Problematics | The puzzling truth about cats and dogs
For any Monday’s puzzles, please send in your solutions by noon on Friday the same week. This will also be mentioned in the footnote every week. Let's get solving!
Jasvinder Singh of Nabha, who had correctly solved both puzzles set in Week #20 of this column, could not be included among the acknowledgments in the print edition last week because he had sent his mail on Sunday, the day before publication. The only course left was to credit him in the web version.
All these weeks, we have been unmindful of the deadline because there hasn’t been any. So, why not set one. For any Monday’s puzzles, please send in your solutions by noon on Friday the same week. This will also be mentioned in the footnote every week.
Time to solve a couple more now.
#Puzzle 22.1:
A collector of pets buys three cats and three dogs and puts them in three enclosures, one cat and one dog in each.
The six new additions cost him exactly ₹1 lakh, cheap by pet market standards. This is not a lump sum: each pet has an individual price tag.
The three dogs cost a total of ₹46,128.
If the Akita had cost ₹56 less and the collie had cost ₹56 more, then all three dogs (including the dalmatian) would have carried the same price tag.
The Siamese cat costs exactly the same as the dog with which it shares an enclosure.
The British shorthair costs twice as much as the dog in its enclosure.
In the third enclosure, the dog costs twice as much as the cat, which is a Manx.
Which pet costs how much, and which cat is the companion of which dog?
| #Puzzle 22.2: |
Take the word TRANSACTED. Using as many of its 10 letters as possible (you may use T and/or A twice each), what is the longest word you can form? REACTANTS would be great, with 9 of the 10 letters, while TRADESCANT would be a perfect 10. Now, what is the longest word you can form with the letters of DICTIONARY? |
Mailbox: Last week’s solvers: #Puzzle 21.1 Hello Kabir, The same 3-digit number chosen in the beginning will reappear. For example, if Friend #1 started with 832 and repeated the digits to get 832832, then Friend #2 divided this by 13 and got 64064; Friend #3 divided this by 7 and got 9152; and Friend #4 divided this by 11 and got 832, which was the number chosen in the beginning by Friend#1. Any 3-digit number XYZ, when multiplied by 1001, repeats itself to become XYZXYZ. And 1001= 13*7*11. So, when XYZXYZ is divided by 1001 or 13*7*11, we will get XYZ. — Rina Shri, Noida Extension |
Solved both puzzles: Agastya Malhotra (Noida), Sunita & Naresh Dhillon (Gurgaon), Rohit Khanna (Noida), Abhishek Murali, Dr Nakul Makkar (Noida), Kanishka Kataria (Delhi), Amardeep Singh (Meerut), Rudransh Sinha & Prisha Sinha (Noida Extension), Rina Shri (Noida Extension), Nipun Bamania (Mumbai), Mukesh Arora (Gurgaon), Lucky Singh Randhawa (Mandawali, Delhi), Jasleen Kaur (Delhi), Gulraj Singh Nagi (Ludhiana), Anil Kumar Goyal (Delhi), Prabhjot Singh (Delhi), Biren Parmar (Bay Area, California), Rahul Agarwal (Bay Area, California), Nishanka Sharma (Delhi), Sandeep Ohlan (Rohtak), Yojit Manral (Faridabad), Raghav Kapre (Gurgaon), Jaikumar Bhatia (Ulhasnagar, Thane), Ravi Sondhi & Rudra Sondhi (Gurgaon), Vinod Mahajan (Delhi), Musarrat Rai Handa (Faridabad), Gopal Menon (Mumbai).
Solved #Puzzle 21.2: Sudesh Dogra (Delhi) Problematics will be back next week. Please send in your replies by noon on Friday to problematics@hindustantimes.com |
Some other solvers deserve an honourable mention. Varsha Jain of Mumbai solves the first puzzle and gets 9 of the 10 anagrams. Geetansha Gera of Faridabad gets 8l; Avanti Kashikar gets 7. Bhavya SK and Dr Vivek SK, a daughter-and-father team writing from Delhi, have anagrammed HIGHEST INN as NIGHT SHINE rather than THE SHINING. While there is indeed a horror short film called NIGHT SHINE, the puzzle had specified “well-known horror films” and so this answer cannot make it to the all-correct list. |
| Solved #Puzzle 21.1: Joy Pandya (Mumbai), Prateek Garg, DSS Bhaskar (Mumbai), Arsh Gupta (Gurgaon), Utkarsh Pandey, Nandita Singh (she also did 3 of the anagrams), Aanhad Aggarwal, Nishanka Sharma (Delhi), Varsha Jain (Mumbai), Bhavya SK & Dr Vivek SK, Geetansha Gera (Faridabad), Avanti Kashikar |
| Solved #Puzzle 21.2: Sudesh Dogra (Delhi) |
Problematics will be back next week. Please send in your replies by noon on Friday to problematics@hindustantimes.com
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