52 | New Scientist | 4 April 2020
The back pages Puzzles
Our crosswords are
now solvable online
Available at
newscientist.com/crosswordsAnswers and the next quick crossword next weekACROSS
1/6 Lefties also confused
about what to do if you
suspect you’re 13 (4-7)
3 See 27
9 Swollen area in muscles
could emit strange smell,
to begin with (7)
10 Virus twisted a part
of brain (5)
11 Reported old medicine
in drain (5)
12 Operating theatre, the centre
of epidemic, a finally stressful,
difficult experience (6)
14 How to take a pill: none
recover (6)16 Encourage doctor to lose
her head (4,2)
19 Greek character eating end of
carrot, a mark of disease (6)
21 Virus has centre of Wuhan
covered in paper (5)
24 Worry that short length
is getting shorter (5)
25 At home with old flame,
behave without precision (7)
26 To quote Susan, it is entirely
clean (8)
27/3 Upset him with dirty
menu - that’ll stop
disease spreading (4,8)DOWN
1 Little probability farm
animal will get virus (8)
2 Girl followed by a virus (5)
4 Arctic dweller giving
entrepreneur hug
and kiss? (4,2)
5 Knock over supple Enid
every now and then (5)
6 See 1 Across
7 We hear McGregor may be
making money in China (4)
8 Allow AI to be deadly (6)
13 Fiend etc. riddled with
disease (8)15 Some pollutant I
generated is trigger for
immune response (7)
17 Sounds like line by the
dock getting worse (6)
18 Virus found in Serbia,
somehow (6)
20 Understand what you
don’t want to do in an
outbreak (3,2)
22 Weaken a spooky
creature with drug (5)
23 Virus taking time away
from celebrities (4)Quick
Crossword #54
AnswersCryptic crossword #28 Set by Wingding Quick quiz #45 Puzzle set by Zoe Mensch
ACROSS 1 Major, 4 Injection,
9 Technic, 10 Xerosis, 11 Cubic,
13 Sebum, 15 LOL, 16 RGN,
17 Lemma, 19 Venin,
21 Edwin, 23 Green, 24 CIO,
25 Sex, 26 Excel, 28 Servo,
29 Weights, 31 Null Set,
33 Regulator, 34 Konix
DOWN 1 Math Curse, 2 Jacobin,
3 Run, 4 Incus, 5/14 Jex-Blake,
6 CD-ROM, 7 Insulin, 8 Nasal,
12 Cylon, 18 Magic, 19 Venus,
20 Neocortex, 22 Waxwing,
24 Carlsen, 25 Sewer, 26 Ethyl,
27 Lunar, 30 Set, 32 Lek1 Which mathematician
and astronomer made a
conjecture in 1611 about
how closely you can pack
spheres in a 3D space?
2 According to the idea,
about how much of a space
can you fill with spheres of
the same size: two-thirds,
three-quarters or four-fifths?
3 When was this considered
formally proved, using
programs by Thomas Hales
and collaborators, in a paper
in Forum of Mathematics?
4 Mathematicians have
tried to solve this problem in
higher dimensions. Does the
maximum amount of space
you can fill go up or down?
5 Which “father of
information theory” showed
that this higher-dimensional
mathematics was useful
in reconstructing noisy
communications signals?Answers belowJohannes Kepler 1About three-quarters, 74 per 2ents show you only cent. Experimachieve about 65 per cent if youin at randomdrop them20173Down, precipitously: in 7D, 4s to be ple, it seemfor examonly around 30 per centClaude Shannon, with the 5that often pling theoremsame bears his nam#53 Paintings by numbers
When the famous artist Pablo Picossa
held his final exhibition at the Galleria del
Pardo, he wanted the public to experience
his works in the order in which he had
created them. Paintings from his early
“Green” period were in room 1. From
there, visitors should go to room 2 to see
his Mauve works and then to the adjacent
rooms 3, 4, 5 and so on, until they reached
the Black paintings (generally viewed as
Picossa’s darkest period) in room 9.Alas, no details remain to indicate
which room was where. Yet his widow
Bella does recall a curiosity about the
numbering of the rooms: the three-digit
number formed by the top row added
to the number formed by the middle
row equals the number formed by the
bottom row. Can you recreate Picossa’s
gallery tour?Answer next week#52 Bus change Solution
The easiest way to work out the maximum
amount of change you can have without
having £1 exactly is to start from the largest
coins and work your way down.
You can’t have £1 or £2 coins, but you can
have a 50 pence coin. Then you can add up to
four 20p coins and still be unable to make £1.
From here, you can’t add any 10ps (or you’d
have 50p + 20p + 20p + 10p = £1), but you
can play the same trick again with 5ps and
2ps, adding in one 5p and four 2ps.
50 + (20 x 4) + 5 + (2 x 4) = £1.43 in total.Quick quiz #45
Answers