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Post by Nalkarj on May 3, 2017 22:48:22 GMT
The Puzzle Murder Case Now this is a puzzle I can understand, unlike the peacock poem: When I first saw babbages, it made me think of cabbages. I wondered if maybe the puzzle was to shift each by one letter. When I tried shifting it around, it didn't work but the sounds reminded me of the Lewis Carroll poem, "The time has come, the walrus said, to think of many things. Of shoes and ships and ceiling wax, of cabbages and kings." And then I realized it was the words of the poem with one letter changed. If I replace the letters in the order of the words I get Wesck, the name of one of the suspects. But of course, he did it in a way that the killer would not know what he was doing. And he was addicted to puzzles, of course.
So Mrs. Wesck was the murderer, which Phil knew because it was the answer to the riddle, which he had solved.
Nice puzzle, salzmank. Glad I read Alice in Wonderland as a child. Excellent work! Both brimfin and jervistetch have got it! Sorry I don't have prizes, fellas. OK, I've got to work on my puzzle-writing skills. Perhaps I should do something else with cabbages? I couldn't think of what letter to change there, so I finally went with Babbage, who was a mathematician--but of course I needed an s, or it wouldn't finish out the Carroll quotation. Another thing I've been wondering: is the story quite fair to people who haven't read Carroll's books? They're favorites of mine, but I know some folks nowadays know the title but not the books--and haven't even seen the Disney adaptation. I was hoping that the mathematician and Anglican clues would do lead people towards Carroll even if they haven't read his books, though: LC was both. Anyway, congrats again, guys! And thanks for the compliments! EDIT: I took up jervistetch 's solution for the s problem and have changed the story to use the ink blot to cover it. I had thought of using it as an indication that he, like I, had trouble coming up with an analogue for cabbages, but Jervistetch's solution strikes me as far more effective.
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Post by Nalkarj on May 3, 2017 23:10:39 GMT
By the way, brimfin , about the peacock puzzle... I'm still having trouble understanding it. Perhaps Pete can swoop in and help...
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Pete
Sophomore
@petermorris
Posts: 111
Likes: 30
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Post by Pete on May 3, 2017 23:26:22 GMT
The peacock poem. I find it ... surprising that you basically worked out the method, but don't understand the answer.
I saw a peacock. With a fiery tail, I saw a comet. Drop down hail, I saw a cloud. With ivy circled round, I saw a mighty oak tree. Creep along the ground, I saw a spider. Swallow up a whale, I saw the ocean. Full of ale, I saw a Venice glass. Sixteen foot deep, I saw a well. Full of their tears that weep, I saw their eyes. All in a flame of fire, I saw a house. As big as the Moon and higher, I saw the Sun. Out in the midst of night, I saw the man that saw this wondrous sight.
All of these are valid, grammatical sentences.
"With a fiery tail, I saw a comet" has the exact same meaning as "I saw a comet with a fiery tail."
Yoda, with his back to front speaking, would have found it obvious.
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Post by brimfin on May 3, 2017 23:49:51 GMT
I saw a peacock poem. Thought it would be a riddle sublime. But it turned out to be A collosal waste of my time.
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Post by Nalkarj on May 4, 2017 0:03:48 GMT
The peacock poem. I find it ... surprising that you basically worked out the method, but don't understand the answer.
I saw a peacock. With a fiery tail, I saw a comet. Drop down hail, I saw a cloud. With ivy circled round, I saw a mighty oak tree. Creep along the ground, I saw a spider. Swallow up a whale, I saw the ocean. Full of ale, I saw a Venice glass. Sixteen foot deep, I saw a well. Full of their tears that weep, I saw their eyes. All in a flame of fire, I saw a house. As big as the Moon and higher, I saw the Sun. Out in the midst of night, I saw the man that saw this wondrous sight.
All of these are valid, grammatical sentences.
"With a fiery tail, I saw a comet" has the exact same meaning as "I saw a comet with a fiery tail."
Yoda, with his back to front speaking, would have found it obvious.
