The Treasure Hunt - Confounding Members Daily!
So what is this Treasure Hunt? It's a series of seven mysterious riddles, plus a final challenge to solve, in order to gain a prize. It's one of the new puzzles/games that was added to The Problem Site in the last few months. When I created the puzzle, I expected people would enjoy it - what I didn't expect was the volume of people who kept coming back again and again to try to solve the puzzles. If you look at the Statistics Page, you can see how many people (on average) join the quest each day. At the time of writing this post, that average is 22 new members each day.
The other thing I didn't expect was how many of those members would be completely confounded by the riddles. Since the game was posted back in October of 2005, only a handful (I think 4 or 5) members have actually made it all the way through the puzzle from start to finish. What is the hangup? The hangup is the very last riddle. "Odds And Ends" is the name of the riddle, and it is somewhat mathematical in nature. Although it is also fairly "graphical" in nature as well (yes, you can consider that a bit of a hint!)
And, if you want another hint, consider this: the answer to the last riddle is very short, and one of the people who was able to solve the puzzle solved it by guessing. Not bad...using his guessing method, he was guaranteed to get the right answer in less than 27 guesses. Hmm...
Of course, if you waste that many guesses on a single puzzle, you might regret it when you get to the final challenge!
Okay, that's enough hinting around...
If you are an elementary school teacher, and you are thinking of having your class participate in The Treasure Hunt, you should try the puzzles first yourself! Some of these puzzles are solvable by elementary students, but several are more likely to be solved by high school students or adults.
High school students with well developed problem solving skills and a strong determination to succeed will get enjoy pitting their insight and intuition against this devious puzzle.
The other thing I didn't expect was how many of those members would be completely confounded by the riddles. Since the game was posted back in October of 2005, only a handful (I think 4 or 5) members have actually made it all the way through the puzzle from start to finish. What is the hangup? The hangup is the very last riddle. "Odds And Ends" is the name of the riddle, and it is somewhat mathematical in nature. Although it is also fairly "graphical" in nature as well (yes, you can consider that a bit of a hint!)
And, if you want another hint, consider this: the answer to the last riddle is very short, and one of the people who was able to solve the puzzle solved it by guessing. Not bad...using his guessing method, he was guaranteed to get the right answer in less than 27 guesses. Hmm...
Of course, if you waste that many guesses on a single puzzle, you might regret it when you get to the final challenge!
Okay, that's enough hinting around...
If you are an elementary school teacher, and you are thinking of having your class participate in The Treasure Hunt, you should try the puzzles first yourself! Some of these puzzles are solvable by elementary students, but several are more likely to be solved by high school students or adults.
High school students with well developed problem solving skills and a strong determination to succeed will get enjoy pitting their insight and intuition against this devious puzzle.
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