beta-testing a new puzzle

many are the puzzles that i attempt to solve, far fewer are the ones that i actually do solve—but a still smaller category are the puzzles that i write myself. i developed the following puzzle last night while suffering from insomnia and staring at a digital clock.

the setup: each numeral on a clock is composed of digital sections (eg. 8 has seven sections; 9 has six). using the 12-hour clock…

easy: determine the difference (in minutes) between the time with the fewest total sections and the time with most total sections.

hard: determine the time with the single greatest net change in sections from the minute before it (e.g. the net change between 3:34 and 3:33 is 1 section).

comments are now enabled (for 1 day only) in anticipation of the avalanche of answers, feedback, and derivatives that you might have.

UPDATE: the correct answers to both the easy and hard questions appear in the comments, so if you want to submit your solution without reading anyone else’s you can always email me via email.

opposite day

mike from the internet has sent me the above sentence (to which i added a calming grey-pink gradient and then typeset it in rustika). it is part grammar lesson, part logic riddle, and part buddhist kōan. mike writes:

I think the sentence should be read front to end as normal, and the resulting instruction would be nonsensical, like if somebody said to “Stop at green traffic lights, go at red traffic lights.”

since i am a reader (and unabashed abuser) of parentheses (and nested parentheses (like this one)) i default to reading parentheses. therefore, i would read this sentence as “do not read words inside of parentheses” and then, (providing i always did what imperative verbs told me) i would disregard all future parentheses. supposing i was then to read the sentence over again, i would trip the gate in the opposite direction (do read words inside of parentheses) and get stuck in an infinite loop. if it weren’t for that soothing grey-pink gradient, i would soon luze my marbles (marbles is a metaphor for sanity).

finally, mike mentions that i may refer to him as mike but that i don’t need to. therefore, i will refer to him as kilroy. so readers, how do you interpret kilroy’s sentence?

in honour of coining -or- the mile high club for logicians

i mentioned yesterday that i spent a good deal of my return flight questioning sachiv about his father’s reverse-œdipus issues. but what of my other flight? well, i WAS going to watch the benjamin button movie starring danny devito BUT on the day that i left, my father sent me this puzzle which i decided to work on instead.

you are given 12 coins. 1 of the coins is irregular and weighs either slightly more or slightly less than the other 11. you are also given an old-fashioned scale of the type that has come to symbolise the legal profession. your challenge is to determine which of the coins is irregular and if it weighs more or less than the others IN ONLY 3 ROUNDS OF WEIGHING ON THE SCALE.

it seemed easy enough but it took almost the entire 4 hour flight to arrive at an answer that still needed further retooling once i made it to a beach. if you can’t take the suspense, my solution is here [warning the solution is ALOT more complicated than i originally thought].