allison
>grue@cs.uq.oz.au & warwick@cs.uq.oz.au
--

Jordan Mann at NYU      (mannj@cims.nyu.edu)
Newsgroups: rec.puzzles
From: mgtaylor@eos.ncsu.edu (Mary Molly G Taylor)
Subject: Solitaire Games
Organization: NCSU Project Eos
Date: Mon, 31 Aug 1992 17:56:15 GMT

My way of amusing myself is lists --- what to get done, 50 states (and some-
times capitals) in alphabetical order, 28 NFL teams, 23 NBA teams, etc.

MaryMolly
mgtaylor@eos.ncsu.edu
From: rstimets@silver.ucs.indiana.edu (robert and stimets)
Newsgroups: rec.puzzles
Subject: Re: Smurf problem
Date: 2 Sep 92 19:34:56 GMT
Organization: Indiana University

In article <1992Sep1.150543.28977@hellgate.utah.edu> tolman%asylum.cs.utah.edu@cs.utah.edu (Kenneth Tolman) writes:
>Alright, so the mayor dude calls for all red hatted smurfs to stand up....
>Let's examine some possibilities....
>
>0) If no smurfs had red hats, the mayor would not have made the request
>
>1) If one smurf had a red hat, he would see no one else had red hats, so
>would have stood up on the first request.
>
>2) If two smurfs had red hats, on the first request they would have waited
>(for they would assume the other guy would stand up).  They might wait
>to see what the other guy did.... but since the commands came rather
>quickly they would have to wait for the next request.  After the next
>request, they would know that they too had a red hat, so would stand.
>
>Therefore, the number of request made equals the number of people standing.
>
>

Unfortunately, this would have to contradict the premise of the puzzle, that is:
The smurfs have no way of finding out which color hat they have on.

RStimets
Newsgroups: rec.puzzles
From: billg@bony1.bony.com (Bill Gripp)
Subject: Re: Audible Puzzles or Nonsense Questions was  Re: Slaughter of the Innocents
Keywords: puzzle Bible New Testament
Organization: LA&W RR
Date: Tue, 1 Sep 92 16:03:28 GMT

In article <12683@grayt> grayt@Software.Mitel.COM (Tom Gray) writes:
>In article <1992Aug21.190625.23459@visix.com> debbie@visix.com (Debra Fetter) writes:
>>In article <12636@grayt>, grayt@Software.Mitel.COM (Tom Gray) writes:
>>
>>|> and now the other golden oldie
>>|> .
>>|> How many animals of each kind did Moses take with him on the ark?
>>> -- 
>>
>>It was Noah and the ark, not Moses.
>
>This is an exam-ple of an audible puzzle in which the listener will
>supply part of his own bafflement. He will hear "ARK" and automatically
>substitute Noah. I have even heard one person who was very knowledgeable
>about the Bible begin to explain about 7 of the clean and 2 of the
>unclean before he realized his mistake.
>
>Can anyone give more examples of audible puzzles like this that
>rely on the listener trying to make sense of a nonsense question?


Except that someone who is really knowledgable will know that Moses DID
have an arc!  But he didn't have any animals in it.  It was the arc of
the covenant (as in Raiders of the Lost Arc) and it contained the the
tablets of stone (with the 10 commandments), some manna which the
Israelites ate while wandering in the desert for 40 years, and I think
Aaron's staff.

So there are really two different solutions to this puzzles, though
most people will no doubt go with the Noah version.


Newsgroups: rec.puzzles
From: turney@cs.cornell.edu (Jenn Turney)
Subject: Re: Scrabble Dictionary
Organization: Cornell Univ. CS Dept, Ithaca NY 14853
Date: Wed, 2 Sep 1992 21:07:58 GMT
Expires: Tue, 15 Sep 1992 04:00:00 GMT

An astute abserver quick to investigate the OSPD word list I offered
points out that it seems to be only approximately the OSPD, i.e. there
are some words missing.  I believe the list originated from a
Scrabble-playing program -- the friend who passed them on to me
referred to them as an OSPD listing and I'd assumed he meant it
literally.  Well, see if I ever trust him again... :)

I _can_ offer some justification for including the >15 letter words.
The Scrabble program I have for my Mac allows one to custom-design
boards: changing the size, symmetry, and placement of bonuses (even
allows quadruple letter/word spaces!).  While this particular program
doesn't allow sizes greater than 15, I wouldn't be surprised to find
others that did.

Jenn
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
| turney@cs.cornell.edu | Dept of Computer Science | Cornell University |
|-----------------------------------------------------------------------|
| She winced at his response of such a gratuitous "Wow": it said little |
| for his seizure of her meaning and even less for his lexicon.         |
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: clong@remus.rutgers.edu (Chris Long)
Newsgroups: rec.puzzles.crosswords
Subject: OSPD and Other On-line Word Lists
Date: 3 Sep 92 05:47:21 GMT
Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J.


I have the following available:

  OSPD (the complete and accurate version)
  United Kingdom OSPD
  Webster's 2nd International (Air Force version)
  9- and 10-letter words from the OED
  Two random English word lists, which contain some brand names
  Several lists of names and surnames of people
  Dutch, French, German, Norwegian, and Swedish word lists
  MW 1974 Pocket (main entry solid words only)
  MW 1989 Pocket (as above but not as restrictive)
  Several shorter lists (asteroid names, sports terms, etc.)

