I learned about this little puzzle thing called Petals Around the Rose yesterday (via BoingBoing). It’s sort of a dice game where you have to figure out how to solve the puzzle as you go, and once you know how, you can’t tell anybody else. It took me a while to figure it out, because I tried to over-analyze it. In fact, it’s almost an accident that I figured it out at all, considering the line of thought I was trying to follow. Of course, now I’m sworn to secrecy, so I can’t tell you what that line of thought was…
The name of the game is Petals Around the Rose, and that name is significant. Newcomers to the game can be told that much. They can also be told that every answer is zero or an even number. They can also be told the answer for every throw of the dice that are used in the game. And that’s all the information they get.
The javascript app on the page listed above didn’t work for me in Firefox. I had to use the sample dice rolls detailed in the story about Bill Gates in order to figure it out. As I mentioned before, I’m sworn to secrecy about how to get the answers. But I will say that a child in first or second grade (or even a bright pre-schooler) could give you the answers, once they know the method.
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211 Comments
type this in the adress bar http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petals_around_the_rose
type this in the adress bar http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petals_around_the_rose
the anwser is 3=2 and 5=4
i figured it out and you didnt haha
If you never figure it out, YAY your the smartest person on the planet!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I consider myself to be relatively skilled in the field of brain teasers, and I could not solve this myself in the half hour I had. So after twenty minutes I just gave up and wrote a computer program that would analyze the several hundred rolls I had accumulated. It got the solution in about a minute or so, and the code was relatively short.
So to those of you who are struggling – try getting your computer to do the busy work…
AHHH its sooo sooo frusteratiing… I asked my computer teacher about it and he said “cant tell its a secret…” NO DUH! TELL ME PLEASE TELL ME!
Well.. I figured it out a year ago after about an hour of hard work… unnecessary hard work I should add…
I’ll try to give hints without ruining the answer…
Because the answer is always even, try to figure out how that is possible if the numbers are random… I mean if you add them all up, there is the same chance of it being even or odd…
In my opinion, the ROSE is the most important… find the rose, then look for the petals…
Sorry, can’t be more specific without all of it being edited out…
Remember, the visual representation of a die, or an actual die is better than 5 numbers.
Oh, and anybody have a link to “Petals and Roots”? there is a slight reference on wikipedia but I’ve tried googling it and I’m not coming up with anything
are all those things you put next to ur writing cluse or just for show
So… anyone else feel kinda disappointed when they finally figured it out? Like for real…
does anyone have a helpgful hint about figuring out the number of Plankton in the version that involves plankton as well as fish, bears, and holes?
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