Comments on: Brain Game: Wally’s, 9pm, Bring Cake

By: Dawn

Dawn — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 01:08:00 +0000

Love these! I always use the ’square’ system (names vertical, scores horizontal) and eliminate possibilities as I read each clue.

By: Katrina

Katrina — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 22:31:00 +0000

WOW! finally got one right!!!!
Yay me:)

By: Missy

Missy — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 20:39:00 +0000

YES! Finally, I got one right!

By: Chichikov

Chichikov — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 19:26:00 +0000

I used to love doing these in Dell Puzzle magazines when I was growing up. You set up a 5×5 grid with the people’s names on the X axis and the points on the Y axis (or vice versa). Fill in the grid with an ‘x’ for each answer that can’t be correct (e.g., Bee can’t have 30 or 45 points, so you enter an x in the corresponding cells) and an ‘o’ for the ones that you’ve determined to be correct. I need to lay out things like this visually in order to solve them.

By: Ian

Ian — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 19:16:00 +0000

I figured it out this way:
Andy and Goober both could only score either 30 or 45 points. Andy’s could only be 30 or 45 because his score could only be exactly 30 points below Bee’s (the only pairs of numbers exactly 30 apart are 30/60 and 45/75). Goober’s score could only be 30 or 45 because Barney Scored more than twice as many points as Goober (and the only numbers that fit that category were 30 and 45). This also meant that Barney’s score could only be 75 or 100. Anyway, Since Andy and Goober were 30/45 or 45/30, nobody else could have those amounts. This gives Otis 75 automatically since he had to have an odd number of points and since 45 was the only odd number left. Giving Otis 75 meant that Barney scored 100 (by elimination since he could only have 75 or 100). Back to Bee, she is linked to Andy score by +30 and since 75 was Otis’ score, Bee had to have 60 and Andy (30 under Bee) had 30. This left Goober with 45.

By: olal

olal — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 18:03:00 +0000

must have been playing FISH if Barney was first and Otis second….

By: nutmeag

nutmeag — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 16:10:00 +0000

If you think four hours of game playing is boring, you should come to my family gatherings. With around 100 people showing up, we always have several games of dominoes going that last ALL DAY–and they’re rarely boring.

By: Lindsey

Lindsey — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 15:23:00 +0000

Sounds like how I brought in the New Year… On January 1st my family and I played cards for seven hours — breaking only for snacks, drinks and bathroom breaks.

By: Diana

Diana — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 15:04:00 +0000

lol – 4 hours of card-playing is my idea of a perfect evening.

By: Sandy

Sandy — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 14:40:00 +0000

Only 62 games, pcav, at five points a game. Each player dealt 12 or 13 times, so it might have been a four-hour event, depending on what games they chose. And yes, there’s not much to do in Mayberry once the Sun goes down, unless you like the sound of crickets chirping and frogs croaking.