Last night I browsed a bit through a Scientific American "Mind" edition (volume 16, number 1) I bought some time ago. On page 96 it got some "Head Games" by Abbie F. Salny. I was able to solve one very fast, a pattern completion puzzle.
Read the rest of Mind games and alternative solutions.
Hi John, I came across your blog by accident (whilst searching for a download link for mu-torrent) and stayed to try and solve the puzzle. I pretty quickly got the alternative solution 77 too, but in a different way to your friend. My approach took the difference of the bottom and the leftmost number and added it to the rightmost number.
This yields a progression (10, 20, 40) that increases as 10 * 2^(n), where n is the position index starting from n=1 i.e.
8 + (8-6) = 10 9 + (16-5) = 20 9 + (32-1) = 40 12 + (77-9) = 80
Hope this helps!
Dave
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Did you know that i drank quite some wine when solving that puzzle, because it was my birthday :P
my best Sudoku score so far:
And my Alchemy high score: 58,324
scary eh?