Okay im starting up the riddle game, basically its like acronym word game in how its carried out, you answer the previous riddle and post a new one with it. Anyways im going to post a riddle that is claimed only the top 2% in the worlds population can figure out, im sure some of you have seen it before but its just to get the ball rolling. Please note that this riddle can take a while.

* There are 5 houses that are each a different colour.

* There is a person of a different nationality in each house.

* The 5 owners drink a certain drink. They each smoke a certain brand of cigarettes and also have a certain pet. No owner has the same pet, smokes the same brand of cigarettes nor drinks the same drink.

The question is. “Who has the fish?”

CLUES

1. The British man lives in the red house.

2. The Swedish man has a dog for a pet.

3. The Danish man drinks tea.

4. The green house is to the left of the white house.

5. The owner of the green house drinks coffee.

6. The person that smokes Pall Mall has a bird.

7. The owner of the yellow house smokes Dunhill.

8. The person that lives in the middle house drinks milk.

9. The Norwegian lives in the first house.

10. The person that smokes Blend, lives next to the one that has a cat.

11. The person that has a horse lives next to the one that smokes Dunhill.

12. The one that smokes Bluemaster drinks beer.

13. The German smokes Prince.

14. The Norwegian lives next to a blue house.

15. The person that smokes Blend, has a neighbour that drinks water.

One week and no one's solved it yet? Must not be trivial.

Here's the answer:



The German has the fish.

Rick you're a genius. I tried for a short while but had to stop. Oh, I'm SURE I could have done the riddle quite handily, but I was at a handicap after an especially intense French manicure. I'm sure you can understand.

You do realize (British translation: "realise") that you now need to post a riddle to challenge maxi. Hopefully, he's not getting "pissed" this weekend and can manage it. (I also hope he has a good sense of humour.)

ditto OnlyNow

So you had a French manicure as well??

lol yes I do have a good sense of humour.

Well done Rick, what did you start with? I started by figuring out where the houses were, then of course eliminated the possibilities until I finally got all the pets except for one blank space Anyways you need to post a new riddle to challenge us now heh.

LD--That was me, and you know I'm just kidding. I know you prefer acrylics airbrushed with Fauvism-inspired nail art.

Oh, and maximus587 (is that the right number?), you misspelled humour. (lol)

Somebody stop me.

try and figure this out:

a amber nit

That's it? No further info for this one?

Where's Rick?

Maybe he's waiting for a jimmy riddle?

OK, here's the riddle:

It's well known that it takes four colors to color a map in 2D so that no two countries touch (share an edge) with the same color. How many colors does it take to color a solid model assembly of parts so that no two parts touch (share an area) with the same color?

I've just done some quick sums on a fag packet and reckon the following :-

Calculate 24 x (the number of corners - the number of edges + the number of faces).

subtract the answer from 49.

calculate the square root of the result = R.

The number of colours is then (7 + R)/2 !!

"A amber nit" is an anagram for "BrainMeta."

That answer is incorrect.

Without the constraints (the 15 clues) there are 5!^5 (five factorial to the fifth power, about 25 billion) possible arrangements of the objects in the riddle. Because there is no deterministic path to solving the riddle, some guesswork is required. I tried a few things and then lucked out.

I started with the simplest constraints first. The Norwegian lives in the first house, the blue house is next door, and the milk is in the third house are the only definite placements. After that, I tried possible placements of neighbors and got lucky eventually.

Thats correct Rick.

Damn! Do you know that my FIRST instinct was that this was an anagram? Then I dropped that idea, thinking an anagram would be too obvious and easy. (And descrambling words is one of my few talents. I challenge anyone here to a game of Scrabble...even Rick.) Sometimes we gotta go with our own initial ideas.

Scrabble? Sure, but isn't anybody going to solve my riddle?

Im actually confused about what im supposed to do, what is a solid model assembly? after that Il give a whack at solving the riddle

Agreed, explain yourself a little better, genious. Not that I'll have a chance to solve it before one anyone here, but...

The riddle is basically about "lofting" the 4-color map theorem to 3D. You can google the map theorem to find out more about the 2D version.

See, for example

http://mathworld.wolfram.com/Four-ColorTheorem.html

Now extend the theorem to 3D. For example, the solid modeler AutoCAD provides 256 colors to the user for coloring parts. As these parts are assembled, how many colors are required (minimally) to color parts such that no two parts would appear to be the same part due to sharing the same color?

In the 2D map theorem, two countries can contact at a corner and be the same color because the contact area is zero (point contact). Same with the 3D version (the area of contact can be zero with the parts sharing the same color).

Here's an image of a 3D solid model created in SolidWorks:



Notice the yellow end caps on this end of the yellow tanks in the image. We know that the end caps are part of the tanks (not separate parts) because they are the same color as the tanks.

Now have I totally muddled the issue?

Yeah I understand what your saying, well im trying to think over the hardest possible 3d map to color but so far im at 8 colors, good god ive been looking over it and sadly I may need to do some math lol because the surface area for each part to touch can be tiny so as long as you can continue to get every surface to touch each other, you need another color.

No hints until next Tuesday.

I can see now why my maths failed!
I was considering solid objects like tetrahedrons rather than an assembly of parts. I'll have another go now.

