Questions tagged [puzzle]

Tag for questions meant as a puzzle for the Mathematica.stackexchange.com public or about solving puzzles using Mathematica.

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10 votes
3 answers
1k views

Solving a rotating combination lock puzzle

The following puzzle appears in The House of da Vinci II and I thought it might be interesting to tackle in Mathematica: There are numbers marked on four rotating cylinders. These numbers must add up ...
0 votes
0 answers
77 views

Mathematical Equations Puzzle: Perfect Sixes

pI have given the following problem to my students Write some code that solves the perfect sixes problem for all numbers it works for! The perfect sixes problem asks you to solve some equations: \...
8 votes
2 answers
1k views

CRAZY EIGHTS puzzle

The Sunday New York Times magazine has a puzzle, CRAZY EIGHTS such as this: The goal is to fill in the $4 \times 4$ unfilled squares with letters to make valid 8-letter words reading both ...
10 votes
1 answer
492 views

JUST SAYING puzzle

The Sunday New York Times magazine has a new puzzle (June 26, 2022), JUST SAYING by Will Shortz, with the following rules: Change one letter in each word to spell a new word. Then arrange the new ...
1 vote
0 answers
36 views

answers Solving puzzles with Mathematica [closed]

Hi, I want to calculate the values of these numbers a, b and c. The only information I have: a = √((b-c)²) b = a * c c = (a+b)/2 Anyone knows where to begin?
11 votes
3 answers
1k views

"Sit for a spell" graph search

The December 12, 2021 New York Times Magazine puzzle section introduced a new type of word search puzzle, called Sit for a spell. It consists of an undirected graph of 13 vertices labelled by English ...
7 votes
3 answers
4k views

Crack it if you can? But in the best way

From the Wolfram Community posted by Helen: A little while ago I was asked to solve this "safe cracker" puzzle, a sweet example of a coffee table puzzle. The basic gist of this puzzle is ...
36 votes
8 answers
3k views

Insert $+$, $-$, $\times$, $/$, $($, $)$ into $123456789$ to make it equal to $100$

Insert $+$, $-$, $\times$, $/$, $($, $)$ into $123456789$ to make it equal to $100$. Looks like a question for pupils, right? In fact, if the available math symbols are limited to addition ($+$), ...
4 votes
1 answer
284 views

FindPath with required Edges

Suppose I have a graph g with some edges reqEdges (in the example code here, just one edge). I would like to use ...
3 votes
1 answer
165 views

Solving calculation puzzle [closed]

I recently got asked how to achieve a result of 100 only using the numbers {1,7,7,7,7} (the number 1 can be used only once and ...
1 vote
2 answers
105 views

Translating MATLAB code into WL code [closed]

I want to solve the following problem by simulation. There is a bus with 100 labelled seats (labelled from 1 to 100). There are 100 persons standing in a queue. Persons are also labelled from 1 to ...
0 votes
5 answers
340 views

If someone would want to think about the question: mathematical-optimization "Banknote"

I solved the puzzle of IBM Ponder This September 2019 by my code written with mathematica. I would like to share this code after the solution that will come as soon, and discuss it. In the meantime, ...
2 votes
1 answer
124 views

Strategies for making a cellular automaton puzzle

I am making a cellular automaton secret message puzzle for my kids, and am looking for help on strategies to make it. I am relatively new to Mathematica, thank you for your help! The puzzle is a grid ...
4 votes
1 answer
149 views

KenKen Puzzle Helper - Dropping order-less sequences

In the following example, I am generating all the variants of a $9 \times 9$ KenKen puzzle that come in groups of three using addition that result in $18$. ...
3 votes
3 answers
225 views

Find rules for the similar "Conway's Game of Life", and initial input on an 11x11 torus board. Descripted on the "Puzzel Chalenge IBM May"2020"

I solved on May 2020 this using mma . I am aware of this command - Cellular automata. But I can't use it on this challenge, because there's no concept of "Torus" in the CellularAutomaton . ...
1 vote
0 answers
64 views

Place the numbers 1-7 in the squares so that each row and columns adds up to the same total [closed]

A F B D E C G A+B+C = B+D+E = F+E+G Numbers 1,2,3,4,5,6,7
36 votes
3 answers
7k views

How many triangles are there?

Some time ago I found a puzzle and it stopped my work until I solved it. One of the possible solutions: Let us sum upright and upside down triangles whose top lies in the $i$-th row. $$ N=\sum_{i=1}^...
4 votes
3 answers
200 views

A sudoku-like collection puzzle

I have a puzzle. I'm given a collection of $n$ lists, all of equal (but arbitrary) length $l$. These lists are made up of 0s and a few filled in numbers, like so: { {0, 2}, {0,0}, {6, 0}, {0,0} } ...
7 votes
2 answers
303 views

Solving puzzle with sum

My dad really likes to play this kind of puzzle. And I've tried to help you get the values to my level of knowledge. The puzzle looks like this: The rule is to use numbers from 1 to 9, but it is not ...
0 votes
0 answers
109 views

Word search puzzles

I saw the entry Solving word search puzzles and I wonder if it is possible to: Search for words that exist not only in diagonals but that turn like a snake (left, right, up, down)? Search for all the ...
9 votes
3 answers
1k views

Solving a cryptarithm

This problem appears on the mathematics stackexchange, which I summarize here as: 12 letters (a, b, c, d, e, f, g, h, k, l, m, n), are used to represent single digits, i.e., {0-9}. Given the ...
4 votes
1 answer
433 views

Linear Integer Programming for solving Sudoku

I have generated sudoku solver using a recursive scheme, however, i wish to find a more mathematica like solution to solving sudoku. I tried using FindInstance but ...
25 votes
1 answer
2k views

How to divide the wine into two equal portions?

