The unsolveable
Jun. 20th, 2005 03:19 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tahnanIn a comment on a post at Puzzle Can(n)on, which I only just discovered, Todd McClary observes that
If that's true, why do I keep trying to relax with these damned unsolveable puzzles?
Usually I like Andrew Plotkin. He's clever, he's fair. And yet "The Fifth Praser Maze" is, to the best of my ability to tell, unsolveable. It's a step up from a puzzle like "What do I have in my pocket", but not much. For instance:
I've been poking at this off and on for a few days now, during my off-hours when trying to unwind and refocus my mind after dissertating. It certainly seems to be the case that one is looking for a six-letter answer, spelled out by taking the deleted letters in each clue: "take a word for an illusion, remove its first letter, get a word for an illusionist." I use that one because that is the one I solved. Not for lack of looking at lists of birds and measures and bones. This is wordplay; this is what I do; how the hell can it be this intractable? (This is one of four opening puzzles. I've got one part of this; that puts it ahead of the other three.)
I was going to complain about a puzzle in a sequence on Blogspot (which![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
thedan pointed me to), which for lack of a better starting point you can start here. Or you can skip to week two, puzzle five, which Dan pointed me at. The puzzle claimed that "only one way [of proceeding] will allow you to keep forming five-letter words and to end up with eight letters that can also form a word", which is the goal of the puzzle. I thought he was utterly mistaken, because I consistently came up with garbage. I didn't realize that (a) he'd be using the words "easts" and "newsy", and (b) the final answer would be a particular plant from Mexico. (He didn't realize that the word has another anagram, either.) That puzzle wasn't broken; it was just, pardon my saying, mildly stupid.
...that [a puzzle] has an "achievable objective" is a valid defining quality, but also addresses the appeal of the puzzle in contemporary culture. In "Small is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered," E.F. Schumacher [...]:"A busy detective who has been dealing with divergent problems all day long will read a detective story or solve a crossword puzzle on his journey home. He has been using his brain all day; why does he go on using it? The answer is that the detective story and the crossword puzzle present convergent problems, and that is the relaxation."
Some people are attracted to puzzles with a predictable form, such as the crossword, while other are intrigued by puzzles with unknown structures, such as the MIT Mystery Hunt, but in both cases the solver carries an initial expectation that the problem will challenge mental facilities while eventually coming to an end.
If that's true, why do I keep trying to relax with these damned unsolveable puzzles?
Usually I like Andrew Plotkin. He's clever, he's fair. And yet "The Fifth Praser Maze" is, to the best of my ability to tell, unsolveable. It's a step up from a puzzle like "What do I have in my pocket", but not much. For instance:
Off with its head!
- I behead a flavorsome seed, and discover the Way.
- I behead an illusion, and discover an illusionist.
- I behead a single bird, and discover a mountain top.
- I behead a sick-house, and discover a savour.
- I betail a shape, and discover a short distance.
- I betail a strip, and discover a bone.
I've been poking at this off and on for a few days now, during my off-hours when trying to unwind and refocus my mind after dissertating. It certainly seems to be the case that one is looking for a six-letter answer, spelled out by taking the deleted letters in each clue: "take a word for an illusion, remove its first letter, get a word for an illusionist." I use that one because that is the one I solved. Not for lack of looking at lists of birds and measures and bones. This is wordplay; this is what I do; how the hell can it be this intractable? (This is one of four opening puzzles. I've got one part of this; that puts it ahead of the other three.)
I was going to complain about a puzzle in a sequence on Blogspot (which
thedan pointed me to), which for lack of a better starting point you can start here. Or you can skip to week two, puzzle five, which Dan pointed me at. The puzzle claimed that "only one way [of proceeding] will allow you to keep forming five-letter words and to end up with eight letters that can also form a word", which is the goal of the puzzle. I thought he was utterly mistaken, because I consistently came up with garbage. I didn't realize that (a) he'd be using the words "easts" and "newsy", and (b) the final answer would be a particular plant from Mexico. (He didn't realize that the word has another anagram, either.) That puzzle wasn't broken; it was just, pardon my saying, mildly stupid.![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
spoiler text abounds, but answers don't
Date: 2005-06-20 10:55 am (UTC)image - i = mage?
I'm not sure about the others, but the last one might be
ribbon - bon = rib
which may yield the final answer
cinnabon, in which case you should ping aspartaimee for your prize.
Re: spoiler text abounds, but answers don't
Date: 2005-06-20 03:43 pm (UTC)Re: spoiler text abounds, but answers don't
Date: 2005-06-20 04:06 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-06-20 02:02 pm (UTC)Where is this Andrew Plotkin thing?
(no subject)
Date: 2005-06-20 04:25 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-06-20 06:53 pm (UTC)I actually beat the thing, but that was the last puzzle in that set of four that I solved and I got half the parts and guessed the other half. But
Keep at it. There is some good stuff in there... just not that. I do agree with your points, at least.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-07-31 08:45 pm (UTC)