New Scientist - USA (2019-10-05)

52 | New Scientist | 5 October 2019

The back pages Puzzles

Quick crossword #42 Set by Richard Smyth Quick quiz #23 Puzzle set by David Bodycombe

#24 Three stamps

I’m on holiday in the lovely country of

Philitaly, and planning to send plenty of

postcards because postage is very cheap.

But the country only allows up to three

stamps on any letter.

Can you tell me which three

denominations of stamps would allow me

to cover any cost of postage from 1 cent to

15 cents inclusive?

And which four stamp denominations

would allow all values from 1 to 24 cents?

Answer next week

#23 Circling the squares

Solution

We are told that one of 18’s neighbours is

15. The other neighbour can’t be 7 (because
    18+7=25), so 7 must appear somewhere
    else. The neighbours of 7 can only be 2 and


16. Working outwards, this forces a chain that
    goes: 11-14-2-7-9-16-20-5-4-12-
    13-3

11’s other neighbour can only be 5 if it must

make a square, but 5 is already in the chain,

so 11 must be the other neighbour of 18.

15’s other neighbour could be 1 or 10.

If 1, then the chain would be 15-1-8-

17-19-6-10-X. But if 10, then it would

be 15-10-6-19-17-8-1-3, which

completes the loop, like this:

1 The EPR thought

experiment, proposed

by Albert Einstein, Boris

Podolsky and Nathan

Rosen in 1935,

introduced the world to

which phenomenon?

2 The 10,000-year-old

archaeological site Göbekli

Tepe lies in the south-east

of which country?

3 What name is given to

solids whose underlying

atomic structure is ordered,

but doesn’t repeat regularly?

4 Scientists studying which

bird in 2016 found they

spent up to 10 months in

the air without ever landing?

5 Dialogue Concerning the

Two Chief World Systems –

which systems, and

written by whom?

Answers below

Quick

Crossword #41

Answers

ACROSS 8 Altitude, 9 Nearer,

10 Centrifuge, 11 Acid,

12 Dorset, 14 Earlobes,

15 Ostrich, 17 Agnosia,

20 Rubidium, 22 Decode,

24 Skua, 25 Deoxidised,

27 Spring, 28 Uploaded

DOWN 1 Albedo, 2 Pint,

3 Autistic, 4 Cerumen, 5 In gear,

6 Palaeozoic, 7 Beriberi,

13 Sorbic acid, 16 Skunk Ape,

18 Godzilla, 19 Embolus,

21 Indigo, 23 Diesel, 26 Imax

Quick quiz #23

Answers

ent – or entanglem Quantum 1

“spooky action at a distance”, in

Einstein’s disparaging phrase

ental onum Turkey. Its m 2

structures raise the question

e first, civilisation of which cam

or religion

Quasicrystals. Long considered 3

possible, the first natural im

ple was identified in 2009exam

on swiftm The com 4

Wrote Galileo, heretically, of 5

aic and Copernican the Ptolem

s ological systemcosm





 

  

   



  

 



ACROSS

1 1980 sci-fi film starring

William Hurt (7,6)

8 Himalayan cryptid (4)

9 Star in Orion (10)

10 Unborn baby (6)

11 Laptop “Hackintosh” (8)

12 1973 Michael

Crichton film (9)

14 Trigonometric function (4)

15 Armoured combat

vehicle (4)

16 Arthur ___, English

astrophysicist (9)

20 Squash cultivars (8)

21 Offshore drilling

platform (3,3)

23 Professor ___, inventor

invented by Norman

Hunter (10)

24 Melting (of snow and ice) (4)

25 Acid perfusion

procedure (9,4)

Answers and a tectonic crossword next week.

DOWN

1 Plant genus in the family

Ranunculaceae (7)

2 Rate of rotation of a

smooth ribbon (5)

3 Ribulose bisphosphate

carboxylase/oxygenase (7)

4 Arboreal fungal

infection (5,3,7)

5 Nicaragua volcano (6)

6 ___ poplar, name for

the tree Populus

tremuloides (9)

7 Contraction of the heart (7)

13 Kitchen tool patented by

Ezra Warner in 1858 (3,6)

15 Bone joined to the

sternum (4,3)

17 In comics, the alter ego of

engineer Tony Stark (4,3)

18 Oxidising agent (7)

19 Constriction of the pupil (6)

22 L (5)

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