On 15th April 1892 Obadiah Squelch left his tomato processing factory for the last time. Inside 200 cans labelled "Finest Tinned Tomatoes". Who had committed this dreadful crime?
The Police brought in the Twig And Leaf Division (Special Branch) to investigate the case. It was a brief case.
Within minutes they had reduced the suspect list to six. After a further two hours they had ruled out suicide, so that left just five. Now they need your help to solve the mystery.
The suspect list:
The Police returned to the scene of the crime with three chickens and a cockerel. They were the Four Hens-ic Scientists. Closer examination at the factory revealed a pool of red liquid around the tomato juice extractor. But it was already in the papers. It had been leaked by the press.
The headlines next day relayed the story to the world:
In fact, all the papers got it wrong. So who killed Obadiah Squelch?
1) Answer
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The diagram below shows a pattern made up of squares:
How many squares can be found in the pattern?
1) Answer
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Hungry Horace recently went on a Sponsored Walk to raise funds for new equipment at the local Hospital. His sponsor form looked like this:
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Name |
Amount Per Mile |
Total |
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Fat Freda |
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Dim Jim |
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Tall Tanya |
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Silly Cilla |
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C.U.Jimmy |
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Albert Bodge |
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Roland Heap |
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Nice Nigel |
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Merlin Shriek |
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Carol Singer |
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Altogether Horace collected £22.00 from his sponsors. How far did he walk?
1) Answer
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Look at the triangle of six pennies below:
I want to turn this triangle upside-down, so that it looks like this:
What is the smallest number of coins I must move?
1) Answer
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Here is an ordinary cross. You are allowed to make two straight cuts across it.
How do you cut it to make the most pieces?
1) Answer
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The Birthday Cake has all gone but there are twelve piles of Smarties left. Each pile is held together by icing so can't be split up. Most of the guests have gone, but Hungry Horace and his two friends want to share out the Smarties equally.
Can you share out the piles so that everybody gets 25 Smarties each?
1) Answer
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Hungry Horace like to save money whenever he can (so that he's got plenty left to buy more food) so when he went swimming with some of his friends he had a clever idea to use the weighing machine to weigh him and his two friends for only one 10p coin!
Once the weighing machine has shown a reading the dial can only go down to a lower weight. So this is what horace did. He and his two friends sorted themselves out in order of weight (they knew that Horace was the heaviest and that Tiny Tim was the lightest), and then followed this plan:
Find the correct individual weights of Hungry Horace, Curly Kate and Tiny Tim.
1) Answer
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Welcome to the strange mind of Eureka Blip. He does not always think the same way as we do, but he does always have his own logical set of rules. One of his favourite tricks is to say the opposite of what he really means. Recently I had a conversation with him, which went like this:
"Good morning, Eureka, how are you?"
"Go away. I feel absolutely dreadful."
"What are you thinking about today?"
"I am not thinking of any number at all."
"Is your number less than 50?"
"No. It is greater than 50, and it is a prime number."
"Is it less than 26?"
"Yes, and it is an even number."
"And it's not a square number?"
"Correct."
"Thank you, Eureka. Goodbye."
"Please. Hello."
What was Eureka Blip thinking of?
1) Answer
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In Hungry Horace's kitchen there were three tins. Each tin contained three delicious cakes:
One night Horace crept into the kitchen, opened the three tins, and ate three of the cakes.
The surprising thing was, when Horace went back to bed, each tin still contained three cakes.
How did he do it? Were they REALLY magic cakes?
1) Answer
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I have 10 gold bars, but one of them is a fake. The only way I know which is which is that the fake one is a different weight from all the others. Fortunately Hungry Horace has a pair of scales which will compare two piles of gold bars:
Each time I use the scales, though, Horace charges me £1. How can I find out which is the fake gold bar with the smallest number of weighings?
1) Answer
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Father Christmas has to visit a lot of homes on Christmas Eve when he is out delivering presents. He usually gets a glass of sherry and a mince pie at each house too. Now, Father Christmas can manage the sherry, but finds eating all those mince pies quite difficult. So Hungry Horace helps him out.
Last year Father Christmas finished his rounds with lots of mince pies to spare. He gave 25 million (25 000 000) to Hungry Horace. It takes Horace just 10 seconds to eat a mince pie. How long did it take him to eat all 25 million? An hour? A day? A week?
1) Answer
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Last month I sent off for one of those kits which you can use to make your own Christmas Crackers. The kit contained:
All the other parts were the same type. The kit contained enough bits for 50 crackers. Can I make each cracker different from all the others?
1) Answer
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According to the traditional song, on the first day of Christmas (25th December), my true love sent to me:
On the second day of Christmas (26th December), my true love sent to me THREE presents:
On the third day of Christmas (27th December and so on) my true love sent to me SIX presents:
This carries on until the the twelfth day of Christmas, when my true love sends me:
After the twelve days of Christmas are over, how many presents has my true love sent me altogether?
