Kominers’s Conundrums: Houston, We Have a Cube-Shaped Problem
(Bloomberg Opinion) -- This week, one of the most familiar shapes shocked the world for exactly the right reason: It was in a place that made no sense — the moon.
Immediately, several rival puzzle organizations vowed to find out more about the object. But we here at Conundrums are happy to report that our Lunar Intelligence Squad has already finished its investigation.
One of our most inventive agents discovered a way to sneak in and survey the moon hut’s contents. But with the world watching, he couldn’t simply transmit the information back to us, lest it fall into the wrong hands.
He came up with an ingenious cipher on the spot: encoding the information in moon geo-coordinates. He sent us a series of crags, craters, and other rock formations, which we’ve transcribed onto a real-time moon map. The only problem is he’s still far out in space, which leaves us having to figure out how these landmarks are connected.
Can you crack the code and determine what’s inside the mystery hut? That’s this week’s answer, and proof that no one can beat Conundrums at intergalactic shape searching. Other puzzlers will be green with envy!
Once you solve that, there’s a bonus challenge, too: Our agent isn’t supposed to reveal his identity, but nevertheless couldn’t resist raking his call sign across the moon’s pockmarked surface. Can you find it?
If you figure out how to square this cube — or if you even make partial progress — please let us know at skpuzzles@bloomberg.net before midnight New York time on Thursday, December 23.
If you get stuck, there’ll be hints announced next edition, on Twitter, and in Bloomberg Opinion Today. To be counted in the solver list, please include your name with your answer. And don’t forget to sign up for our Conundrums email list!
Our Previous Conundrum: There’s Still Time to Solve!
There's still time to meet up in the metaverse by way of our Sherlocked puzzle collab! Help us break into the subconscious of the crafty but grumpy artificial intelligence named Marvin by solving a series of escape room-style clues. And if you’re having trouble figuring out the access password, you might want to take a closer look at the screen image. There are many different ways to read the digits — left to right; top to bottom — but maybe what you need is something of a hybrid? As we hinted: “this is, after all, a puzzle column.” (And when you’re done, don't forget to check out Marvin’s Moonbase!)
Previously in Kominers’s Conundrums…
Our looping letters Conundrum challenged solvers to make sense of an animated series of letters in various colors.
There were 21 letters in total, in seven different colors (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet), on three different colored backgrounds (white, gray, and black). Once you had transcribed the letters, the first trick was to sort them into groups according to background color. Next you had to sequence them according to the colors of the rainbow — as hinted by clues like “this week’s Conundrum is perfect for a rainy day — or a sunny one, for that matter” and the observation that the letters looked “absolutely breathtaking in the right light.”
This yielded the message
WEAVE EVERY THIRD LETTER.
But what to do with that? We had stated that the answer was a seven-letter word, and the instruction — combined with the overall letter count of 21 — suggested the strategy of going back to the order of the letters in the animation, and “weaving” every third one of them together.
That spelled the answer “WAVELET,” which matched confirmatory clues in the text such as the description of the puzzle as “rippling out” and references to “oscillations” and “the right frequency.”
Ross Rheingans-Yoo solved first, followed by Zarin Pathan, Zoz, Lazar Ilic, Ellen & William Kominers, Max Chemtov, Nancy & Murray Stern, Sanandan Swaminathan, TCH, Dave Matuskey, Daniel Dantas, Yannai Gonczarowski & Elee Shimshoni, and Michael Thaler.
The Bonus Round
We hope you enjoyed palindrome-ambigram day on 12/02/2021! In the meantime since then, “one misplaced pawn” may have determined the World Chess Championship. An incredible teddy bear story (hat tip: Ellen Dickstein Kominers); an “ice box” puzzle; a Radiohead virtual game; and the chairs of “Star Trek.” Bat parenting (hat tip: Ellen Dickstein Kominers); a dinner disaster; the ideal code; and the smallest apartment in New York City. Discovering haikus in New York Times articles (hat tip: Shosh Vasserman); Stephen Sondheim, puzzle expert (hat tip: Eric Berlin); and “the weirdest book in the world” at 40 (hat tip: Zarin Pathan). “Pokémon and the First Wave of Digital Nostalgia”; Jamie Shum’s “31 Highlights on Matt Amodio.” “THERE IS A FOX ON THE FIELD!” Plus inquiring minds want to know: What sort of keyboard do you use to fire nuclear missiles?
The date also had 180° rotational symmetry!
This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.
Scott Duke Kominers is the MBA Class of 1960 Associate Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School, and a faculty affiliate of the Harvard Department of Economics. Previously, he was a junior fellow at the Harvard Society of Fellows and the inaugural research scholar at the Becker Friedman Institute for Research in Economics at the University of Chicago.
Lara Williams manages Bloomberg Opinion's social media channels.
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