Geekery

The Empty Triangle

Posted on 16. Nov, 2009 by Jake.

This week’s brain teaser is just for the ubergeeks. I’m taking it up a notch to see if you can reveal your true geekery or if you’re just a plain novice in a Think Geek t-shirt. FYI -This puzzle happened to be found in a Mensa publication.

Question:

Which figure should be placed in the empty triangle?

Catch the solution to this brain teaser right here next Mon, 23 Nov 2009.

Answers to last week’s riddle:

Question 1:
What do the following numbers have in common?
3    7    10    11    12
Answer:
The only vowel they contain when written out fully is the letter E.

Question 2:
What is the next number in this series?
5   25   61   113   181   ..
Answer:
265. The series consists of the sums of the squares of 1 and 2, 3 and 4, 5 and 6, etc

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Riddles: Word Up

Posted on 27. Oct, 2009 by Jake.

Today’s riddles are all simple, short and to the point…. the point being, they’re word problems!

Problem 1:

Take the letters ERGRO. Put three letters in front of it, and the same three letters behind to form a common English word.

Problem 2:

Which of the following words is the odd-one-out?

IBIS IBEX ORYX SIKA ZEBU

Answers to Palindrome’s and Maths:

A car”s odometer shows 72927 miles a palindromic number. What are the minimum miles you would need to travel to form another?”
Answer
110 miles. (73037)

Question
There is a clothing store in Bartlesville. The owner has devised his own method of pricing items. A vest costs $20 socks cost $25 a tie costs $15 and a blouse costs $30. Using the method how much would a pair of underwear cost?
Answer
$45. The pricing method consists of charging $5 for each letter required to spell the item.

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Geek God – Alexey Pajitnov

Posted on 29. Sep, 2009 by Jake.

While discussions on gaming can get heated, all gaming fanatics can agree on one thing – there is a test of every gamer’s basic skills which has nothing to do with how much RAM your machine has or how high res your screen is. Any gamer worth his salt should be able to pwn when it comes to the most legendarily simple-yet-complicated game of all time – Tetris – the ultimate puzzle game. So Alexey Pajitnov, the inventor of Tetris, deserves a special place in the pantheon of geek gods.

Initially, his story had tragic overtones, making it all the more interesting. Pajitnov invented Tetris in 1985 in Russia, while working at a government organisation called the Computing Centre of the Soviet Academy of Sciences. Because Russia was still under Communism, Pajitnov didn’t earn a cent for his invention, as everything he made was owned by the state. He distributed Tetris all around the USSR and other Eastern bloc countries for free.

So, Pajitnov ended up an alcoholic living in extreme poverty. Well, not really. Actually, he got co-opted by the Yanks, who brought him over to America in the early 90’s, where he started the Tetris Company and began earning royalties from his creation. By 1996 he was employed by Microsoft and making millions. So much for the tragedy.

But while Pajitnov didn’t achieve technological martyrdom, he did invent possibly the most successful game of all time. It has sold more than 70 million copies. Electronic Gaming Monthly’s 100th issue named Tetris the ‘Greatest Game of All Time’. And Tetris has a way of getting people to think about the big questions. In 1988 a thesis by John Brzustowski asked ‘Is it possible to play Tetris forever?’ (the thesis deduced that no, it isn’t). And, recently, research by neurologists Dr. Michael Crane and Dr. Richard Haier showed that playing Tetris improves your brain function, boosting one’s “critical thinking, reasoning, language and processing”.

That’s that then. Tetris makes you clever. So logic dictates that its inventor must be uber-clever. All hail the brilliance of Alexey Pajitnov.

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Riddles:A drop in a Bucket & Codes

Posted on 10. Jul, 2009 by Jake.

RIDDLE: crack the code

Can you translate the following?

yyuryyubicuryy4me

ANSWER :

 Too wise (YY= too wise) you are,
Too wise you be;
I see you are,
Too wise for me.

RIDDLE: bowling balls in buckets

If I were in Hawaii and dropped a bowling ball in a bucket of water which is 45 degrees F, and dropped another ball of the same weight, mass,and size in a bucket at 30 degrees F, both of them at the same time, which ball would hit the bottom of the bucket first?

ANSWER:

 The ball in the bucket of 45 degree F water hits the bottom of the bucket last. Did you think that the water in the 30 degree F bucket is frozen? Think again. The question said nothing about that bucket having anything in it. Therefore, there is no water (or ice) to slow the ball down…

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