Apologies if this has been posted before.
http://member.melbpc.org.au/~lborrett/computing/petals-bg.htm
Some people can work this out in second, while it takes others ages. It becomes annoying after a while when you cannot work it out.
When you work it out, don’t post how you did it.
What a fun puzzle! I got it in a minute or two. I won’t post the answer, but I will say not to overanalyze. It’s not as hard as you think.
I’m impressed with myself. I don’t usually get puzzles very quickly. Well, this one did take me about 4 minutes, but that’s quick for me. now to look for more victims, err, I mean players.
Took me about 10 minutes, which is good for me. Usually I just get frustrated because it always seems the author just picked some random set of rules. However, I can’t not know the answer either so generally things like this just drive me nuts.
This may sound strange but I figured it out from the name of the game, *then * I verified it by observation. (After the first understandable disappointment) Ain’t that a pip?
I spent maybe ten minutes or so on it – but what an awful ten minutes! Then the answer jumps out of nowhere, and you wonder how you didn’t see it nine minutes ago. Great puzzle.
All right, I just plain don’t get it. Could somone post the answer in spoilers?
she loves me, she loves me not…
Just a hint, not the solution. (only read it after you spend some time on it, tho)
does it have to do with fibonacci numbers?
This isn’t meant as a hint to the puzzle so much as a clarification of something in the article, but I’ll spoiler it anyway:
In the referenced article, the FRONT side of the dice are “what you rolled.” I got stuck for ages because I thought the TOP was the “rolled” number. That pesky real world intruding again, apparently those pictures are looking from the top down.
Ah, I’m such a sucker for spoilers. I was on the right track, but I had to read NoClue’s spoiler. Oh well, neat trick!
Timewinder - me too. That had me for about 10 minutes…
And, as an added bonus, here’s a similar puzzle (with solution) I encountered in my youth, suitable for kids/teenagers. This time the name isn’t significant. I’ll spoiler the whole things so that it doesn’t ruin the main puzzle by proxy. This works well in a group, using the same rules as the petals puzzle: let people who figure it out prove it by prediction rather than telling the answer.
As the “presenter” of the puzzle: Take seven forks, arrange them in a geometric pattern on a table, then withdraw your hands to the edge of the table a few inches away, and announce a number. Repeat with different patterns and numbers. To make it harder, seem to make subtle distinctions (tines up/down, reverse fork direction, make trivial “straightening” adjustment that changes the number, etc. Actual answer: the number of fingers (0-10) you have resting on the edge of the table after the adjustment. Note: as with the classic magician’s redirections, you don’t have to move your hands very far away–it will take some time before people start looking around. Also, once you’re down to the last few folks who haven’t “gotten it,” try having the answer change WITHOUT TOUCHING THE FORKS as a hint. As with the petals puzzle, people rarely feel cheated when they get it, usually there’s a great sense of accomplishment.
Never mind, I got it.
God, that’s frustrating.
I wound up going to Google and spoiling myself, in the interest of getting some sleep in the next week or so.
This is a stupid fucking puzzle. If you’ve played the original Silent Hill, this is similar to the zodiac puzzle near the end of the game.
One of Spider Robinson’s books had a description of coming up with an answer to a hard problem. That moment of realization is like getting hit right between the eyes with a very heavy sledgehammer, just before the pain registers.
Now I know what that means! I had half of it, but kept getting it wrong, and almost gave it up as a wrong track, until the “click” happened, then I scrolled down the page, keeping the answer just below the bottom margin, gave my answer, checked it, and started getting them all right.
Very nice, thanks!
Spent 15 or 20 minutes on it last night with no luck. Got it instantly this morning. I guess sleeping on it really does work.
Yar! My Captain! If’n you still be stuck, e-mails me, an’ I’ll… enlighten you.
A dedicated web search will also work, don’t ye know.
After spending inordinate amounts of time on this, I showed it to a friend who got it in under a minute, and then told me the secret.
I’ve never felt this stupid.
This turned into a two-part puzzle for me: Figuring out the answer, and then figuring out what the hell it had to do with roses.
I saw it almost instantly, and I’m generally very bad at this sort of thing. I’ve got a 100% accuracy rate, but I feel my mental algorithm is fairly stupid – and so is the game, by extension. Would somebody who knows the answer comment in spoilers on this half-answer?
Only two dice “count,” and they’re both odd numbers. The solution is based on a simple attribute of the two dice which count.