Tuesday, April 20, 2010

UFO Puzzle

The astronaut returning from a space walk reported that he found a strange galactic object. It was a perfectly symmetrical solid figure which looked exactly the same no matter what side you approach. At least it did - before the astronaut touched it. Now three of the faces are pulsing with red light, three with blue light, and the other six with green light.

The scientists at base headquarters are still trying to work out what the lights mean, but they do know the shape of each faces. Do you?
(this puzzle is from the Logic Puzzles book by the Diagram Group)

Submit your answer on our Family Puzzle Marathon Be first to solve three puzzles and get a prize!

3 comments:

kj said...

The twelve faces are pentagons. The object must be a Platonic solid since before the astronaut touched it, it was perfectly symmetrical. The Platonic solids are the five regular convex polyhedra -- the faces are congruent regular polygons, and so have equal edges & angles. The only one with twelve faces (three red + three blue + six green) is a dodecahedron, which is made from twelve congruent pentagons. (The other Platonic solids are the tetrahedron, made from four equilateral triangles; the cube, made from six squares; the octahedron, made from eight equilateral triangles; and the icosahedron, made from twenty equilateral triangles)

Anonymous said...

Pentagons they are, the 12 faces of a dodecahedron. I was stumped at first as the puzzle said the object looked EXACTLY the same no matter the angle; that, I think, is true only of a sphere (not even true of a piece of paper). Tom

Maria said...

Pentagon it is.
Sorry - KJ - can't give you another puzzle point even so you got here first. One puzzle point per person per week. Therefore Tom gets it.

Congratulations, Tom, this is your fourth puzzle point - please email me your address to get a prize!

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