monica's puzzles

Disclaimer: No stick dogs were harmed in the writing of this post.

The other day, we had a forum thing for our exposure trip next week. It was held in one of the very few air conditioned rooms in the school. Naturally, the thought of a cold room brought me a sense of comfort and a bit of eagerness to go to the forum. I was willing to sit through 3 hours of pure boredom for the cold. You see, in the classroom, I sit in a place no electric fan could reach so 3 hours of cold is like a ray of golden sunshine. Except it's cold.

Dark blue lines show the areas that are blessed with the gift of the electric fan.

So imagine my frustration when I found out that oh, hey, THERE'S NO ELECTRICITY.

Turns out, the power's been out for the past two classes but I didn't notice because of my location in the classroom.

To make things worse, our boring Social Studies teacher was the one giving the forum. He has a dragging voice that can lull anybody to sleep in less than 10 minutes.

No electricity + no mic + boring Soc Sci teacher = sleepy me. (Well, it's not really just me.)

I would've been bored out of my mind to the point of insanity if not for my seatmate, Monica. Yeah... we weren't (still aren't btw) close so at first it was a bit awkward. But we got to talk about our childhood games and she told me about the puzzles/brain teasers her dad used to make her solve. We were working on the puzzles for 3 hours. It was crazy fun. (But again, I am shallow and I was willing to do anything to distract myself from the forum.)

My favorite puzzle included a dog and some toothpicks (teethpick?). But of course, we didn't use actual toothpicks.

This is the toothpick dog:

I was supposed to make him turn around and face the right by moving only 2 toothpicks.

My first attempt:

She said it was wrong and that the tail had to be up. So I told her the dog got mad when I forced it to turn the other way. She told me the dog's just a drawing and so it doesn't feel. I accused her of animal cruelty.

My second attempt:

I added a female dog and made her bark (move 1) then wave (move 2) to try to seduce the dog to turn around.

So Monica told me that I wasn't allowed to add anything. I told her she didn't understand love.

So since the dog was a total snob to my totally hot dog drawing, I decided it was gay. Or a bitch (HEHE SEE WHAT I DID THERE?).

My third attempt:

With the help of science and genetics, I was able to come up with a brilliant solution.I mutated the dog to grow two heads. One facing the right, one facing the left. But like every other good thing, there's a price. The dog had to lose its feet. Three of them.

Monica stared at me for a few moments before responding.Then she accused me of animal cruelty. All she was asking me to do was make it turn around, but I injured it and caused irreversible damage. For the sake of science!!

After some time, I ran out of possible explanations for the weird shapes I formed with the lines and I gave up.

The correct answer

Cute. Very cute.

Afterwards, I felt so stupid.



Lesson learned: Dogs are useful in math.












Some more puzzles:

Trace over all the points in four lines
(4 moves) that do not curve

Pretend it's a dustpan with, er... dust.
Take out the dust by moving only 2 sticks.
You're not allowed to touch the dirt.

PS: If I screwed up my grammar/spelling/pronunciation (because I am the voice in your head and you can hear me say poignant) more than once, frogive (<-intentional) me for it's midnight and I'm barely awake.