Category / A riddle!

by zbicyclist

Checkmate!

Kilby sent in this double puzzler:

“When I wrote Leigh Rubin to point out that one of the three checkers should already have been doubled to form a ‘king’, he mentioned that he had submitted the comic to the syndicate with a caption, but that this caption never made it to the published version.”

Puzzle #1:

Submit a caption that might fit this cartoon.

Puzzle #2:

Assuming the pieces can move (and capture) only according to their own “rules”, which side would win the endgame shown in the comic?

The knight, as white, should have the first move. In checkers, red goes second. Now, if we assume the knight is at a1, then the checker at c1 should have been made a king. So, we need to assume that the knight is at h8, and the red checkers have to start by moving away down the board.

OR, you can assume the red checker has just gotten to c1, and is being crowned as we speak; this puts the knight at a1.

The history of these games can also be discussed in the comments.

By the way, I’m on chess.com as zbicyclist; anyone like a game?

by EditorM

Frazz riddle … conclusion

Did you catch the posting earlier today, Frazz riddle … answered soon ? It incorporated the Monday and Tuesday strips from last week, where one of the kids tells Frazz that she is giving her dad a vacation, and it cost only nine bucks. She adds a clue, that she could have spent twice as much but then it would have lasted just half as long. Oooh, paradox!

The Tuesday strip shows Frazz asking “Where will he go for $9? What will he see?” and the student answering “Nowhere. And nothing new. Just in a whole new way.” Evidently still in clue mode.

But the the Wednesday strip goes right to the answer. And Thursday and Friday just round off the story. Here they are:

P.S. It wasn’t quite done as of that Friday installment. It continued for one more, on Saturday. (But Monday — and probably not Tuesday either, but this will be already posted by then, so … who would care?). Here is the Saturday strip:

by EditorM

Frazz riddle … answered soon

Monday’s strip seemed to be the start of one of those extended riddles Frazz sometimes undertakes (such as with Halloween characters).

How can a vacation cost just nine bucks? And why would one costing twice as much last only half as long? Hmmm, put on your thinking caps.

Tuesday continued the riddling, with maybe a small bit of new clue:

And then what on Wednesday? Further clueage, helpful but not giving it all away?

Nope, Wednesday’s strip directly gave the solution! Then Thursday and Friday rounded out the story. (I’m writing this on Friday so it remains to be seen if there will be more of this tale next week. But you are reading this on Tuesday or later, so you’ll already know…)

On the off chance some CIDUers are seeing this but haven’t seen these Frazz strips, can we do something to allow for puzzle-solving and speculation in the comments here, but still give the solution? Well, ideas like throwing in tons of vertical space are not really effective. And that time we tried protecting a spoiler with that sliding-panel image-comparison gizmo was broken on some people’s platforms, and is anyhow a pretty flimsy test of patience.

Well, fine. The next three strips from this series will be in a separate post, this afternoon. Meanwhile, feel free to opine here on how that bargain vacation would work!