My son received a 2021 Brain Puzzlers calendar last Christmas. He started the first puzzle, and never made it past there. He just gave it to me. I thought it might be fun to post the puzzles on here and see how far we can get.
I definitely can’t guarantee I’ll post daily, but the second half of the year work is slower for me, so I’ll try to post multiple times per day then.
1/1/21 - Step by Step
Print the phrase HAPPY NEW YEAR without the spaces. Insert a T where each of the spaces used to be. Change the last letter to an H. Insert a T in the next-to-last position. Replace each A with the word NEW. Reverse the order of the first three letters. Change the third consonant from the front to an O. Move the third letter to the end. Change the third E from the front to a T. Delete all pairs of consecutive double letters. Reverse the order of the letters. Add a space after the sixth letter and a hyphen after the twelfth letter. What is the result?
1/1/21
HAPPYNEWYEAR
HAPPYTNEWTYEAR
HAPPYTNEWTYEAH
HAPPYTNEWTYEATH
HNEWPPYTNEWTYENEWTH
ENHWPPYTNEWTYENEWTH
ENHOPPYTNEWTYENEWTH
ENOPPYTNEWTYENEWTHH
ENOPPYTNEWTYTNEWTHH
ENOYTNEWTYTNEWT
TWENTYTWENTYONE
TWENTY TWENTY-ONE
1/2/21 - Around the Block
If a 6x8x11 wooden block is painted orange and then cut into 1x1x1 cubes, how many of these 528 cubes will have orange paint on exactly two faces?
By the way, I’m horrible at puzzles and don’t usually do them. We’ll see how long I can stick with this.
1/2/21
I think it’s 4x each different edge length excluding corners, so 4*(6-2 + 8-2 + 11-2) = 76
You are correct!
not exactly a puzzle, just following directions
I agree. First one was disappointing. We’ll see if they get better as I get further in.
1/3/21 - Open Season
Using every letter in this grid once, spell out seven words associated with salt in contiguous squares joined edge to edge.
| . | . | . | . | . | . |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| E | P | U | U | I | D |
| R | P | S | M | P | O |
S,I,N,C,R,S
T,I,L,H,E,R
N,T,E,Z,T,E
I,I,O,N,P,K
A,R,G,P,O,A
N,R,O,C,S,H
I typed them in separated by a comma so they could easily be copied into Excel. Open to other ideas on how to put a grid of letters on here.
Grain
Pinch
Popcorn
Pretzel
Shaker
Sodium
Superstition
Nice! Here’s how I did it (You helped me get a few that I just wasn’t seeing).
If you’d like equal spacing, try using
(code)
text
(/code)
… replacing ()'s with []'s above. Here’s what that would look like:
E,P,U,U,I,D
R,P,S,M,P,O
S,I,N,C,R,S
T,I,L,H,E,R
N,T,E,Z,T,E
I,I,O,N,P,K
A,R,G,P,O,A
N,R,O,C,S,Hor without commas
EPUUID
RPSMPO
SINCRS
TILHER
NTEZTE
IIONPK
ARGPOA
NROCSH1/4/21
Star Search
Place stars in six cells of this grid so that every row, every column, and every outlined region contains exactly one star. Stars must never be located in adjacent cells, not even diagonally.
Curious if there’s a way to post a grid like that in here without just taking a screenshot of Excel.
Thanks for the tips! I definitely like the equal spacing better. I put the commas in there so it was relatively easy to paste into Excel.
I took the liberty of “editing” your post to show how to do a table in a post.
Can you share how you did it? Since the post has been locked for editing I can’t see how you did it.
1/5/21 - Passing Fad
Use only the letters in FAD to fill in the blanks to create common, uncapitalized words. Each letter in FAD will be used at least once in every word. Can you come up with all eight words?
- H _ N _ _ U L
- S _ _ E G U _ R _
- _ _ _ _ O _ I L
- S C _ _ _ O L _
- H _ N _ C U _ _ S
- _ _ _ I _ _ V I T
- _ I _ _ L E H E _ _
- _ E C _ _ _ E I N _ T E _
