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Letters In Boxes #12
This heavily mathematics-oriented edition of Letters In Boxes has been brought to you by the number 10. But why, if it's the 12th in the series? Because 10 is what 12 looks like in base-12. Base-12 is an interesting number system, when you think about it. If we lived in a base-12 world (instead of the base-10 world we have), there'd be ten inches in a foot, 50 seconds in a minute, and 20 hours in a day. Cool, huh?
To solve this week's puzzles, you need to know a bit about mathematical bases, and the easiest way to explain it is by looking at the base-10 system we're used to. When you see the number 179, we know that it's the sum of 9 ones, 7 tens, and 1 hundred. (These values are calculated by 10 to the 0th power, 10 to the 1st power, and 10 to the 2nd power.) But when you calculate the same value in base-12, you'll find that it's made of 11 ones, 2 dozens, and 1 gross (12 to the 0th, 12 to the 1st, and 12 to the 2nd powers). In other words, as you move from right to left the value of the digit in that position multiplies by the base number.
So armed with that little bit of knowledge, you should be ready to tackle this week's excessively numerical challenge. (Hint: Expect a lot of A=1, B=2, etc.) Click on the image below to open up this week's starter puzzle in a new window. When you think you've solved it, change the filename (in this case, "dimeadozen") to your answer, making sure you keep the same directory and .gif extension. If you're right, you're straight through to the next puzzle. If you're wrong, you'll get an error message, but you're free to recalculate your work and try again.
This batch of puzzles contains four puzzles to solve. On the fourth puzzle, you'll find the email address for sending your final answer. We'll hand out a prize to the first correct entry we receive, plus ten additional randomly-selected correct entries. Please include your Casual Gameplay account display name with your entry. You must be at least 13 years of age to enter. Only one submission per participant, please. Offer void where prohibited. Your deadline for submitting your answers is Monday, August 29th at 11:59 PM (GMT-5:00). Can you become the Ace of Bases? Play along to find out!
Update: Congratulations to these eleven winners! :D
All eleven winners were given a choice of prizes or an entry into our GRAND PRIZE drawing held at the end of August! Congratulations and thanks for playing with us! Look for another Letters in Boxes again soon!
- ViciousChicken ...First!
- Ajslama
- nqeron
- han519
- donhuando
- DebbyA
- Chaos
- ladodger
- Vespert
- Nigma
- RUSHAFX
Walkthrough Guide
(Please allow page to fully load for spoiler tags to be functional.)
This week's contest is over, so I can now announce that this week's contest was in fact entirely a hoax. Your math teacher wanted us to post this puzzle to get you ready for the pop quiz next week. That's right, you just got tricked into learning something! Na-na na-na boo-boo! (Your math teacher would also appreciate it if you stopped drawing those ugly pictures on the chalkboard.)
Anywho, let's take a look at this week's answers:
Puzzle 1
Puzzle 1 Answer
To solve the first puzzle, you needed to interpret the stack of colored boxes as base-3 numbers. The lowest level (which every column includes) was equal to ones (3 to the 0th power), the middle level was equal to threes (3 to the 1th power), and the highest level was equal to nines (3 to the 2nd power). A black box meant a zero in that position, a grey box meant a one, and a white box meant a two. Once you translated all of the columns from base-3 to familiar ol' base-10 (which gave you 14-5-3-20-1-18), you simply had to translate those numbers to letters to get the puzzle's answer, NECTAR.
Puzzle 2
Puzzle 2 Answer
This puzzle involved splitting the words into vowels and consonants, and solving each row as though they were written in base-2. Every vowel counted as a 0, while every consonant was a one (to those who thought the word OUIJA was a bit peculiar, you were right!). Once the numbers were translated from base-2 to base-10, it was simply another translation of those base-10 digits to letters, resulting in TROMBONE.
Puzzle 3
Clearly this isn't the standard-issue Letters In Boxes puzzle, as you needed to figure out where the Letters In Boxes were in a typical screenshot. If you've done any sort of web design, or perhaps some photo editing, you might be aware that colors are often represented with base-16 numbers (also known as hexadecimal, where the digits go from 0 to 9, then A to F). One of these "two-digit" numbers (ranging from 00 to FF) is assigned to each pigment (red, green, and blue). However, when these colors aren't written in hexadecimal, you'll usually see them in terms of numbers from 0 to 255.
That's where we look to solve our puzzle. In the lower-right corner, you'll notice the values for red, green, and blue pigments in the pinkish color selected. If you take those three numbers and convert them back into hexadecimal, you'll get FA, CA, and DE, which combine to spell FACADE.
Puzzle 4
Puzzle 4 Answer
For the final puzzle, you needed to look at the grid of numbers as an analogy of sorts, where a certain number in base-X (on the left) is written as Y (on the right). Thus, considering that the number in question is written in base-10 as 100, that translates to 10201 in base-3, 144 in base-8, and so on. In the end, the five bases you've decoded are 3-8-9-5-6, which spell out CHIEF.
Winners will be announced soon!
Posted by: Steve
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August 30, 2011 12:59 AM