Elwood's Problem Page

Back in the 1970’s I went through a phase of designing Mazes, inspired by a book by the great Maze designer Greg Bright (whatever happened to him, does anyone know? Interesting guy, a musician as well as a maze designer - I have one of his singles which must be very rare. Since I put this web page here I've had emails asking about him. If you're out there Greg, please get in touch.) Here are some scans of the original drawings that I did. I have cleaned up the images slightly, but since they were HAND DRAWN before the age of computers, they are a little rough in places. If you click on the thumbnails below, you can download the full size images, then print them off and try them out for yourself. (Starting from the exit is not allowed!) By the way, these are NOT labyrinths. There is a major difference between a maze and a labyrinth, but I'm too lazy to explain it here. Try Wikipedia.

Also, take a look at these amazing mazes from a friend of mine who is also a Greg Bright fan; Kevin O'Neill

Thanks to Bruce for sending me this...

------------ o O o ------------ I was a dedicated Amiga fan until it finally bit the dust in the late 90's, and I spent months working on a 3D Labyrinth game for it, complete with sound effects. It's a shame to let it go to waste, so it's available here completely free - click here to download the whole thing as a Zip file. It needs a fast Amiga with at least 2MB of RAM to run it, and the graphics aren't exactly Tomb-Raider quality, but it's fun to play, and the source code is all there too, written for Hi-Soft BASIC. Enjoy!.

------------ o O o ------------ This is another Amiga program. This one explores the effect of accelerating a spaceship up to the speed of light. There are no fancy graphics, just a simulated control panel which shows distance covered, apparent velocity, actual velocity and relativistic effects. It's interesting to play with it and see what happens if you accelerate at a constant 1g all the way to Alpha Centauri! See if you can do it. Click here to download the whole thing as a Zip file.

------------ o O o ------------ Now here's a beautiful puzzle that seems impossible, but isn't. A cylindrical hole six inches long has been drilled straight through the centre of a solid sphere. What is the volume remaining in the sphere? You have all the information you need. Answer by e-mail only (address below)

------------ o O o ------------ The famous phrase (and Pink Floyd album title) "The Dark side of the Moon" is a common misconception. The side of the Moon that we cannot see from the Earth - the Far side - gets just as much sunlight as the side we can see; the "day" on the Moon consists of roughly two weeks of sunlight followed by two weeks of darkness - and that's the same on both sides of the moon. The only difference is that on the side nearest to us there is a small amount of earthlight reflected back similar to the way we get moonlight here, but discounting that, the far side gets exactly the same amount of sunlight as the near side. I get so fed up of explaining this point to people who go on about the "dark side" of the moon that I've decided to put this explanation here so I can direct non-believers to it. So there really is no dark side of the moon, and a big thanks to David Gilmour & co for confusing the general public for the past 30 years. Great album title, but BAD ASTRONOMY! (I'm thinking of adding a web page entitled "Common misconceptions about Space" here soon.) Anyway, all this is a clue to my next puzzle (A little astronomical knowledge may be helpful): Given that the orbit of the planet Uranus takes 84 years to go round the sun, and its axis is tilted at 98 degrees, if you could stand at its North Pole and watch the Sun move round the sky, what path would it take over the Uranian Year? (And for another puzzle, what would you see if you stood on the equator?)

------------ o O o ------------ There's another old puzzle that goes thus: A man travels one mile due South and one mile due East, then shoots a bear. He then walks one mile due North, and finds himself back where he started. What colour was the bear? Of course, it's obvious when a little thought is applied - he must have been at the North Pole, so therefore the bear was white. Easy. However... Let's suppose he WASN'T at the North pole (forget about the bear.) There is another place where you can walk 1 mile South, 1 mile East, then 1 mile North and arrive back where you started. (And it's NOT the South pole - if you're at the South Pole you can only go North!) You don't need to invoke another dimension or time travel or anything like that - it's quite easy, but it involves a little bit of lateral thinking. Again, answer by email only (address below).

------------ o O o ------------ A PROGRAMMING CHALLENGE This isn't a puzzle, but a challenge to programmers. After seeing wonderful astronomical programs like Celestia and Skyglobe that can show the galaxy of known stars from any position or perspective, I wondered if a similar program could be written that would look for patterns in the general randomness of star positions. Imagine finding (as in Arthur C. Clarke's novel The City and The Stars) a ring of six stars so perfectly aligned that they could only have been arranged deliberately. Such a find would be conclusive proof of alien intelligence, and modern computers are now capable of looking for such things. All we require is a program capable of doing the search. It's beyond my capabilities, but I'm sure there's someone out there who could do it. Any takers?

