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Present tense: The Weekly Puzzle by Dilip D’Souza
This form of the riddle is attributed to Albert Einstein. Can you crack this one and figure out who gave what to the birthday girl?
It was Ashwini’s birthday last week, and three gifts arrived by courier: a Rotex watch, several packets of wildflower seeds and a bottle of litchi honey. Unfortunately she ripped open the packages and threw away the containers and wrapping before noting down which came from whom. Still, two were from the major shopping sites Tungabhadra.com and Flapgaadi.com; the third directly from her friend Aziz. That, her memory and some detective work resulted in the following clues:
* The package from Hardwar arrived damaged and crawling with ants.
* Flapgaadi stopped selling watches back in 2010.
* Aziz’s package wasn’t a cube.
* Unseasonal rains this year caused all the seeds in Flapgaadi’s Hardanahalli warehouse to sprout, so they had to be trashed.
* Hardwar has no Tungabhadra or Flapgaadi warehouses.
* Advertisements for Tungabhadra have this slogan: “No sharp corners on our packages!”
* The package from Hardanahalli was not a cylinder.
What did Aziz send Ashwini and what kind of package did it come in? What came from Haldwani? And what was in the package that looked like a ball?
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How do you solve this kind of puzzle?
One way is to make a grid, as in the diagram below. In this case, Tungabhadra, Flapgaadi and Aziz along the top, and the various features on the left, grouped by their type: package contents, package shape, source city. (You could just as easily choose something else along the top — give it a try).
Now go through the clues and mark the appropriate spaces each time you learn something. Cycle through them until you’ve marked all the spaces with either a tick or a cross.
I’ll start this off with the first two clues.
#1 does tell us what’s in the package from Hardwar, but gives us nothing to place a tick or a cross against. #2 lets us place an ‘X’ to say the watch could not have come from Flapgaadi.
The rest? You’re the boss.
Scroll down for the answer
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Answers: Aziz sent Ashwini honey in a cylinder. The seeds came from Haldwani. The ball carried the watch.