It's been a week now. Want the answer?

Yep, I would like to get the answer.
But not only the answer but also the explanation how I should have managed to solve the riddle.

hmm, well I figure that

Reduction of Surface Area = Increased number of potential parts and Decreased potential part space

Increase of Surface Area = Decreased number of potential parts and Increased potential part space.

So you really have a balance between them, how I will manage to formulate it.. im not sure. Rhymer said something about having another go at it, so im not sure if he wants the answer yet.

When looking at this in 3d form we have to think of x plane, y plane and z plane. From there we formulate that the surface area of parts is dynamic, the area of space in which the parts are contained is static. So if we get the number of parts (N) and find the total surface area (S) then we can start to get somewhere. So what about this Rick

y(g) = [1/2 (7 + 'Squareroot of' 48g + 1)]

where y is the floor function

mm hold on ima have to check a bit more, this is for the 4 colors however it seems like chromatic numbers can calculate 3d objects as well.. i have to go for now, more to come tommorow.

Actually my grades in maths were rather poor and my knowledge of English is also limited, please apologize for optioning to solve the riddle, I am absolutly incompatible to do it on my own .

The first step to getting better is believing you can. Hell Einstine failed grade 12 math and he has formulated world changing equations, you just need to be confident in yourself.. few things that are easy are worth going for. Alas my brain is on overload, im giving the riddle a break for tonight, ive been doing ten things at once and thus il take a further look at it tommorow.

Thanks for your kind respond! To all our friends in "Vocabulary, Language, & Word Games" thanks for all their patience and encouragement,their birthday wishings, a very hearty" Thank You".
Somehow they always manage to put a smile and a laughter on my face . If I feel tired I will leave encouraged....

ann

Time's up, so here's the answer (and how to go about solving it):

The first question to ask is, is there a bound on the number of colors required, then if so, what is that bound? I did a thought experiment in which I tried to construct assemblies where as many parts touch each other as possible, to see if there is a bound on the number of colors. One hint was that AutoCAD provides 256 colors to the user. Even though 8 colors are usually enough for most design models that actually get built, 256 colors are not enough for extreme cases.

Consider a model of the human brain. There are about 100 billion neurons in the brain, with many of them touching a thousand other neurons. It should be seen that if a thousand neurons all touch each other, then a thousand colors will be required. Because the "branching factor" of theoretical neurons is unbounded, then the number of colors required to construct a model of them (such that no two touching neurons are the same color) is also unbounded.

Here is a graphic of a simple model to show the point:



There are 12 objects arranged in a circle and each object is either touching or being touched by another object. Therefore there are 12 colors requried in this example. As the number of objects grows without bound, the number of colors required also grows without bound. Therefore, the answer to the 3D n-color map problem is "the number of colors required is unbounded."

Proof: the proof is by construction. That is, for any number of colors, n, that is proposed to be a bound on the number of colors required, I can construct an example requiring n + 1 colors, by the method illustrated above.

I was supposing something like that ...
thanks for the explanation, even guys with rather poor maths knowledge can get it.

ann

Ah alas, I was getting quite close, anyways tis all good, I had taken a look at the formulation for various objects but had not reached the final point, oh well, it was taking a while, but I had sooo many projects underway lol.

I need to come up with a new riddle, and I will, soon.

Can you explain how your 12 objects are touching each other?

Please note that I am misquoted by guest.

Imagine that my 12-object model is constructed from variously colored lumps of play-dough or modeling clay. Take a ball of clay and pinch out tendrils. Then lay the tendriled lumps on a board such that each is touching or touched by every other lump. In my drawing, the tendrils pass above and below each other, to reach out and touch some other.

I hope this is clear enough.

Rick, checking this site quite frequently, waiting for the new riddle, maybe then I am too busy to solve it

All good things are worth waiting for.

Okay here is my Riddle, how is it that I can Guarentee to a tie, that I will win match and loose a match between two players in chess?

To expand on this here is the situation.

Player 1 vs Maximus
Player 2 vs Maximus

How can I guarentee I will tie as in I will win one match and loose one match? (skill level is unimportant, a 8 year old beat a chess grand master with this)

You tell the first player you will kill him if he beats you, and then you throw the second match.

haha no I mean using regular chess rules in a regular chess scenario, I would be playing these people at the same time if it helps.

In that case, either player 1 or player 2 (or both) is identical with player Maximus.

Can you elaborate on what is identical?

You would be playing yourself, and could therefore determine the outcome of the game.

No, player one and player two are diffrent people, I am playing both games at the same time eg.

Player one makes a move it is now max's turn. Maximus makes his move, player one considers his move. Player two does his move it is now max's turn, max makes his move, player two considers his move. player one is finished his move, it is now max's turn again.

And you can guarantee that you will win one game against an arbitrarily strong player?

New riddle:

I am rooted yet movable. My master protects me from predators and competitors yet I am imprisoned and the only way out of jail is death. At night I sleep under the stars and rain and sun are happiness to me. What am I?

I can guarentee I will either win one game and loose one game or have a stalemate, either way it is a tie. The skill level is unimportant

And you are playing by the official tournament rules of chess? They forbid collaboration by the players.

Player one and Player two do not even see each others boards or talk to each other. The answer is incredibly simple by the way.