------------ o O o ------------ WHAT'S MY IQ? I have been asked this question occasionally, and instead of answering it directly I prefer to put it in the form of a puzzle. So here it is - my IQ is the same number as the LOWEST score you CAN'T get in one turn of a game of darts! For example; the highest score obtainable is 180 (three treble 20s), ok? But there is no way you can score 179 with three darts, it simply isn't possible. However, that is not the lowest impossible score. So what is it?

------------ o O o ------------ ELWOOD'S MAD QUIZ Answers? Questions! Questions? Answers! (Which every Rock fan knows is a track by the 70's Dutch band Focus) Here's some questions where the answer is also a question. Some are easy, some are tough but the answers are interesting! 1. What was the final question asked of Major Ingram which would have earned him £1M on "Who Wants to be a Millionaire?"? 2. What was the question In "The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy" to which the answer was reputed to be 42? 3. What sarcastic response did Basil Fawlty give to the deaf guest who complained about the view from her window? 4. What did Jeremy Paxman famously ask Michael Howard 14 times in an interview without getting a straight answer? 5. What line was The Who's Roger Daltrey singing at Live Aid in 1985 just as the satellite link broke and all UK TV screens went blank? 6. What famous Sun newspaper headline was taken from a 1976 Supertramp album? 7. What was the third question asked of King Arthur by the bridge keeper in "Monty Python & the Holy Grail"? 8. What was Arthur's answer to the answer to the previous question? (which was also a question!) 9. What were the last words of Gertrude Stein? 10. What did Victor Hugo write in a telegram to his publishers to find out how his new novel "Les Miserables" was selling? (Clue: it's short) 11. To what question did Lieutenant Frank Drebin in "Police Squad" answer "I'm a locksmith, and, I'm a locksmith." 12. What response did Michael Faraday reputedly give when asked by Gladstone what use electricity was? 13. What did the Cat say to Dave Lister in "Red Dwarf" when told Lister was his God? 14. What question could you not possibly give a truthful answer to? 15. What question could you ask where the answer would be identical to the question? 16. Which one of these questions is wrong?

Answers: 1. "What is a 'Googol?'" 2. "What is the meaning of Life, the Universe and Everything?" 3. "What did you expect to see from a Torquay hotel room window? Sydney Opera House perhaps? The Hanging Gardens of Babylon? Herds of widebeeste sweeping majestically across the plain?" 4. "Did you threaten to overrule him?" 5. "Why don't you all f-f-fade away?" 6. "Crisis? What Crisis?" 7. "What is the air speed velocity of an unladen swallow?" 8. "African or European swallow?" 9. "What is the answer?" (no answer) "In that case, what is the question?" 10. "?" 11. "Who are you and how did you get in here?" 12. "What use is a new-born baby?" 13. "If you're God, why that face?" 14. "Would you be making a false statement if you answered yes to this question?" 15. Isn't it obvious? 16. Er.. no.16? Answers to answers (where relevant) 1. 10 raised to the power of 100 (1 followed by 100 zeros) - see this page 2. Actually, the question and answer are mutually exclusive i.e. they can't both exist in the same universe. If they did, the universe would instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarrely inexplicable. 3. "Well it's not good enough!" 4. See this page 5. The song was not included in the DVD release in 2005. 6. Reputed to have been spoken by Prime Minister James Callaghan, but he never actually said it, apparently. 7 & 8. See this page. No, honestly - go on, I dare you! 9. See this page 10. The reply was "!" - see this page 14. If you answered "yes" you would be stating that your answer would be a false statement if you had answered "yes" (which in this case you did), but by doing so you would actually be making a true statement, so therefore the statement is false and your answer must be wrong. If you answered "no" you would in effect be stating that your answer would be a true statement if you had answered "yes" (which in this case you did NOT), but as we have already seen, by answering "yes" the statement becomes false and your answer would be wrong. So you lose again! Of course, any answer other than "yes" or "no" is irrelevant and neither true nor false. (Question 14 is my own invention - © Elwood Herring 2004) 16. But if question 16 is wrong, it must be correct. Which means it's wrong... (Actually no. 6 is wrong; the Supertramp album came out afterJim Callahan's remark, which means that no.16 is wrong too as it asks which one of the above questions is wrong. Logic choppers can take it from there...