Discover Boggler, October 2000


	The Discover Boggler By Scott Kim

Oct 2000
20/20 Visions

For the 20th anniversary issue of Discover magazine all of us columnists wrote articles on the theme of twenty.

20 Trees. The first puzzle of planting 10 trees in 5 rows of 4 is a classic. I played around with it to make harder variations.

20 Questions. The best known game featuring the number 20 is 20 questions. So I worked to find a version of 20 questions that would make a good puzzle.

Many readers wrote in that I had left out some answers. Here they are.

Here is a computer program for finding all the answers, sent in by XXX

20 Painted Houses. Problem 2 is based on the puzzle Fire Ritual from the Obsidian Web puzzles, which was in turn based on the Obsidian Web Puzzle Nanobots, which was a twist on the Obsidian Web Puzzle Floating Paradise. I have been told that problem 1 is an existing classic puzzle, though I had never seen it. The last puzzle is quite hard; one of the people who tested it found a better solution than the one I found.