Summer Puzzles

By Barry Evans fieldnotes@northcoastjournal.com

Every year at this time, I check what I’ve dumped into my “puzzles” folder over the past 12 months. Hope you enjoy them as much as you enjoy the one or two hours when the sun shines here in coastal Humboldt. I think it’s called “summer.” The first is about as counterintuitive as any puzzle I’ve seen.

Surviving the Toss

Alice and Bob have run afoul of the king, and are sentenced to be incarcerated in separate cells. They are told that every morning a guard will go first into Alice’s cell and toss a coin, then into Bob’s cell where he will do the same. Alice has to guess the outcome of the toss about to be witnessed by Bob, while Bob has to guess the result of Alice’s toss. They get to live another day if one or both of them guess correctly, otherwise they are executed. Immediately after sentencing, they managed to confer for a few seconds before being led away to their respective cells. What strategy did they agree upon to always avoid execution?

Family

A woman and her husband have five sons. Each son has a sister. How many in the family?

Geometry Quickie

You can do this in your head! What’s the radius of the semicircle?

Consonants

What’s an English word composed of eight consonants and one vowel?

Punch

A woman went to a party and left early after drinking some punch. Everyone else who stayed later drank the punch and died from poisoning. How did she survive?

Finally …

What gets wetter as it dries?

Answers on page 58. Barry Evans (he/him, barryevans9@ yahoo.com) has a “use it or lose it” approach to his brain. Hence puzzles.