Lunch With George!

Puzzle Contest Archive

Yes, it's another new feature on Lunch With George!... The Lunch With George! Puzzle Contest. Every now and then, I'll post a puzzle, and award an interesting item (a.k.a. the "Prize") to the person who solves it first! This archive of past puzzles will be ordered with the most recent puzzles first.

PUZZLE Ending February 27th, 2002.

This is an easier puzzle... and does not require a deck of cards.

What is the name of the Arizona Diamondback's minor league farm team in Tucson, Arizona?

The correct answer: Sidewinders.

The Winner: Fred!

We had two entries for this puzzle.

PUZZLE Ending February 20th, 2002.

In honor of the new prize, to solve this puzzle you must decrypt an encrypted message!

Get a deck of cards. Be sure you have two jokers, and make sure you can tell them apart-- we're going to call them Joker A and Joker B.

Order you cards as specified on the Card Order page.

Use the algorithm described on the Klondike Algorithm page to decrypt the following encrypted message:

DYPXU ZRJGI

Send the decrypted message to me!

The correct answer: I HATE MENSA.

The Winner: Toni!

We had one entry, and it was correct.

PUZZLE Ending January 30th, 2002.

George found this puzzle:

"In the equation SEND + MORE = MONEY, each letter stands for a digit. I.e., the "S" in SEND may be 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, or 9. No two letters stand for the same digit. Your task: Deduce what digit each of the letters stands for, so that it does, in fact, add up. No higher math skills are required."
Thanks to Andrew Tobias.

The correct answer: 9567 + 1085 = 10652.

The Winner: Corey!

We had three entries, and all three were correct. Fred and Jim supplied the other correct (but tardy) answers. Jim (of "Things We Found Dead in Our Pool" fame) found the answer by writing a computer program, while Corey and Fred searched Google. Hmm. Oh well!

PUZZLE Ending January 16th, 2002.

George found this in a set of puzzle cards published by Mensa:

"Have a look at these strange watches showing military time. By cracking the logic connecting them, you should be able to work out what time should be shown on the fifth watch."

watch #1

15.14.01

watch #2

12.18.00

watch #3

08.26.58

watch #4

03.42.55

watch #5

??.??.??

Copyright © 1993, British Mensa, LTD. Used without permission.

The correct answer: 21:14:51. The seconds decrease by an ever-increasing amount each time (first by one, then by two, then by three, and so on. Thus the final seconds would be 55-4, or 51. The minutes increase each time by twice the previous difference (first by 4, then by 8, then by 16...). So the final minutes would increase by 32, giving us 42+32=74. Since we rolled over past an hour, the actual minutes displayed on the watch would be 14. Finally, the hours decrease by an ever-increasing amount (similar to the seconds), beginning with a difference of 3. The final hours would be 6 less than 03, or 21.

The Winner: No correct answers were received.

Last modified 04/23/2002.

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