Perplex Puzzles

Hush – Green

perplexpuzzles — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 16:36:15 +0000

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Hint 1:

Doesn’t this puzzle make you sleepy?

Hint 2:

Think of a song. Some of the pictures may help.

Hint 3:

Quiet smallish infant, cease your ocular watering

Hint 4:

Qwyzzle 95

Hint 5:

Connect the dots. The pictures give the order.

Answer:

Sandwich

Solution:

In the lullaby “Hush Little Baby” there are eight items mentioned:

Mockingbird
Diamond ring
Looking glass
Billy goat
Cart and bull
Dog named Rover
Horse and cart
Boy

Take these items in order and connect the dots. They form an arrow that points to the sandwich (click HERE to see the result).

Note, I’ve been told there are different versions to this song. I used the one that came up first in Google: HERE.

Infectious – Blue

perplexpuzzles — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 16:56:08 +0000

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Hint 1:

Identify the microbes first. Don’t they look giant and plushy?

Hint 2:

How can you use the names of the microbes to form a question or word?

Hint 3:

Try taking the first letter of each name and rearranging them.

Hint 4:

That didn’t work well, there must be something else. Notice how some microbes are bigger than others? Maybe you do something different with those.

Hint 5:

Use the scientific name for large microbes and the common name for smal microbes.

Hint 6:

The word formed is “outbreak”. Do some searching regrading this word.

Answer:

Motaba

Solution:

The microbes look cute and toy like. If you search for that, you should end up at the Giant Microbes website. Here you can find the common and scientific names of them:

Flu – othronyxovirus -> O
Ulcer – helicobacterpylori -> u
Syphillis (treponemapallidum) -> T
Madcow (bovine …) -> B
Red blood cell (ertyrocyte) -> r
Ebola (ebloa virus) -> e
Fat cell (adipocyte) -> A
Kissing disease (epstein-barr) -> K

Take the first letter of each name, but use the common name for smaller microbes and the scientific name for the larger microbes. Re-arrange these to spell “Outbreak”. This is the name of a movie where there is a virus called Motaba.

Reincarnation – Blue

perplexpuzzles — Sun, 27 Jul 2008 16:56:14 +0000

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Hint 1:

All parts of this story refer to the same name.

Hint 2:

The first and last references may be the easiest. What are muddy beasts? What band has a a huge and devoted following?

Hint 3:

What is a famous secret society, although they aren’t that secret any more? They had something to do with building things.

Answer:

Pigpen

Solution:

Each part of this story refers to the name “Pigpen”. The first part describes an actual pigpen. The second part refers to the Pigpen code used by the Freemasons. The third part is the character Pigpen from the Peanuts comics. And the final part refers to Ron “Pigpen” McKernan of The Greatful Dead.

What’s Cookin? – Orange

perplexpuzzles — Sun, 27 Jul 2008 16:42:03 +0000

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Hint 1:

Search for a combination of some of the more weird terms

Hint 2:

Homestar Runner – Strong Bad Emails

Answer:

Trogdor!

Solution:

The recipie is the steps Strong Bad gives for drawing a dragon on HomestarRunner.com. See the Homestar Runner Wiki HERE for details.

Double Diamond – Yellow

perplexpuzzles — Sun, 27 Jul 2008 16:33:23 +0000

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Hint 1:

They are all in North America

Hint 2:

Four are in the western US, one is in Canada.

Hint 3:

Look at major ski areas in Colorado, New Mexico, Wyoming, Utah, and British Columbia.

Answer:

1 – Whistler/Blackcomb
2 – Jackson Hole
3 – Vail
4 – Park City
5 – Taos

Solution:

No real secret here, just find the websites and look at the maps. The names of the lifts and runs should be unique enough to facilitate web searching.

The Great Project – Black

perplexpuzzles — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 17:14:10 +0000

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Hint 1:

There is one star that will tell you everything you need.

Hint 2:

What is the most important star in the night sky?

Hint 3:

The angle of the north star is equal to the latitude of where you’re observing.

