The Man Who Walked Between The Towers

You have probably heard about the daredevil Philippe Petit who sneaked on top of the World Trade Center and walked between the towers on a tightrope in  the August of 1974. I learned about him from a wonderful picture book by Mordecai Gerstein: The man who walked between the towers.  Here is one of the illustrations:

Some of you also likely saw the documentary made about Philippe Petit: Man on Wire and the animated film based on the above book.

A book, a documentary, an animation. Now it is time for a puzzle.

When Philippe Petit stepped onto the tightrope it was horizontally stretched between the towers. Under his weight, the cable hang a bit down. When Philippe reached the midpoint, the cable under his feet was 10 feet below its original horizontal position and the overall length of the cable got extended by 1 foot. What is the original length of the cable between the towers?

Your answers are accepted any time until midnight Eastern Time on Sunday, on our Family Puzzle Marathon.

Why "Nine" is "Nine?"

I watched the movie “Nine” recently, with Daniel Day-Lewis and many amazing actresses. The story is very simple but the movie is worth watching just to enjoy all the beauty on the screen. However, I wonder why it is called “Nine?”

As a second part of this puzzle, I challenge you to recall movies that have digits from one to eight in their titles.

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

A Water Puzzle

This week is all about water in the Boston, MA area. A large pipe supplying drinking water to two million people burst open. While authorities redirected the water supply to come from the local reservoir, people were warned to use this replacement water for bathing but stick to bottled water for drinking. Imagine how fast water disappeared off the shelves of local stores.

This is a puzzle about one local store that ran out of bottled water very quickly, leaving only one large 12 gallon emergency barrel. Two customers grabbed this barrel at the same time and were contemplating how to divide it. The store didn't have any 6 gallon containers, but did have empty 8 gallon and 5 gallon containers. The customers thought for a while but then figured it out. Both went home with 6 gallons of water each. How did they do it?


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

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!

Cambridge Incident Puzzle

Here is a puzzle that is believed to be invented by Albert Einstein as a boy. But don't be fooled by his young age - it is a very hard one!
I adapted it to a contemporary times and local coordinates.

On a single street in Cambridge, MA, stand five houses where live five professors who were all born in different countries: England, Spain, Ukraine, Norway and Japan. All they houses stand in a row, the other part of the street is a park. On April 15th one of the professors found a dead fish in the envelope in his mailbox. Pet shop owner told that one of this professor's neighbors bought this fish alive a few days ago but he didn't remember who exactly. Local police started investigating who was the owner of this fish and therefore responsible for the prank, but kept it very private as high profile people were involved. Here are some pieces of information we were able to fish from the local papers about this street's residents:

1. The Englishman lives in the red house.
2. The Spaniard owns the dog.
3. Coffee is drunk in the green house.
4. The Ukrainian drinks tea.
5. The green house is immediately to the right of the ivory house.
6. The Ford driver owns the snail.
7. A Toyota owner lives in the yellow house.
8. Milk is drunk in the middle house.
9. The Norwegian lives in the first house to the left.
10. The man who drives the Chevy lives in the house next to the man with the fox.
11. A Toyota is parked next to the house where the horse is kept.
12. The Dodge owner drinks orange juice.
13. The Japanese owns a Porsche.
14. The Norwegian lives next to the blue house.

Can you figure out who owned the fish from this information only?

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

A Coin For Museum

Natural History Museum in Manhattan started receiving enormous amount of calls after the movie "Night at the museum" was released. People wanted to take a tour of the museum, spend a night in the museum, see museum dinosaurs, ride a horse with Roosevelt or contribute some artifacts to the museum. Two new administrators were hired to answer the phone calls and screen legitimate offers. How did administrators decide what to take seriously and what not? Let's see. One of the administrators received a call from an archaeologist offering a golden coin marked 3 B.C. Shall the administrator invite the archaeologist to come and show the coin to the museum committee?

Image via Flickr by Waikay Lau.
Submit your answer on our Family Puzzle Marathon site. Solve three puzzles and get a prize!

Midday Nap Puzzle

Have you heard the latest news? Grabbing an hour's sleep during the day may be as beneficial for learning as a whole night in bed, according to scientists. So, you decide to boost your learning and memory and start taking a midday nap. You fall asleep at noon and are awaken some time later by your boss standing right next to you. You notice that the minute and hour hands on his watch coincide. How long did you sleep?

Submit your answer on our Family Puzzle Marathon site. Solve three puzzles and get a prize!

White House Dinner

Three White House chefs can prepare sixty-person dinner in six hours. Two of the chefs caught a virus and had to stay at home. Will the remaining chef be able to prepare tonight's dinner for one hundred and twenty people all by himself?

Bicycle thief

Alan, Bill, and Charlie were being questioned by the police about the theft of a bicycle. Alan said that Bill had stolen it; Bill said that he was innocent; Charlie said that he was not the thief. The police's lie detector showed that only one of the three was telling the truth - both the others were lying. So who stole the bicycle? (from the Logic Puzzles by the Diagram Group)