1) Answer
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1) Answer
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No. 1 : "The Mysterious Murder Of Obadiah
Squelch"
The answer lies in the very last piece of information you are given:
ALL the papers got it wrong. Let's take each one in turn and see what
it tells us.
BRANFLAKE BILL AND VLOK SVAGEN RUIN
OBADIAH'S DAY
This suggests that Bill and Vlok did it. The paper is wrong, so we
can rule out those two.
O SQUELCH GOES DIRTY HARRY IN TROUBLE
Dirty Harry is therefore NOT in trouble, so it can't be him
either.
SUN SAYS DEN AND PETE ARE INNOCENT
The opposite of this is that Den and Pete are two
suspects.
WHO CANNED OBADIAH? PERSIL PETE GETS CLEAN
SHEET IN TRIAL
The opposite of getting a clean sheet is being found
guilty.
So it was Persil Pete!
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No. 2: "Who Squares Wins"
There are 24 squares of various sizes, as this breakdown diagram
illustrates:
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No. 3: "Fund Raising Fun"
Altogether Horace collected £22.00 from his sponsors. £10.00 of that came from Tanya, Albert and Nigel, so that means the others paid him £12.00. Adding up the Amount Per Mile column we see that Horace was sponsored £1.00 per mile altogether. That means he walked 12 miles to raise his £12.00, giving him the required £22.00 in total.
No. 4: "Pure Coin-cidence"
It is necessary only to move two coins, as the diagrams
reveal:
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No. 5: "Cutting Across A Cross"
This is one way of making six pieces with two cuts. I couldn't do any better!
The diagram below shows one way to group the Smarties so that Horace and his friends get 25 each.
Steps 1 and 2 tell us that Curly Kate is 10 kg heavier than Tiny Tim. Step 3 therefore tells us that Tim is 25 kg and Kate is 35 kg. Similarly we can work out that Hungry Horace is 15 kg heavier than Curly Kate. So Horace is 50 kg.
No. 8: "The Strange Mind Of Eureka
Blip"
Let's "translate" Eureka's words so that they say what he means:
"Good morning, Eureka, how are you?"
"Come and join me. I feel fine."
"What are you thinking about today?"
"I am thinking of a number."
"Is your number less than 50?"
"Yes. It is less than 50, but it is not a prime number."
"Is it less than 26?"
"No, but it is an odd number"
"And it's not a square number?"
"Wrong. It IS a square number."
"Thank you, Eureka. Goodbye."
"Thank you. Goodbye."
There is only one square number between 26 and 50 which is odd, and that's the answer:
Eureka was thinking of the number 49.
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No. 9: "Horace's Magic Cakes"
Horace ate the cakes in the large tin, then he put the middle tin into the empty tin.
So when Horace went back to bed, every tin contained three cakes again!
No. 10: "The Way Out Weigh-In"
To avoid paying Hungry Horace too much money for the use of his scales, I had to do a bit of clever thinking! The first thing I did was to weigh three bars on one side against three bars on the other. If they balanced, I would know all six were good; if they did not balance I would know that the remaining four were good. Either way it would take me only two more weighings to find the bad one (the fake). Let us take each scenario:
The First Weighing Balances
We have six good and four suspect bars. Weigh three suspect ones
against three good ones. If they balance, then of course the fourth
suspect bar is the bad one. If the second weighing shows the suspect
bars to be heavy, then weigh one of the three heavy suspect bar
against another. The pan which goes down on this third weighing
contains the bad bar. If this third weighing balances, then clearly
the third suspect bar is bad. An analogous situation arises if the
second weighing shows the (3) suspect bars to be light.
The First Weighing Goes Down on the Left
Either the left pan is too heavy or the right pan is too light.
Either way the remaining four bars are good. If we label the bars ABC
in the left pan, DEF in the right and GHIJ the remaining good ones
then it becomes easier to follow!
Second weighing: AB against CD. If it balances then either E or F is too light. Third weighing E against F to test.
If AB is heavier than CD, then A is heavy, B is heavy or D is light. Weigh BD against GH to find out.
If AB is lighter than CD, then C is heavy or D is light. Weigh C against G to test.
The First Weighing Goes Down on the Right
Interchange the words "heavy" and "light" in the paragraph above!
I made it about 7 years, 338 days, 12 hours, 26 minutes and 40 seconds!
No. 12: "Absolutely Christmas
Crackers"
3 x 4 x 4 = 48. Sadly at least two crackers must be exact duplicates of ones already made.
No. 13: "12 Days Of Christmas"
1 + 3 + 6 + 10 + 15 + 21 + 28 + 36 + 45 + 55 + 66 + 78 = 364 presents
- more than enough to keep me going until the following Christmas!
Stephen Froggatt February 1999