Hint 4:

Notice how Polaris doesn’t line up with North? Why is that?

Hint 5:

Read about the Earth’s precession and its effect on the north star.

Hint 6:

The north star in this picture is Thuban. When was it the north star? Use that info along with the latitude to get an idea of wher the great project is.

Answer:

The Great Giza Pyramid (pyramids is fine too)

Solution:

You need to know where you are and when. Once you know this, you can make an educated guess as to what the project id.

The angle of the north star in the sky is the same as the latitude from where you are observing. In this star chart, that is about 30 deg N. It is hard to figure out, but the distances between degrees is larger closer to the horizon. That is why 30 deg is not exactly one third of the way up the sky.

In this image the north star, Polaris, is not in line with North. This happens due to the precession of the Earth. In this image Thuban is in line with North, so it is the North star. This occurred around 2200BC.

What could be going on roughly around 2200BC at a latitude of 30 deg N? Probably the Great Pyramids being build. That is a great project indeed.

644 Days – Green

perplexpuzzles — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 18:23:48 +0000

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Hint 1:

Don’t try to search for all of the terms at once.

Hint 2:

You will most likely find the answer indirectly via blogs or fan sites.

Hint 3:

Other location include: Norad, Witchita, and Serpent Mound.

Answer:

Russell Shoemaker

Solution:

The map is the one from the main page of www.afterworld.com. This is an online sci-fi series that documents the journey of Russell Shoemaker across America after most of the world’s population disappears. If you web search using a few of the terms on the map, you should run across a video link to an episode, or a blog/fansite entry. From there, get to the main site where you see the map, and from there you can figure out who’s journey it was.

What Song? – Purple

perplexpuzzles — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 16:08:47 +0000

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Hint 1:

There are actually two songs here.

Hint 2:

The treble clef is one song, the bass clef is something else

Hint 3:

The treble clef is an actual song. Try www.melodyhound.com to find it.

Hint 4:

The bass clef is not a song, but it does have a pattern. Look at how many lines the notes span. Remind you of anything?

Hint 5:

Combine the song title from the treble clef with the number the bass clef represents. It loosely becomes the title of a new song.

Answer:

American Pie

Solution:

If you try to play the music as is, you will find that it doesn’t sound very good. That’s because the treble clef is America The Beautiful and the bass clef is a musical representation of the number Pi. For the bass clef, the notes span ten lines, with zero being the bottom most line and nine the topmost.

The idea is that we have “America The Beautiful” and Pi which would lead you to think of American Pie as the song.

Grey Code – Silver

perplexpuzzles — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 20:16:52 +0000

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Hint 1:

Look up Grey Code in Wikipedia. Use the 4 bit version.

Hint 2:

Look up combinational logic to find out how the gates work.

Hint 3:

Run the grey code through in order. You get a block of sixteen 8 bit binary strings.

Hint 4:

Ok, they aren’t ASCII, what else could they be? Look at the whole picture.

Hint 5:

The 1s form a pattern in Braille.

Answer:

Bugs Bunny

Solution:

The input is the 4 bit grey code since there are four lines going in (for details, see THIS)

Take each of these grey code inputs in order and put them through the circuit to get sixteen outputs of eight bits each. For help with digital logic, see THIS

You might think you convert each 8 bit output to a number and that would be an ASCII letter or something, but that is not the case. Look at the 16×8 output as a picture, and you will see a series of braille letters. These spell out BUGS BUNNY.

I Can Has – Yellow

perplexpuzzles — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 20:41:14 +0000

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Hint 1:

Take a look at the LoLCats bible translation project.

Hint 2:

Do some research on the web for popular Bible passages if you are the non Christian type.

Answer:

1 – Genesis 1:1, 2 – John 3:16, 3 – Psalm 23, 4 – Ezekiel 25:17

Solution:

If you aren’t up on your Bible, you can easily find popular Bible passages and verses with web searching. Then go to the LOLCat Bible Translation site (http://www.lolcatbible.com/) and look them up.