New Scientist - USA (2022-03-19)

19 March 2022 | New Scientist | 53

The back pages Puzzles

Quick quiz #143

1 Males of which group of animals

experience “musth”?

2 Which chemical element has

the atomic number 33?

3 Where in the solar system are

the volcanoes Olympus Mons

and Ascraeus Mons?

4 Which mass extinction came first:

the Permian-Triassic, the Devonian

or the Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction?

5 In the human spine, how many vertebrae

are typically found in the sacrum?

Answers on page 55

Puzzle

set by Derek Couzens

#159 Express coffee

The streets of New Addleton are set out

in a rectangular grid. Seven coffee vendors

(the circles in the diagram above) have

stalls at metro stations and want to set

up a central depot to collect supplies from

each morning. They want to minimise

their combined cycling distance from

stall to depot. Pat has four candidates

for the depot location: A, B, C and D.

“Are you sure one of those four is optimal?”

asks Shahin. “I suppose we could work out

the total vendor-depot distance for every

point on the grid.”

“No need, I can tell you the best place just

by looking at the diagram,” announces Kim.

Which location does Kim recommend

and why is she so confident?

Solution next week

Cryptic crossword #79 Set by Wingding

Scribble

zone

Answers and

the next quick

crossword

next week

ACROSS

1 Bird that’s a novice (6)

4 Bird with alien food pipe (6)

9 Ancient city may clean lake

every now and then (7)

10 Bird with new headgear (5)

11 Young animals given medicine first

in research buildings (5)

12 Publicity for machine learning

on Irish TV – I’m gripped! (7)

13 Son trusted dad would be moving,

like the night sky (4-7)

18 Painters of Central Park birds

eating sulphur (7)

20 Show of displeasure from

South Carolina bird (5)

22 Bird with concave wings in the future (5)

23 A little bit of insect in tin (7)

24 Expensive bird with lubricant (6)

25 Pull bird in front of church (6)

DOWN

1 Run, walk and hike (6)

2 Zero carbon supported by Cambridge

advocate of simple theories (5)

3 Pollution is eradicated, to some extent,

by air purifying device (7)

5 Terribly cruel and sore (5)

6 Assign great importance to feline

sensory organs in speech (7)

7 Somewhat smitten, reclusive mammal (6)

8 Spread tastes same after mixing

with iodine (11)

14 Bird with obsession ditches

male for moon (7)

15 Undisciplined soldiers left out report (7)

16 Force taken out of lightning strikes (6)

17 Student feeding bird gets

frightened reaction (6)

19 Smooth, solid vegetable (5)

21 Rise of nitrogen agriculture

shortened part of body (5)

Our crosswords are now solvable online

newscientist.com/crosswords

C

A B

D