I probably have some other stuff around, also.
-- 
Chris Long, 265 Old York Rd., Bridgewater, NJ  08807-2618

"In a study of schoolboys, an educator discovered a correlation between size
 of feet and quality of handwriting.  The boys with the larger feet were,
 on the average, older."        Wallis & Roberts, _The Nature of Statistics_
Newsgroups: rec.puzzles.crosswords
From: asimov@wk223.nas.nasa.gov (Daniel A. Asimov)
Subject: Cryptic Picture Book by AZED???
Organization: NAS, NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CA
Date: Tue, 25 Aug 92 19:15:42 GMT

A friend has mentioned the existence of a book by the famous constructor
AZED consisting largely of cryptic clues accompanied by drawings of
their surface meanings.

Can anyone tell me the title of this book, and if possible the
publisher and copyright date?

Even better, can anyone tell me where I can purchase a copy?

Many thanks in advance.

--Daz
Newsgroups: rec.puzzles.crosswords
From: gross@math.utah.edu (Fletcher Gross)
Subject: Re: CWC Poll
Date: Thu, 27 Aug 1992 14:30:37 GMT
Organization: Math Dept, University of Utah
Followup-To: rec.puzzles.crosswords

In article <1992Aug27.094951.21447@quantime.co.uk>, roger@quantime.co.uk
(Roger Phillips) wrote:

> 
> I feel that part of the role of the CWC (and ACC)
> is to encourage newcomers.
> Putting constraints on the surface meaning of the clue
> will probably discourage them.
......
> 
> I'd prefer "vanilla" competitions, in the main.
> 
> Perhaps every few weeks a gimmick could be used;
> but the judge should be aware that
> some gimmicks make clue writing easier,
> while others make it more difficult.

I second Roger's statements. I like the idea of a weekly contest and I do
not want it to be a major time consumer.

Fletcher Gross                  |   (801) 581-6567
Department of Mathematics       |   gross@math.utah.edu
University of Utah              |
Salt Lake City, Utah   84112    |
From: jholden@netcom.com (Jeremy Holden)
Newsgroups: rec.puzzles.crosswords
Subject: Crossword Bookstore
Date: 26 Aug 92 19:29:41 GMT
Distribution: usa
Organization: Windward Group

Someone asked where to possibly find a crossword book (by AZED)...
I don't know if these guys have it but I got a couple of obscure
books from:
  The Crossword Bookstore
  PO Box 909
  Bellmore, NY 11710
  1 (800) 456-5455
They do a lot of mail order books,
  Jeremy
Newsgroups: rec.puzzles.crosswords
From: hutch@bellman.lanl.gov (John Hutchinson)
Subject: Re: OSPD and Other On-line Word Lists
Reply-To: hutch@bellman.lanl.gov
Organization: Los Alamos National Laboratory
Date: Thu, 3 Sep 1992 14:24:40 GMT

In article 9932@remus.rutgers.edu, clong@remus.rutgers.edu (Chris Long) writes:
>I have the following available:
>
>  OSPD (the complete and accurate version)
>  United Kingdom OSPD
>  Webster's 2nd International (Air Force version)
>  9- and 10-letter words from the OED
>  Two random English word lists, which contain some brand names
>  Several lists of names and surnames of people
>  Dutch, French, German, Norwegian, and Swedish word lists
>  MW 1974 Pocket (main entry solid words only)
>  MW 1989 Pocket (as above but not as restrictive)
>  Several shorter lists (asteroid names, sports terms, etc.)


These word lists are great, Chris.  But do you have them on disk or in some
other electronic media format?  That was the original question in this thread.
If you _do_ have them on disk, I'll be right over!  :)


___________________________ John "HUTCH" Hutchinson _________________________
_________________ Fair Dinkum Technologies     Member - IAAD  _______________
________________ "No worries, mate... it's from Fair Dinkum!" _______________
____________ email: hutch@bellman.lanl.gov   GEnie: FAIR-DINKUM _____________


Newsgroups: rec.puzzles.crosswords
From: levin@world.std.com (Levin F Magruder)
Subject: Re: PuzzlePack word game software
Organization: The World Public Access UNIX, Brookline, MA
Date: Wed, 2 Sep 1992 03:34:21 GMT

In article <1992Sep2.094925.10514@waikato.ac.nz> bill@waikato.ac.nz writes:
>> Oh, I forgot to mention, it's fast.  Even on a search like 
>> ????est the time it takes to run is something like 5 seconds.
>> 
>> 
>
>Does anybody know how the program stores its dictionary to enable such
>fast lookup? I'm also interested if anyone knows of any other dictionary
>storage method that is useful for crossword-style searching.
>
>Bill Teahan
>Systems Programmer

I'm know next to nothing about comp sci, but I suspect they use
some elaboration of a data structure called a "trie" (not acceptable
in scrabble, btw, though oddly enough the plural is).  There was
an article about tries in a c users journal within the last 3 or
4 issues, but I didn't read it.  Using tries still wouldn't
explain how find the matches to ????est without searching every
possiblity... you might index both the beginning and ends of words
and use some heuristic to figure out which is the best end to look
from.  I didn't try any searches like ????a????.  This program also
does not allow (I don't think) searches like [any number of any char]est,
so his program does not have to search a complete wordlist for ????est,
only the seven letter words.

Anyway... it's straying pretty far from crosswords.

Newsgroups: rec.puzzles.crosswords