Aug 15, 2011 One Word Wonder Puzzle

Edit: removed comment

Do we have to be familiar with where those things come from?

Yeah, what game are these from? I'm wondering if we need to know the specific name for each object/card.

Dang it, rolled a 7.

And where are the development cards? I've won quite a few games with 2 cities + largest army + 4 VP.

Everything you need is shown.

Nice solution writeup (and a very nice puzzle too).

6th. If I didn't abbreviate in my notes when solving, then I would have been faster (though I don't know if my position would have improved....)

[3] No you don't. All info you need is provided.

[3] FWIW, this is from Settlers of Catan, with the expansions. All info that you NEED, however, is in the puzzle.

Nice one! I like the games, so that helped me a bit.

So we don't need to know the specific names of the objects? I've never played this game so I don't know which words are the proper ones: stone/brick, wheat/grain, wood/lumber, etc.

[2] [3] Even though I *am* very familiar with this game (Settlers of Catan), I completely relied on the "Building Costs" given in the puzzle as [5] referred to (I always forget what costs what).

I suppose without that familiarity I would have taken an extra 1/2 minute or 1 minute to understand the setup, but you can say that about just about any themed puzzle IMO.

[11] No ... all needed info is provided.

Yahtzee!

You solved this puzzle in 13 minutes and 1 second and were the 50th Tanga member to solve it.

[2] [3] All the information you need is provided.

Edit - I see several other have beaten me to it.

[2] The puzzle is entirely self-contained.

I liked this puzzle a lot.

*grumble* I REALLY need to learn how to count to 2!!!! *sigh*

(Very nice puzzle, spamwise - *thumbs up*)

Do the numbers on the right get used at all? Tried using them at first but they don't match the number of supplies on top. So then I switched to trying to make it match the number of supplies on top. Stuck at that point since Tanga-ing gives me gibberish.

tried every (obviously not) permutation i can think of to no avail.....
thanks [23] appreciate it.....

There is one unstated assumption that you must make right off the bat in order to solve this puzzle. Also, you should ignore the "..." in the puzzle text, which is very misleading.

I had a lot of fun with this one even if I kept messing up my building costs. I took a different approach than that given in the solution, partially because I didn't assume that all the cards up top would necessarily be used.

And I wish that the items to be built had been sorted differently. The solution assumes you will solve it in the same manner as spamwise. If you don't, you'll find yourself anagramming to make sense of the letters you get.

The puzzle is not unlike a logic puzzle and anytime I've ever read the solution to a logic puzzle, I have never, ever solved it the "intended" way. But the anagram is my only complaint. I am not familiar with the game but it didn't hold me up in the least. It's a great puzzle beautifully presented.

Reminds me of working logic puzzles.

[18], [19] The numbers on the right tell you the amounts of things that you are building. You have to figure out what thing goes with which amount. The idea is to spend all your resources (the cards at the top). I'm sure this will get flagged if too salty.

Did anyone else pull out their deck of resource cards to help with this one?

I really liked this one! Heard lots of good things about the game; have to go out and get it sometime.

Thanks for a fun one, spamwise!

great puzzle

[21] ugh, had it the whole time but didn't think to anagram! thanks.

[23] i think that's pretty salty..

[23] makes me think that knowledge of the game would have helped me a bit. As I said in [21], I did not assume that all resources needed to be spent. I might have solved it differently if I had. I enjoyed working it in the manner I did nonetheless.

edit: yeah, [27], those letters sure don't look like they'd spell something, do they? lol - I only anagrammed because I had checked my work backwards and forwards twice and figured it was worth a shot.

[2],[3], actually, the one thing people might need to know if they haven't played the game is that resource cards (the stacks of things at the top) are spent, not kept, when you build something.You probably figured that out, but just in case...

Well I've got all the buildings matched to their number, but I can't figure out a way to Tanga that gives me a word.

There's not another solution to this, is there? I can't get a word out of the way I did it, even with anagramming!

[31] I built stuff in a different order than spamwise did. Since the build order did not seem deterministic to me, I left the items to be built in the order listed and then extracted the correct letters, but they were in the wrong order.

edited when I finally figured out what Arnott was saying...

Finally got it! Man, that was annoying! Didn't know if it was indexing or the other way, so it took me a while to find the right combination.

Great puzzle. Spent way to much time researching how to play "The Settlers..." game. Finally realized I didn't need to know how to play and loved the brain game. Got shut out of the top 100 on both puzzles tonight and would like to blame it on the load time (I did have some problems), but, I really can't -- darn it!

