M i n d s p O r T Plus Sized Puzzle
E4 Regarding the puzzle about the periodic table where I had asked what the only letter of the alphabet not used while naming their atomic symbols was, I should have clarified that the entire range of elements up to # 118 should be considered. Also, not to consider some names given locally by some countries. Sorry about that. Sue me.
But while we’re on the table, here’s a neat problem. Consider the following two groups of 30 elements each: ( I) hydrogen + zirconium + tin + oxygen + rhenium + platinum + tellurium + terbium + nobelium + chromium + iron + cobalt + carbon + aluminium + ruthenium + silicon + ytterbium + hafnium + sodium + selenium + cerium + manganese + osmium + uranium + nickel + praseodymium + erbium + vanadium + thallium + plutonium AND ( II) nitrogen + zinc + rhodium + helium + argon + neptunium + beryllium + bromine + lutetium + boron + calcium + thorium + niobium + lanthanum + mercury + fluorine + bismuth + actinium + silver + cesium + neodymium + magnesium + xenon + samarium + scandium + europium + berkelium + palladium + antimony + thulium.
What do you think they have in common? Can you believe they’re anagrams of each other! Of course in two cases American spellings have been used, but still, isn’t that something amazing? But here’s the super kicker. They are also related in another way. ( Hint: and it’s not in alphabets.) Go figure.
DEAR MS ( The problem was about two thieves who broke into a church to cut the bell ropes and, for various dumb reasons, fell, while you had to calculate the total length of the ropes. — MS)
On- THE- ROPES DEPT: Whenever we have one side ( a) of a right- angled triangle, and know the difference between the second side and the hypotenuse ( b), then the length of the hypotenuse is a2/ 2b + b/ 2. In the case of our puzzle, this works out to be 482/ 6 + 1 ½ inches, or 32 feet 1 ½ inches.
— Altaf Ahmed, ctrlaltaf@ yahoo. in
( The other problem was about discovering the logic behind a particular sequence of 26 words like so: SCHWA, SPLAT, THREE, GRIST, CHORE, FLOUR, SCEAU, FILCH, RINSE, GAMES, CANOE, REACH, MOIRÉ, BEAUX, QUEUE, ANGST, INTRO, ASTER, ACHOO, EXIST, AWAKE, ABOUT, ADIEU, EIGHT, OUTDO, OILED and a test of memory! — MS)
WORD- BITS DEPT: The logic behind this particular word sequence is if you replace the consonants by ZERO and the vowels by ONE, you will see the numbers one to twenty- six in ascending order, BUT in binary representation. — Surya Narayanan Krishna Moorthy,
surya661666@ yahoo. com
I liked your wordlist- from- hell puzzle, which had me in knots for a while till I cracked it. After about an hour I discovered that it was actually neat little numbers consisting of just ones and zeroes. Get it?
Observe the position of the consonants and vowels in each word of the series. If we replace each consonant with a 1 and each vowel with a 0, we get the series of numbers 1, 2, 3, . . . 25, 26 as written in binary form.
— Saifuddin S F Khomosi,