Table of Contents

Corning Community College

CSCS2330 Discrete Structures

~~TOC~~

Project: WEEKLY PUZZLE FUN (wpf4)

Part 1: 4x4 medium-level difficulty logic-grid puzzle

Objective

To apply your skills in the solving of a logic puzzle. We've now been through the gamut of resolutions on easy difficulty; this week we reset to 4×4 and up the difficulty to medium. You'll find the clues may reveal less direct things, but indirectly is where the connections will be made.

Grid-Based Puzzle Strategies

Some things to keep in mind when solving this type of puzzle:

Remember, keeping track of what has been eliminated is just as important as tracking what has been identified. A lot of trouble or “dead ends” have emerged when people were not keeping full inventory on grid box eliminations.

Please do endeavor to put forth original, honest effort in the solving of these puzzles, by hand; the process will help foster and solidify many analytical reasoning skills that will influence and improve your logic and programming skills. Improvements won't happen overnight, but through consistent practice, by the end of the semester you should start reaping the benefits of such an activity.

Puzzle Backstory

A series of bizarre UFO sightings have taken place in Byron, California this past week.

Puzzle

Clues

  1. Of the sighting of the teardrop-shaped UFO and Benny Baron's report, one was from Walnut Creek and the other was received on August 4.
  2. Neither the report from Springfield nor Flora Flynn's report was the report of the teardrop-shaped UFO.
  3. The sighting of the diamond-shaped UFO was from Springfield.
  4. Benny Baron's report was submitted 1 day before the report of the cone-shaped UFO.
  5. Neither Flora Flynn's report nor Edith Estes's sighting was the August 6 report.
  6. The August 6 report was from Upper Lake.

Part 2: Letter Division Puzzle

Objective

Logic grids are not the only form of logic puzzle; here is another one that relies heavily on logic and reasoning in order to sift through.

A letter division puzzle is one where the numbers 0-9 have been replaced with various letters of the alphabet; it is your task to determine what number each letter maps to, and report that to me in the project submission.

Letter Division Puzzle Strategies

Some things to keep in mind when solving this type of puzzle:

As I said: For this sort of problem, you will likely want to take notes; all the various little tests you concoct to prove or disprove some relationship can be important in the bigger picture. This may also take a bit longer and seem more overwhelming (especially at first), but really, it is just longhand math :) Remember to attack the problem in pieces, and not head-on all-at-once.

Practice some similar math problems to derive patterns so that the seemingly unfamiliar letters performing math can start to make more sense.

Puzzle

          OIL
     +-------
LATE | INNING
      -LATE
       ====
       GGINN
      -GOAVG
       =====
        MMMAG
       -ONTGV
        =====
         LMOI
number 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
letter

Part 3: Easy Sudoku puzzle

Objective

With the logic grids you put your logic skills to the test, with the word math you math skills. Here, we will explore various other types of puzzles, often combining both logic and math skills to solve, but also exercising different aspects of your deduction/induction skills.

Puzzle

2 5 4 3 7
9 6 8
6 1 5
9 3 7 1 2 8
4 5
2 5 9 3 6 4
4 1 7
1 7 8
3 7 1 6 2

Enter numbers into the blank spaces so that each row, column and 3×3 box contains the full sequence of numbers 1 to 9.

Top row:

pos #0 pos #1 pos #2 pos #3 pos #4 pos #5 pos #6 pos #7 pos #8
2 5 4 3 7

Submission

To submit this weekly puzzle, simply run the submit line below; a submit-time questionnaire will collect your puzzle results.

Submit Tool Usage

When you have completed work on the project, and are ready to submit, you would do the following:

lab46:~/src/discrete/wpf$ submit discrete wpf4
Submitting discrete project "wpf4":

SUCCESSFULLY SUBMITTED
lab46:~/src/discrete/wpf$