536 Puzzles and Curious Problems

(Elliott) #1
Point Alignment Puzzles 165


  1. A HOPSCOTCH PUZZLE


We saw some boys playing the ancient and ever popular game of hopscotch,
and we wondered whether the figure that they had marked on the ground
could be drawn with one continuous stroke. We found it to be possible.
Can the reader draw the hopscotch figure in the illustration without taking
his pencil off the paper or going along the same line twice? The curved line
is not generally used in the game, but we give the figure just as we saw it.

([X] I



  1. A WILY PUZZLE


An unscrupulous advertiser offered a hundred dollars for a correct solution
to this puzzle:
"A life prisoner appealed to the king for pardon. Not being ready to favor
the appeal, the king proposed a pardon on condition that the prisoner should
start from cell A and go in and out of each cell in the prison, coming back to
the cell A without going into any cell
twice."
Either the advertiser had no answer,
and knew he had none, or he was pre-
pared to fall back on some trick or
quibble. What is the best answer the
reader can devise that may be held to
comply with the advertiser's condi-
tions as given?


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A+ +++++-



  1. A TREE PLANTING PUZZLE


A man planted thirteen trees in the manner shown on the following page,
and so formed eight straight rows with four trees in every row. But he was not
satisfied with that second tree in the horizontal row. As he quaintly put it, "it
was not doing enough work-seemed to be a sort of loafer." It certainly does

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