INTELLECT SHARPENERS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22195, 23 February 1934, Page 3

INTELLECT SHARPENERS

Written for the Otago Daily Times By 0. J. Wherefore. [Correspondence should be addressed to Box 1177, Wellington.] ANAGRAM. In the lines given below the three spaces are to be filled with words composed of the same four letters: — We stood in the blockhouse, the Capspoke, This looks like a— — if I'm right, That one-legged pirate, John . Silver, has come With a flag that is meant to be » white. I won't be a -- of elegant words, I'll pitch in a broadside red hot, Be to take cover the next time we meet, Because if you're seen you'll be shot. POCKET MONEY. A boy left home with a rather limited amount of pocket money, and at the first shop he visited he spent one penny more than a third of this amount. At the second shop he spent one penny less than a third of the remainder. When he left this shop he missed one coin, which meant a serious loss to him, because it amounted to more than a quarter of hie cash in hand. This did not prevent him from continuing to spend what he had, and at the third shop he parted with; one penny less than . three-quarters of the amount which he supposed to be °all he possessed. Then on the way home he found the missing coin in another pocket, and with this he still retained one-quarter of the sum with which he had started shopping. The problem is to discover what was the value of the coin which he mislaid. - ' : ARMCHAIR PROBLEMS. Two wire fences are the boundaries of a road, and are 66 feet apart. .They, are parallel to one another, and in each of them the spaces between the standards are eight feet. A person standing a short distance off the road, and looking across it at a right angle to the direction of the fences, sees three spaces in the further fence enclosed between two of the standards which are ewht feet apart in the nearer fence. How far is the observer distant from the nearest fence? In the year 1920 the ages of Mr F. and his daughter were to one another ae 8 is to 3. Four years later the daughter married, and a year after that gave birth to a son. In 1935 the mother will be three times as old as her son. What will Mr IVs age be when his grandson reaches his twenty-first birthday? In a certain street in a suburb there are five residents who are very friendly with one another. Mr White's house is the eighth up the street from Mr Black s, and Mr Rose's house is the seventh-dpwn the street from Mr Green's. Mr White s house is the thirteenth up the street from Mr Rose's, and Mr Scarlets is the third down from Mr Green's, i How far apart are the houses of Mr Scarlet and Mr Black?

ANOTHER PROBLEM IN WORDS. The four gentlemen who have on previous occasions shown so much pleasure in mystifying one . another - with wordpuzzles, were heard again a few days ago. i The first looked up from the magazine i he had been reading, and spoke of a word of three syllables he had just met, m which the second letter can be changed twice. The word itself, he explained, means simply skill or ability,. but the first change gives it the .meaning of a high position, and the second a position of another kind. Number 2 spoke of a word of four syllables, in which the third letter can be changed but only once. * I see it here in the report of a governing body, but when the change is made, it means a condition of no government. Number 3 said" that his word contained only three syllables, and it is the fourth letter that can be changed.. In . the original form it meant a friendly agreement, and the change made it into something altogether unfriendly. Number 4 asked his friends to think of a word ol only seven letters, in'which the middle letter can be changed. The meaning of both words, he said, is approximately the same—that is they are not exactly synonyms, but a person writing a message df sympathy could choose, to use either of them. Readers are invited to discover these words and their changes. A CRICKET MATCH. A cricket match was played between two schools, A and Z. The A team was chiefly dependent on one batsman, X, and in the first innings he scored three runs more than the total of the other 10 men. In the second innings he made 24 moie than in the first, and in fact his score was one-fifth of the total obtained bv al": 11 men in this innings. The highest scorer in the Z team obtained oneninth of all the runs made in both innings, although his two efforts added together were only 12 more than the score made- by X in the first innings. For the sake of simplifying this problem, it is. supposed that there were no extras. Readers are invited to find which- side won. ""SOLUTIONS TO, LAST WTEEK'S PROBLEMS. Anagram.—Miles. Smile, Slime. Combination Lock—There are 16777296 combinations. Who Went to the Dance?—Mabel, Mavis. Freda, Rose, and Nora. Timber Problem—Thirty of 18 feet, 15 of 16 feet, and 15 of 14 feet. Armchair Problems. — (1) Each piece weighed one-seventh of a pound. (2) Mr 15. 7'? inches; Mr W, 64. inches. Both Ends Meet.—lt was stated that it can be shown that a solution exists,> but it wag left to readers to discover that this can only be the case if the sum of H and S equals 10. The answer is 2309 plus 4631, equals 7440.