Great puzzle! You're a freakin' genius, spamwise!

[31] Ah, wait. I just read the solution closer. For some reason, when I looked at it the first 3 times, I *saw* the letters correctly extracted from the words in the order listed. I finally read the rest of the rather lengthy solution (Yeah, I know - funny coming from me).

Anyway, I thought about trying to order as the solution intended but, again, since it didn't seem deterministic with some numbers used more than once, I didn't figure that could be right. It made much more sense to put them in the order the objects were listed and so that's what I did. Which then required anagramming. Again, not unhappy at all. And I'm glad my comment helped at least [27] cross the finish line. :)

It's really a nice logic problem....nothing more, nothing less.

I had myself stuck for a long time because I was trying to extract a letter from "wall" instead of "city wall".

Nice puzzle and I love Catan.

Elegant and logical.

So I have a list of things to build... but no clue on how to "extract" the right letter from each word...

There are well over a hundred solves now, so I'll be less circumspect in my comments. I'll bet that sonjahi was the only person who managed to solve this without assuming that one had to use ALL the cards. The solution explanation definitely assumes that you will use all the cards. The puzzle is considerably more difficult without that assumption -- in fact, I would have thought it would be unsolvable and I'd love to see an explanation of how to solve this without making that assumption.

The "..." at the end of the puzzle text is very misleading because it means that this isn't the end of the story. It implies that perhaps there are more buildings to be built, or something to be done with the leftover cards, or .... A simple period would have been more accurate.

Usually, making unsupported assumptions penalizes a solver; in this case, however, those who made that assumption were rewarded. And I count myself among the latter because I did consciously decide (despite the "...") to make that assumption after a few moments of working on the puzzle.

[42] Ok, my notes are at home but I'll try to send you an explanation on how I did it. :)

[41] Same here....know idea

[42] This makes no logical sense. The solution, the obvious one, is easy enough and logical, but to assume in a puzzle is to no longer be a puzzle but a made up rendering of such.

4+4= ?

Answer is 96. Oh, you were supposed to assume that you needed to multiply by 12 also. You see???? Just my made up rendering of a solution to a puzzle.

Edit: Ahh, finally figured it out. No assumption at all, the puzzle tells you which ones to take once they are in the correct order. You just have to figure out the order, since there are multiple values.

You solved this puzzle in 22 minutes and 44 seconds and were the 184th Tanga member to solve it. You earned 10 points

I should really count better. I thought there was one less of each resource.

no true settlers player would ever let that many resources pile up in their hand.

I totally agree with what Philana wrote in {42]. I walked away from the puzzle (frustrated) thinking that I didn't know 'how to play the game'.....then, I came back and decided to try to solve it assuming I would use up what was shown to me. I wondered if the .....meant another step, too. But, it really turned out to be a fairly obvious logic puzzle and it was fun to solve. I just thought the ambiguity/assumption was off-putting at first.

Good puzzle, but I definitely would not have figured it out if it wasn't for [23].

[31] I had to anagram because I sorted them in the order that the buildings are displayed, not the order of the "1 of those..." text.

[42] I didn't assume that I'd use all the cards, but I did assume that I'd need enough resources to build everything according to the numbers "of those" shown. I think that's enough information to deduce everything (though it's certainly easier if you assume you'll use all the resources).
EDIT: Hmm, upon further review I actually think I can make another set of buildings with 2 resources left over.

Just tell me, will I have resources left? If not, then I'm making the same stupid mistake somewhere . or how about this, to see if I'm counting the resources properly, am I starting with 5 or 6 sheep? Thanks

No resources left. 6 sheep.

[49]. yes, there is another set if you don't require all resources used. With anagramming, you can then spell casino- which is where you can lose those extras :-)

Tough OWW, but all those years playing Starcraft and Dawn of War put me in the right mindset XD
yep, everything you need to solve it is there

[51] Thanks,going back to try again. First ,I'm going to practice some simple math lol. My first go around , I only used 5 sheep because I thought the top bar was just a frame as the bottom is and it didn't work! I tried it with 6 but came out with leftovers!

[53] As [51] said, there are two solutions that satisfy the requirements of the puzzle as presented. One solution uses all the resources, and the other doesn't.

To get the intended puzzle answer, you have to use the solution that uses all of the resources.

Great Puzzle! Wish I was here right time for this. Not that difficult once you figure out rock is the place to start.