There is a 8-liter bottle is full of wine. There are two empty bottles that have capacity 5-liters and 3-liters. How can these three bottles be used to separate the wine into two 4-liter portions? ...
2 votes
1 answer
127 views

Jug pouring puzzle in Mathematica

Using two unmarked 5 and 3 gallon jugs, obtain exactly 1 gallons in one of these jugs by filling, pouring, and emptying operations. Assume there is an endless supply of water. My approach: I use the ...
0 votes
2 answers
238 views

Puzzle 2: Sum-Till Forty (Something Funny)

I am learning Mathematica because I love it. I also love solving puzzles so I think it would be a nice way to learn Mathematica through puzzles. This is the second puzzle in a series I intend to solve....
16 votes
5 answers
2k views

Puzzle — 20 People to consume 20 units of food under constraints

I am learning Mathematica because I love it. I also love solving puzzles so I think it would be a nice way to learn Mathematica through puzzles. This is first puzzle in series I intend to solve. So ...
18 votes
6 answers
6k views

Puzzle with Mathematica

Hello everyone, This is a puzzle I got from someone via social media. Basically, we need to fill up the boxes with the numbers 1-9 (no repetitions) that fit the multiplication and addition operations. ...
17 votes
4 answers
1k views

Solving chess bishop problem

I have generalized the problem in this way where I have a list list=Tuples[Range[8],2] I want to find the largest sublist in which the addition of the two ...
13 votes
3 answers
722 views

How do we solve N-Rooks variation using primes?

Using a $p_n $x $p_n$ matrix, how can we solve the N-Rooks problem to find a prime in every row and column? ...
15 votes
2 answers
1k views

How to fill a grid make its total be largest

I have a blank grid whose dimension is 5*5. I want to fill it with some number using 1, 2, 3 and 4. But in every blank space if you fill 2, its neighbor (include four direction, such as left, right, ...
15 votes
3 answers
919 views

Solving the magic backyard puzzle with MMA

I was trying to solve this puzzle using mma It looks like the generalization of the magic square. Anyway here my attempt:- There are four columns $(x,y,z,w)$ and nine rowa which are denoted by the ...
24 votes
4 answers
13k views

Elegant solution to the Zebra [logic] Puzzle ("Einstein's Riddle")

The famous Zebra Puzzle (Wikipedia), often called "Einstein's Riddle," is a logic puzzle that can be solved deductively by applying a list of logical rules. One version of the riddle (from Wikipedia) ...
2 votes
0 answers
105 views

Where do the radicals end?

In an early iteration of this question on the Mathematics SE, the radicals weren't properly formatted, so they only had the √ symbol with no indication of which terms were supposed to be ...
3 votes
2 answers
342 views

Solve the "Cheryl's birthday" puzzle using mathematica

The "Cheryl's birthday" puzzle has been circulating around, the backstory is available via wikipedia. The puzzle itself is reproduced here: Albert and Bernard just became friends with Cheryl, and ...
1 vote
0 answers
146 views

Twilight Zelda Guardian Puzzle : Shortest Path Proof [closed]

I'm playing a video game right now and in it is a puzzle (see here). There are solutions to solving it (see here) on the Internet, but I'd like to know if this path is the shortest path (least amount ...
3 votes
4 answers
674 views

Solving puzzles with Mathematica

I would like to be able to solve logic puzzles such as the one described here using Mathematica. I have copied & pasted the listed example below to save on jumping about with hyperlinks: The ...
39 votes
3 answers
3k views

Tiling a square

I wondered if there was a way to automate the process of finding a way to tile a tile into a square. The idea is to represent the tile with a matrix of $0$s for blank space and $1$s for filled spaces ...
20 votes
4 answers
3k views

How many Christmas gifts?

This question is based on the old song, The Twelve Days of Christmas In a comment made on a recent question, Yves Klett remarked, "no seasonal questions this year?" This reminded me of one I ...
58 votes
2 answers
20k views

How can I calculate a jigsaw puzzle cut path?

I want to generate a path to cut an arbitrary shape into a set of jigsaw puzzle pieces. All pieces must be unique to preclude placing a piece in the wrong spot. Pieces must be interlocking such that ...
20 votes
4 answers
3k views

Finding all dictionary words that can be made with a given set of characters (Wordfeud/Scrabble)

This is a slightly more involved variant of this recent question. By sheer coincidence I happened to have been building a Wordfeud (Scrabble clone) game in Mathematica. My interactive Wordfeud board ...