And now here is the solution to that baffling puzzle from yesterday.
Please don't ask me to explain it. I am, as they say, merely following orders.
Eddie Mair | 08:46 UK time, Thursday, 14 June 2007
Please don't ask me to explain it. I am, as they say, merely following orders.
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Re: Stephen, Leader of STROP
Ahh your explanation makes sense now! - you are clever - I couldn't work out the right angles.
As I thought, too complicated by half!
Hold on a sec. I didn't really think about this yesterday when SLoSTROP was completing the puzzle, but I don't understand the rules. Again. I took the rule:
Lines passing through white circles must pass straight through its cell, and make a right-angled turn in the cell next to the white circle (left or right).
to mean that white circles will have right angled turns on both sides because there is no direction on the line - ie nothing to indicate when the line is entering and leaving. We learnt that if two white circles are next to each other, then this can be "carried over". But in the solution, the left hand two white circles of the group of three have a line that enters or leaves at both ends and doesn't have a turn. Does this mean that this rule should be taken to me that a turn is required only at one side of a white circle - which would explain the "carrying over"?
I had a necklace like that in the 80s made of little bits of plastic fake coral.
Ah, so you can put in turns in empty squares! They didn't tell us that piece of important information!
I don't think it's got anything to do with puzzles - I think it's a new, cheap design for the London 2012 Olympics. In which case, I quite like it. It looks, to me, a bit like someone juggling. Yes?
Nonsense, that wasn't in the least bit malicious, and I've just been out taxiing during the past hour and a half or so since my last post.....
Is that an O level physics circuitboard?
The answers to both puzzles are incorrect. In both puzzles, if going clockwise there is one place where the line does not bend in the square after a white circle. If going anti-clockwise there are TWO examples in each puzzle. I came up with an alternative solution to the blank puzzle, so long as clockwise is the rule.
Graham Baker, Stockport.
Very clever, GB (8). However, I think the rules were just a bit vague. I went back and read the wikipedia version of them and it explicitly says that a turn must occur before and/or after. So there is no need for direction after all. Also, because of the accompanying notes, it's readily apparent that a row of 3 white circles must always be visited separately. Trying the fight the urge to find a book of the damn things now...
Val P (6) It's a frog, sitting on his haunches, holding his front legs up!
Hurrah! That's what I had found. I don't think the rules were vague really. 'Left or right' means that it can either be left or right (and maybe both). Unless it's not what it means in English and that's just what my French-speaking background led me to believe.
I'm also dangerously close to look for another puzzles to solve. That's a nice change from sudoku.
Thanks John (9), what do you search for in wikipedia? Or do you have a link? Thanks.
Graham Baker (8), Didn't you live in Reading until recently? Or Slough? Somewhere like that, anyway? How's the leg? Or perhaps you are a different Graham Baker?
By the way, at first glance, I truly, honestly thought that the second line of your post at 12 said "Or do you have a life?"...
Sorry Aperitif, wrong GB!
Aperitif, I think it was me that you were thinking of! And the leg is coming along fine, thank you.
Oops, sorry guys, but glad to hear the leg is on the mend.
Oops, sorry guys, but glad to hear the leg is on the mend.