The Riddles

The Dominoes on the Checkerboard

You are given a checkerboard and 31 dominoes. Each domino covers exactly two adjacent squares of the checkerboard (either horizontally or vertically, but not diagonally). You are asked by a psychotic gunman to arrange the dominoes in such a way that the upper-left and lower-right corner squares of the board remain uncovered but every other square is concealed by the dominoes. Is such an arrangement possible?

A - Yes
E - No

The answer to this riddle is E - No. Notice that there are equal numbers of black and red squares on a checkerboard. When you put down a domino, you cover one black and one red square, no matter what orientation you try. But to cover all but two opposite corner squares would mean covering an unequal number of red and black squares. This just can't happen. That psychotic gunman with the nice manners will be very upset.

The Triangular Lot

A plot of land with sides of length 55 yards, 117 yards, and 62 yards is put up for sale at a price of $9 per square yard. If 9% tax is added on to the total sale price and the result is taken to the nearest dollar, what is the last digit of the number of dollars of the final cost?

H - 1
I - 2
J - 3
K - 4
L - 5
M - 6
N - 7
O - 8
P - 9
Q - 0

The answer to this one is R - Zero. The sides which are 55 and 62 yards add up to 117 yards, the same length as the third side. Therefore the "triangle" is just a line segment - the area is zero! Furthermore, the 9% tax on zero is zero, even in America.

The Floating Ladder

An aluminum ladder hangs off the edge of a ship. The ladder is three meters long, with rungs 1/3 meter apart. If the tide rises 1/2 meter each hour, and two rungs are already submersed, how many rungs will be covered after four hours?
T - 7 rungs
F - 8 rungs
J - 9 rungs
X - None of the above
P - Roosters don't lay eggs

The answer here is X - None of the above. The ladder is attached to a floating boat; as the tide rises, so does the ladder.

The Two Trains

If two trains (one with a mass of 14,500 kg leaving Denver at 2:50 am, and the other with five tuba players, twelve tap-dancing pigeons, and their groupies, all singing "Koombayah") are traveling toward the sun at an alarming velocity, then (neglecting air friction) what is my favorite number?
B - 3.14
B - 4444
B - 26,987,489,910
B - 0
B - 0.0000000
B - None, some, or all of the above

Our best guess on this one is B. We're not exactly sure which one. The author of this riddle was killed in a tragic boating accident, when he was hit by a floating decimal point.

The Labors

The First Labor - GRIB

The Puzzle Booklet said to solve the above riddles on the way to the Galleria, and to do task GRIB when you got there:

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GRIB

Enter The Fun Shop with your hand out of sight, and ask them if they've sold your severed fingers yet, because you want them back.

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On doing this, the clerk gave an envelope containing a sheet of paper with a 5 x 6 grid, some squares empty, some with letters, and four numbered, corresponding to the four riddles solved earlier.



Inserting the four solutions to the riddles into the correspondingly numbered squares on the grid, then reading left to right, top to bottom, yielded the message, "DO BEXR TASK."



The Second Labor - BEXR

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BEXR

Go to a cashier at McDonald's, with all the team members announcing in unison, "Two all-beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions on a sesame-seed bun."

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Those teams that did this received a "Special" Happy Meal. The box contained a bag of purple candy, and a slip of paper with four colored squares - green, orange, purple, and yellow - each labeled with a different task code.

For those of you who thought this puzzle was just too easy and thought the answer was purple, sorry - if you actually ate the candy, you realized that it was orange flavored. The orange square was labeled with the task code THEW.

The Third Labor - THEW

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THEW

Go into Circus World, and ask the cashier for a condom for a Ken doll.

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Yes, really. If you did this, the cashier gave you another envelope, this one contining a transparency the same size as your original 5 x 6 grid of paper. The transparency also had a grid on it, with some letters, some blank squares, and this time some solid squares.



Examining the transparency alone gave no message, but placing it on top of the paper grid and aligning the grids caused some letters from the paper to be blocked out, and allowed others to shoe through. The combined message of the two layers read, "GOOD JOB NEXT DO SURK."



The Fourth Labor - SURK

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SURK

Go to the desk at Macy's electronics department and ask if there's an After-School Special showing today, and if they mind if you watch it there.

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If you performed this task, Macy's let you back to watch a special videotape thaey was showing. This wasn't exactly an After School Special - it was us (with a special cameo appearance by Dr. Stevenson as Dr. Seuss). Each scene of this fanciful news report about the life of Dr. Seuss contained exactly one letter of the alphabet, at varying levels of subtlety. Eventually, the letters spelled out, "THE ONLY CLUE HERE IS XKAO."

The Fifth Labor - XKAO

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XKAO

Go to the cashier at Gap Kids and ask to try on a pair of socks, using only hand and body gestures.

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If you did this, you received another transparency.



Combined with the other two layers, gave you the message, "OK NOW FORL."



The Sixth Labor - FORL

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FORL

Go to the main desk at Sam Houston Book Store and enunciate, "The fish is in the sea. And so is my nose. Help me - I can't breathe. Cleanly."

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This was the last step of the puzzle. Completing this task yielded an envelope containing a wet paper towel in a baggie. Applying the towel to the transparencies removed some of the letters and some of the solid squares, but left others behind - some of the ink on the transparencies was waterproof, and some was water-soluble.



After stacking the three layers up again, the resulting message left behind was the solution to this puzzle: "GOFAL." This word can be found in the Findivver Table of Elements, and is the solution to this puzzle.