Hi guzzlers,
The first two puzzles today come from reader Gabriella Horvath, who lives in Hungary. She first came across them in her childhood, during the Soviet-backed socialist regime, at a time when many people smoked, and when military service was compulsory. Match puzzles about soldiers were guaranteed entertainment.
In the picture below the matchbox is the barracks and each matchstick is a guard. The guards are arranged in groups of three, such that when the sergeant drives once around the guards to check that they are all there he sees two rows of 9 guards (the top and bottom rows), and two columns of 9 guards (the left and right columns).
Puzzle 1. Four guards sneak off to the cinema with four women. How can the remaining guards rearrange themselves so that when the sergeant drives around he still sees two rows of 9 guards and two columns of 9 guards?
Puzzle 2. The four guards and the four women return to the barracks. The sergeant suddenly appears. How can all the guards and the extra women fit around the barracks so that the sergeant still sees two rows of 9 guards and two columns of 9 guards? We can assume that the women have time to slip into guard uniforms, and so are indistinguishable from them.
The final puzzle is a hundred years old, from the vault of the Dude: British puzzlist Henry Ernest Dudeney.
Puzzle 3. Place 3 matches on the table so they support the matchbox on top of them. The heads of the matches must not touch the table, nor each other, nor the matchbox. (Nor can the matches protrude from the edge of the table).
I’ll be back at 5pm with the solutions. NO SPOILERS!
If you like match puzzles, I have included a few lovely ones in my puzzle book Can You Solve My Problems?, which is recently out in paperback.
I set a puzzle here every two weeks on a Monday. Send me your email if you want me to alert you each time I post a new one. I’m always on the look-out for great puzzles. If you would like to suggest one, email me.
