52 | New Scientist | 15 June 2019
The back pages Puzzles
Quick crossword #33 Set by Richard Smyth Quick quiz #07 Puzzle set by Rob Eastaway
#07 Amveriric’s boat
The billionaire Mr Amveriric keeps a yacht
in a private dock in the Mediterranean.
It is tethered to the quay by a rope.
Last time his staff tied up the boat,
they left too much slack in the rope,
so the boat is now 1 metre away from
the quay when the rope is taut. Hearing
that a storm is on the way, Amveriric
realises that the boat might get smashed
against the wall by the buffeting wind,
so he sends his henchman, Benolin
Chestikov, to shorten the rope.
Seeing that the boat is 1 metre from
the wall, Benolin decides he will pull the
rope horizontally by 1 metre, and as he
pulls, the boat moves in horizontally.
Will the boat reach the wall or not?
(And can you prove the answer to yourself
without resorting to trigonometry?)Answer next week#06 Darts challenge
SolutionThe lowest score you can’t get with three
darts is 163.All other scores below 163 are achievable
in three, for example 161 is 60 + 50
(bullseye) + treble 17.With two darts, 103 is the lowest
score that you can’t get, and with
a single dart it is 23.Given that you have to finish a game of
darts on a double or with a bullseye,
the lowest score from which you can’t
finish with three darts is 159.1 Which German polymath
and mathematician, who
helped developed calculus,
was lampooned as the
ludicrously optimistic
Professor Pangloss in
Voltaire’s novel Candide?2 Crocodile icefish of
the Channichthyidae family
are notable as the only
vertebrates to lack which
protein in their blood
as adults?3 Which solar system planet
would float on water?4 “Onion routing” is the core
principle of which anonymity
network that allows a user
to conceal where they are
accessing the internet from?5 The Cliffside storage
facility near Amarillo, Texas,
houses the US national
strategic reserve of which
cryogenically essential gas?Answers belowCryptic
Crossword #08
AnswersAcross 1 Comb, 3/26 Rosalind
Franklin, 9 Rarebit, 11 Leeks,
12 Spruce, 14 Nudist,
16 Tissue, 19 Lambda,
21 Nicks, 24/10 Laura Bassi,
25 Catarrh, 27 FeelDown 1/13 Caroline Herschel,
2/22 Marie Curie, 4 Obtuse,
5 Amber, 6 Insects, 7 Drip,
8 Ibises, 15 Dracula,
17 Innate, 18 Tai Chi,
20 Black, 23 ClefQuick quiz #07
AnswersGottfried Leibniz 1oglobin. Also known as Haem 2white-blooded fish, theirblood is in fact colourlessetre Saturn. A cubic centim 3s of Saturn weighs 0.7 gramon average, againsts for Earth 5.5 grame stands Tor. The nam 4for “the onion router”Helium 5 Across
1 Network; grille (5)
4/13 Woman whose cancer
cells are the source of the
HeLa cell line (9,5)
9 Moment at which the sun
crosses the equator (7)
10 Term for a hard-to-detect
aircraft, e.g. the F-22
Raptor (7)
11 Alloy of Fe and C (5)
13 See 4 across
15 Key on a computer
keyboard (>|) (3)
16 Component of the psyche,
in Freudian terms (3)
17 Work/time (5)19 Ice ___ , suspended
frozen platform (5)
21 Kg (5)
23 Acid derivative in which
at least one hydrogen atom
is replaced by an alkyl (5)
24 ȡ (3)
25 Write Everything Twice (3)
26 Large single dose of drug (5)
28 School subject (5)
29 Leafy green plant, Spinacia
oleracea (7)
31 Colour composed of equal
amounts of blue and red (7)
33 The E in ENA imaging (9)
34 Untrue (5)Answers and the next cryptic crossword next week.Down
1 Technical jargon (4,5)
2 Unborn (2,5)
3 Nearest star to Earth (3)
4 C 6 H 13 (5)
5 UK welfare organisation
founded in 1948 (3)
6 “Colourless green ___ sleep
furiously” – nonsensical
phrase coined by Noam
Chomsky (5)
7 Methyl benzene (7)
8 Sap-sucking insect (5)
12 Autoimmune disease also
called SLE (5)
14 Ct (5)18 Circular structure that
revolves on an axle (5)
19 Blood component (5)
20 f3 e5; g4?? Qh4# (in
chess) (5,4)
22 Partially ordered set in which
every pair has an infimum
and a supremum (7)
24 Vitamin A1 (7)
25 Unwanted materials (5)
26 Lawrence ___ , youngest
Nobel laureate in physics (5)
27 Shrub in the genus Rhus (5)
30 Radioactive (informally) (3)
32 Bitmap image format (3) Get in touch
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[email protected]1 metre
WALLBenolin pulls the rope
horizontally by 1 metre