Occasional Puzzles - Does your answer hold water?
We were thrilled to receive so many responses to Wednesday’s puzzle! Thank you to everyone who wrote in. We love hearing from you. All in all, we counted 11 unique answers! Scroll down for the full accounting.
Today’s Puzzle
You have a 5 gallon bucket and a 3 gallon bucket, plus an infinite supply of water. What is the fewest number of steps required to measure exactly 4 gallons? As you might expect, you cannot measure partial buckets.
Wednesday’s Puzzle - Quadruple or nothing
Find a set of four homophones - that is, four words that all sound the same but are all spelled differently and all have different meanings. (An example of a set of three homophones is sent, scent, cent.)
We are aware of two possible answers but there may be more, so reply to this email and let us know what you come up with!
[SPOILER] Answer to Wednesday’s Puzzle
As promised, we’re publishing all reader-submitted answers that we consider to be reasonable. Thanks again to everyone who responded! We really do love hearing from you.
Definitely legit (for us, at least)
rite, right, write, wright
carat, caret, carrot, karat
buy, by, bye, bi
Legit if you’re exceptionally well-read
new, knew, gnu, nu
(nu is a Greek letter)
peek, peak, pique, peke
(peke is short for Pekingese)
raise, rays, raze, res
(res is Latin for “thing”, and is used in a legal context to refer to a particular matter)
two, too, to, tew
(tew is an obsolete term for working leather)
where, wear, ware, wair (a wair is a piece of wood six feet long and one foot wide)
Legit if you drink a lot of French wine
dew, do, due, doux (doux is French for “sweet”, and is sometimes used when describing wine)Legit if you allow proper nouns
road, rowed, rode, Rhode (Rhode is one the 50 mythological daughters of Danaus)
reed, read, rede, Reid (Reid is the name of reader Mandy’s boyfriend)