Respectfully, Pete, that's not true. These are not valid, grammatical sentences, and "with a fiery tail, I saw a comet" does not have the same meaning as "I saw a comet with a fiery tail." The solution's sentences misplace their modifiers and leave them dangling. (The links are to sites that teach about misplaced and dangling modifiers.) According to the rules of English grammar, "with a fiery tail" is an adjectival phrase that needs to follow the noun it modifies--to wit, "a comet." Otherwise, we don't know if "with a fiery tail," as a phrase, modifies "I" or "a comet." Now, one can guess at the meaning without much trouble, but that does not mean that these sentences are valid or grammatical. The poem also fails to make much sense. "Full of their tears that weep, I saw their eyes"? Whose eyes? Who are "they"? The most sensible answer is that the word "they" refers to eyes on the feathers of the peacock, but that's not the answer. I still don't understand the answer. I may be a fool, but not for lack of trying to comprehend. The meaning is only that, if we change it, the fantastical elements will go away and be replaced by regular elements? That is not only unsatisfying but also what brimfin and I worked out from the get-go. All we missed were a few elements about punctuating it. Now, it's not your fault that Brimfin and I find this answer disappointing, Pete. You didn't make up the puzzle. Respectfully, I don't "find it...surprising" that I don't understand. But you should understand why we think it's disappointing and realize that the sentences are not grammatical. Salzmank
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Post by Nalkarj on May 4, 2017 0:11:05 GMT
I saw a peacock poem. Thought it would be a riddle sublime. But it turned out to be A collosal waste of my time. ( cont'd, with your permission, Brimfin) Ah! were wonders promised, how I looked in awe, peacocks danced on brainwaves; on my wits they'd gnaw. But now that I have gone and found the answer to the riddle I see in it, I'm sad to say, but a mere tarradiddle.
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Post by jervistetch on May 4, 2017 0:45:50 GMT
The Puzzle Murder Case Now this is a puzzle I can understand, unlike the peacock poem: When I first saw babbages, it made me think of cabbages. I wondered if maybe the puzzle was to shift each by one letter. When I tried shifting it around, it didn't work but the sounds reminded me of the Lewis Carroll poem, "The time has come, the walrus said, to think of many things. Of shoes and ships and ceiling wax, of cabbages and kings." And then I realized it was the words of the poem with one letter changed. If I replace the letters in the order of the words I get Wesck, the name of one of the suspects. But of course, he did it in a way that the killer would not know what he was doing. And he was addicted to puzzles, of course.
So Mrs. Wesck was the murderer, which Phil knew because it was the answer to the riddle, which he had solved.
Nice puzzle, salzmank. Glad I read Alice in Wonderland as a child. Excellent work! Both brimfin and jervistetch have got it! Sorry I don't have prizes, fellas. OK, I've got to work on my puzzle-writing skills. Perhaps I should do something else with cabbages? I couldn't think of what letter to change there, so I finally went with Babbage, who was a mathematician--but of course I needed an s, or it wouldn't finish out the Carroll quotation. Another thing I've been wondering: is the story quite fair to people who haven't read Carroll's books? They're favorites of mine, but I know some folks nowadays know the title but not the books--and haven't even seen the Disney adaptation. I was hoping that the mathematician and Anglican clues would do lead people towards Carroll even if they haven't read his books, though: LC was both. Anyway, congrats again, guys! And thanks for the compliments! EDIT: I took up jervistetch 's solution for the s problem and have changed the story to use the ink blot to cover it. I had thought of using it as an indication that he, like I, had trouble coming up with an analogue for cabbages, but Jervistetch's solution strikes me as far more effective. Thank you, Salzmank. Like with brimfin it was that one word that opened the door for me. Without that I would still be scratching my head. It was educational, though. I had never heard of mathematician Babbage so I looked him up. I guess without him we may not pecking at these keyboards now. I also was puzzled by your "another mathematician" line so I later looked up Lewis Carroll and, for the first time, learned that he was a mathematician, too.
