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Mind Games enters the labyrinthine world of maze-type puzzles with a red-brick road to the stars. Plus a mental camel race and a jewellery dilemma!
17. The great camel race
Once upon a time, in a desert kingdom, two young men were rivals for the love of a beautiful princess. The princess, who had a wicked sense of humour, proposed they settle things by racing their camels to a distant oasis. But it would be a race with a difference: she’d marry the suitor whose camel came LAST.
The young men dawdled for days in the desert, each waiting for the other to take the lead. Eventually, seeing a wise woman under a palm tree, they dismounted from their camels and desperately asked for her advice.
After hearing her words, they immediately leapt onto the camels and raced as fast as they could to the oasis.
What did the wise woman tell them?
18. Linking up
You’ve inherited four gold chains from a great-aunt. The chains are quite short – only three links each – but if you joined them together, they’d make an attractive circular bracelet with 12 links in it. The links are tricky to cut. What’s the smallest number of cuts you must make to produce your bracelet?
19. Red block road
Can you make a “road” of red blocks connecting the two stars – by colouring in only four white squares? The blocks must touch along their sides: diagonal connections (at the corners) don’t count.
- Compiled by Olivia Rose-Innes and Senora Sine Thirteen, Health24, July 2011
References:
Adrian Fisher, The Amazing Book of Mazes, Thames & Hudson, London / Harry N Abrams Inc, New York, 2006
Jeff Saward, Labyrinths and Mazes, Gaia Books Ltd, 2003
Penelope Reed Doob, The Idea of the Labyrinth: from Classical Antiquity through the Middle Ages, Cornell University Press, 1992
The block maze and its solution were adapted from images created by Wikimedia Commons user Efbrazil, and are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.
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