New Scientist - USA (2021-12-18)

#144 Shaken, not stirred

set by Alison Kiddle

On special occasions, Grace enjoys a perfect

martini with 6 parts gin to 1 part vermouth.

Unfortunately, she has been gifted two

bottles of ready mixed martini, one in a ratio

of 5:1 and one in a ratio of 7:1, neither of

which is to her taste. However, she has a

measuring jug that measures multiples of

100ml, and an empty bottle.

How much of each blend should she use

to create her perfect martini?

#145 Up the sprout

set by Rob Eastaway

My local greengrocer has a strange way of

weighing produce. Vegetables go in a pan

attached to a string that goes around a

frictionless pulley and the pulley hangs from

a suspended spring scale. The other end of

the string is secured to the floor.

I picked out some sprouts for my Christmas

dinner, at the bargain price of £1 per

kilogram. The weighing scale indicated

1.6kg.

How much do the sprouts weigh? And how

much do I owe?

#146 Meg’s pegs

set by Colin Beveridge

Meg and Greg are playing a guessing game. Meg

picks a code of four coloured pegs, each of which

may be red, yellow, green or blue.

Greg’s first, incorrect, guess at Meg’s code is

red-red-blue-green.

Meg tells Greg how many pegs are the correct

colour in the correct place. She then tells him how

many of the remaining pegs are a correct colour in

the wrong place.

“Interesting!” laughs Greg. “In that case, I know

your code.”

What is Meg’s code?

#147 Lebkuchen race

set by Steve Wain

A German company sells its festive lebkuchen

in tube-shaped packs of 15 biscuits. Made with

mathematical perfection, the diameter of each

biscuit is exactly five times its thickness.

As I unpacked my shopping, I noticed two ants on

the top rim of the pack I’d just bought. They set off

at the same moment on what looked like a race.

One marched along the length of the packet while

the other, moving at the same speed, began on a

circuit around the top of the packet.

Which ant finished first?

Answers to the festive puzzles, and the solutions to

11 December’s puzzle and crossword, are on page 86

DOWN
1 Modern pest incompletely
destroyed part of seed (9)
2 Catch some Lutherans
needing lift (7)
3 Tranmere Rovers headers and
goal show correlation (5)
4 Engineers rest diving
equipment (10)
5 Listened to East Enders
and made a mistake (5)
6 Cells of the same type are
first to tackle problem (6)
7 Got off the ground with an
air of superiority (6-2)
8 I see a fox score with
pig losing tail (5-2)
9/19 Chemistry laureate and
unfinished drink are what drives
Bond? Quite the opposite (5,6)
10 Old TV part keeps
icon working (9)
17 Find origin of Turkic people (5)
19 See 9 Down
21 Vin Diesel’s partial
to this music? (5)
22 Chemist and lecturer
holds key (6)
24 Organised crime group sent
up missile circling India (5)
27 Ray’s an idle type, by
the sounds (5)
28 Making stronger gin
may flip cocktail (10)
29 Rising to record, study
and inspect duck (9)
32 Entrusts tasks to
representatives (9)
33 Fish? None caught in
fishing equipment (8)
35 French article supports country
scrapping Z – “it makes text
more accessible” (7)
38 Alas, no tribe provides refuge
for returning islanders (7)
39 Explosive damaged X-Men set,
Magneto’s heart cut out (6)
41 Brisk walk around university – this
might come after rainbow? (5)
43 Two masters protecting good
stuff found underground (5)
45 Injection increasingly became
necessary, to some extent (5)

TA

TY

AN

A/S

HU

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ST

OC

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18/25 December 2021 | New Scientist | 83

Festive puzzles