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Post by Nalkarj on May 4, 2017 1:03:36 GMT
Excellent work! Both brimfin and jervistetch have got it! Sorry I don't have prizes, fellas. OK, I've got to work on my puzzle-writing skills. Perhaps I should do something else with cabbages? I couldn't think of what letter to change there, so I finally went with Babbage, who was a mathematician--but of course I needed an s, or it wouldn't finish out the Carroll quotation. Another thing I've been wondering: is the story quite fair to people who haven't read Carroll's books? They're favorites of mine, but I know some folks nowadays know the title but not the books--and haven't even seen the Disney adaptation. I was hoping that the mathematician and Anglican clues would do lead people towards Carroll even if they haven't read his books, though: LC was both. Anyway, congrats again, guys! And thanks for the compliments! EDIT: I took up jervistetch 's solution for the s problem and have changed the story to use the ink blot to cover it. I had thought of using it as an indication that he, like I, had trouble coming up with an analogue for cabbages, but Jervistetch's solution strikes me as far more effective. Thank you, Salzmank. Like with brimfin it was that one word that opened the door for me. Without that I would still be scratching my head. It was educational, though. I had never heard of mathematician Babbage so I looked him up. I guess without him we may not pecking at these keyboards now. I also was puzzled by your "another mathematician" line so I later looked up Lewis Carroll and, for the first time, learned that he was a mathematician, too. Of course, don't mention it. OK, I need to come up with another replacement for cabbages. It's the only one that gave me trouble, and it's still giving me trouble. I'd prefer it not to rhyme, as that makes it slightly more obvious, but then it wouldn't work. But I can't think of a single word that's one letter off from cabbages! Darn. The only thing I can do, I think, is capitalize every word (bringing us back to Babbage as a name) and use your ink blot idea to "singularize" it. Like Brimfin, I'm so happy I read both Alice books when young. Definitely some of my favorites.
If you're interested, I have some more long puzzles like that hanging around, saved on my laptop. I wrote most of them for parties and things like that--people tend to love short mysteries and riddles.
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Pete
Sophomore
@petermorris
Posts: 111
Likes: 30
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Post by Pete on May 4, 2017 1:42:37 GMT
Salzmank, I'm sorry you didn't like the riddle. But as for grammar ... You must have seen a wedding where the Groom said:
With this ring, I thee wed. With my body, I thee worship. With all my worldly goods, I thee endow.
Do you find this incomprehensible, or ungrammatical?
In one of my hints I said: "With this hint, I think you should get it."
Did you object to that grammatical formation?
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Post by jervistetch on May 4, 2017 1:48:00 GMT
This is all threatening to the brilliant life and legacy of Trad Anon.
EDIT: I just noticed that this was my upside down 666 Satan post. I think I'll have a drink to celebrate. To my Puzzle Pals!
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Post by Nalkarj on May 4, 2017 2:36:09 GMT
Salzmank, I'm sorry you didn't like the riddle. But as for grammar ... You must have seen a wedding where the Groom said:
With this ring, I thee wed. With my body, I thee worship. With all my worldly goods, I thee endow.
Do you find this incomprehensible, or ungrammatical?
In one of my hints I said: "With this hint, I think you should get it."
Did you object to that grammatical formation? Well, that depends. (Ready for this ? ) "With this ring, I thee wed" is an example of a phenomenon called hyperbaton. The OED defines it as "a figure of speech in which the customary or logical order of words or phrases is inverted, esp. for the sake of emphasis. Also, an example of this figure." Thus it's a figure of speech in which the regular or customary syntax is altered--it's unusual by its very nature and therefore to be used fixed phrases (e.g., "with this ring, I thee wed") rather than regular speech. (The regular sentence, keeping the archaic pronoun thee, would be "I wed thee with this ring.") Another point: this "Grammar Girl" article points out Yoda does not break up syntactic units. Adjectival phrases, like "with a fiery tail," count as syntactic units. Re: hyperbaton, which may be used in poetry, the same rule applies for modifiers that could potentially cause confusion in the sentence. Misplaced modifiers tend to come into play when the modifier is too far away from the noun it's modifying. The phrase "with a fiery tail" is closer to "I" than to "comet." Re: "with this ring, I thee wed," on the other hand, the adjectival phrase "with this ring" is closer to "I," the pronoun it's modifying. The groom--"I"--is the one who's wedding with the ring. That's not the case with "with a fiery tail, I saw a comet." Again, "with a fiery tail" is modifying the "I," not the comet. Incomprehensibility is not the point; I can understand the sentence, but it is ungrammatical. Again, Brimfin and I weren't attacking you (at all! ) when we criticized the poem-puzzle. I suppose we were both expecting something more surprising, more like a puzzle, in fact--that paradigm shift, or at least an attempt at one, that I've praised elsewhere. Thanks for letting us know about it, though, as I'd never heard of it--interesting concept, too. (I don't know exactly how much of this should go in spoilers, but, hey, better safe than sorry, huh?
