Occasional Puzzles - 🍽️ Rational Rations
Today’s Puzzle - 🍽️ Rational Rations
Your puzzle-loving friend had you over for dinner back in February, and now it’s your turn to host. Brace yourself: she cheerfully informs you that she’s now following a special new diet. Her dietary restrictions may not be medically grounded, but she assures you she’s following some kind of logic.
She’ll eat mayonnaise but not mustard
She’ll drink coffee but not tea
She’ll eat sriracha but not aioli
She’ll eat tomatoes but not radish
She’ll eat margarine but not butter
Can you figure out what governs her culinary decisions?
To help you check your solution, predict whether she’ll eat the following foods and scroll to the bottom to check your answers. (You can also email us with other foods and we’ll tell you whether she’ll eat them!)
pepper
cookies
coconut
zucchini
cheese
pasta
Source: Giphy
Previous Puzzle - đź‘‘ Adventures in Puzzlevania 3
It’s been a long time since your last journey to Puzzlevania. Fortunately, this time you don’t have any cake-stealing trolls to deal with. Instead, you’re here to answer a summons from the queen of Puzzlevania herself. You arrive at her castle and make your way to the throne room, where the queen sits at the far end of the room. You bow. The queen welcomes you, and tells you she has long respected your puzzle solving skills. As a token of appreciation, she continues, she wants to grant you some land in her kingdom.
“How much land?” you ask.
In response, one of the queen’s courtiers pulls out a map and presents it to you.
“This is a map of one of my districts,” the queen explains. “The district is a perfect square, and it is subdivided into five rectangular parcels, which are all the same area. The green parcel is yours, if only you can tell me the area of the whole district.”
The queen sits back on her throne and awaits your answer. What is the total area of the district?
Adapted from Reddit
Solution [SPOILER]
64 square miles. The solution relies on the fact that the blue, grey, and orange parcels together make up a large rectangle that has the same side-to-side width as the green parcel. And, because that large rectangle is three parcels put together, we know its area is three times that of the green parcel. If they have the same width, but the rectangle is three times bigger, that means the height of the rectangle must be three times the height of the green parcel. We know the height of green parcel is 2, so the height of the large rectangle must be 6. Adding those together gets us 8 for the height of the whole district. And, since it’s a square, that gives us an area of 64.
Hint for Today’s Puzzle
Highlight in the space next to each of the following foods to see if she will (YES) or won’t (NO) eat them.
pepper —> YES
cookies —> NO
coconut —> YES
zucchini —> YES
cheese —> NO
pasta —> NO