For being well-behaved at the garden fayre, four children were each given two sweets.
Jesse had an orange sweet. One child who had a red sweet also had a blue one. No child had two sweets of the same colour. A child who had a green sweet also had a red one. Jamie didn't have a red sweet, and Jo had a green one. Jordan didn't have an orange one, and Jesse had no blue sweets.
Knowing that there were two sweets of each colour, can you tell the colours of the sweets each child had?
Answer
Jamie Orange Blue
Jesse Orange Green
Jo Green Red
Jordan Red Blue
Reasoning
The children were: Jamie, Jesse, Jo, Jordan.
The colours were: Blue, Green, Orange, Red.
There were two sweets of each colour, and by (3) no child had two sweets of the same colour.
By (1), Jesse had an Orange sweet …
… by (6), didn't have Blue …
… by (2) and (4), Red was paired with Blue and Green …
… therefore, Jesse's other sweet can't have been Red, so was Green.
Jamie
Jesse Orange Green
Jo
Jordan
By (4) the other Green sweet was paired with Red, by (5) this must have been Jo.
Jamie
Jesse Orange Green
Jo Green Red
Jordan
By (2) the other Red sweet was paired with Blue, but by (5) this wasn't Jamie, so must have been Jordan.
Jamie
Jesse Orange Green
Jo Green Red
Jordan Red Blue
Leaving Jamie with Orange and Blue.
Jamie Orange Blue
Jesse Orange Green
Jo Green Red
Jordan Red Blue
?
Puzzle 14
What well known saying is expressed here:
Refrain from enumerating your owned domestic fowl while their hard, porous calcium containers are undamaged.
At the recent BrainBashers downhill mountain bike race, four entrants entered the challenging slalom event.
Alex finished in first position. The entrant wearing number #2 wore red, but Drew didn't wear yellow. The person in last place wore blue, and Stevie wore number #1. Glen beat Stevie, and the person who finished in second wore number #3. The entrant in yellow beat the entrant in green. Only one of the entrants wore the same number as their final position.
Can you determine who finished where, the number, and colour they each wore?
Hint
Start by looking at where Alex finished, and where the person who wore #3 finished, and then use clue (6).
Answer Pos Name Wore Colour
1 Alex #2 red
2 Glen #3 yellow
3 Stevie #1 green
4 Drew #4 blue
Reasoning
The four colours were: blue, green, red, yellow.
The four contestants were: Alex, Drew, Glen, Stevie.
By (1), Alex was first.
1 Alex
2
3
4
By (4), the person who was second wore number #3.
1 Alex
2 #3
3
4
Looking at (6):
- first place (Alex) can't have worn #1, because, by (3), Stevie wore #1
- second place wore #3
- third place can't have worn #3, because it was worn by second place
- fourth place is the only entrant who could have worn the same number as their final position
Therefore, Stevie finished in third, and Alex wore #2.
1 Alex #2
2 #3
3 Stevie #1
4 #4
By (2), Alex wore red. By (3), the person wearing blue was last.
1 Alex #2 red
2 #3
3 Stevie #1
4 #4 blue
By (5), yellow beat green.
1 Alex #2 red
2 #3 yellow
3 Stevie #1 green
4 #4 blue
By (4), Glen beat Stevie.
1 Alex #2 red
2 Glen #3 yellow
3 Stevie #1 green
4 #4 blue
Leaving Drew in last place.
1 Alex #2 red
2 Glen #3 yellow
3 Stevie #1 green
4 Drew #4 blue
???
Puzzle 16
Your objective is to place some diagonal mirrors into the grid.
If a ray of light is shone in to the grid from each of the letters, and allowed to bounce off the internal diagonal mirrors, each will exit the grid at the twin of the letter that it entered the grid. For example, a ray entering at either letter D will bounce off some mirrors and exit the grid at the other letter D.
Each row and each column will contain exactly two of the diagonal mirrors.