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Post by Nalkarj on May 4, 2017 2:42:20 GMT
This is all threatening to the brilliant life and legacy of Trad Anon. EDIT: I just noticed that this was my upside down 666 Satan post. I think I'll have a drink to celebrate. To my Puzzle Pals! Very true! Believe it or not, I, not knowing to what "Trad Anon" referred, was actually doing anagrams, trying to figure out an author's name (I got "Don Taran"!) before I had the good sense that "anon" meant the simplest thing in the book, "anonymous." Yes, thus the error of overthinking... Merci pour le toast, mon vieux! Je vous remercie beaucoup. Bonne boisson!
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Post by Nalkarj on May 4, 2017 18:09:29 GMT
OK, well, Puzzle Pals (we've got to call ourselves that now--it sounds like a superhero team ["Puzzle Pals, Perambulate!"])--here I am with another one, if anyone's interested.
A wee bit shorter, you'll be glad to know.
One morning, you wake to find yourself on one side of a raging river. You see a bridge, which starts from the same source on your side but then breaks off into two sections. You see two powerful knights, both with long swords at their sides, each guarding one side of the bridge. Both knights' vizors are down, and you cannot see their faces. Now, you are very scared, naturally, and have no idea what any of this means. Suddenly, you hear a voice. You look down--it's your dog!
"Yes, I know it's a surprise that I can talk," your dog says, "but not about that now. You have to get across, but in order to do so, you have to decide which side to cross on. If you cross on the one, you'll go over safely. But if you cross on the other... Well..."
Your dog breaks off. You're fairly worried, of course, and say, "But how will I know?"
"Well," says the dog, "I have a riddle in my possession, written in the form of a poem, that will enable you to know which side to cross on--but even I haven't figured it out yet! Can you?"
Here is the riddle:
(Just so you know, you can trust what the dog says. He is telling the truth.)
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Post by jervistetch on May 4, 2017 19:38:49 GMT
I feel like I'm getting a contact high from this riddle, it's so insane. I'm not sure how to even begin to approach it, but approach it I shall. Thanks for the fresh challenge, Salzmank.
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Post by Nalkarj on May 4, 2017 19:49:09 GMT
I feel like I'm getting a contact high from this riddle, it's so insane. I'm not sure how to even begin to approach it, but approach it I shall. Thanks for the fresh challenge, Salzmank. A contact high, eh? Oh no! Seriously, I wrote the riddle first and then the story around it, as I thought of those old "choose your own adventure" books, so that may be why the tale's so wacky. Hope you like it, though!
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Post by tarathian123 on May 4, 2017 19:54:47 GMT
Can I clarify that the bridge is built in the form of a "Y" with a guard at each end of of the top of the Y?
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Post by Nalkarj on May 4, 2017 19:56:47 GMT
Can I clarify that the bridge is built in the form of a "Y" with a guard at each end of of the top of the Y? Yup, that's what I was thinking, but I couldn't articulate it!
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Post by tarathian123 on May 4, 2017 20:17:46 GMT
Re: Bridge riddle... When I put this into ode form from the places you put the hyphens, I'm left with:
Though I've searched through this and that, rushing, scuttling, through deep brush, yet the answer is not quite, absolutely for you, reader. Gain and pain, so say I, are our fruits of laboring. Ideas change and mush, crush, nipping, gnawing, like a rat.
The first letters of each line spell out "Try again" The last letters of each line spell out "the right"
That's as far as I've got, but... ...am I on the correct track?
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Post by Nalkarj on May 4, 2017 20:22:01 GMT
Re: Bridge riddle... When I put this into ode form from the places you put the hyphens, I'm left with:
Though I've searched through this and that, rushing, scuttling, through deep brush, yet the answer is not quite, absolutely for you, reader. Gain and pain, so say I, are our fruits of laboring. Ideas change and mush, crush, nipping, gnawing, like a rat.
The first letters of each line spell out "Try again" The last letters of each line spell out "the right"
That's as far as I've got, but... ...am I on the correct track? Not only that, but you've got it already! After these last two strike-outs, I should be sent back to the minor leagues, with my puzzle-writing skills.
Yes, the right is indeed the side of the bridge on which you should head across.
Very smart work--I thought the initial acrostich-acrostic would confuse people.
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Post by tarathian123 on May 4, 2017 20:31:50 GMT
Oh wow! Ok. Thanks. Comes of reading Holmes and Wimsey I guess.
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