November's puzzle
This month, we're doing something different. I wrote a logic problem for your solving pleasure. This is the first time I've written a logic problem and I hope you enjoy it!
As we all know, many Ravenclaws have an attachment to spreadsheets. They make them, they use them, they adapt them, they share them!
Spreadsheets shared on Google Sheets have a unique feature. Those who were individually invited to view or edit the spreadsheet show up in the upper right corner with the name and icon they use for Google+ or gmail. However, those viewers of the spreadsheet who followed a general link to access it show up as icons of assorted "anonymous animals," e.g. anonymous alligator, anonymous penguin, and anonymous wombat. Intriguingly, you cannot see your own icon.
To help the Tower with the House Cup, Ravenclaw staff have access to a spreadsheet of great beauty and majesty, showing the points earned by HPKCHC players throughout the term. This spreadsheet, which we call the 'Claw Lawg, was originally designed by cyprienne and is currently maintained by our Spreadsheet Sorceress llim and her apprentices NoNeinNyet and senkatnovo.
Recently, Head of House PickleMommy, Head Girl CathyCake, and Prefects DrusillaWormwood, elekanahmen, gwenschweitzer, and kaypendragon were all in the Lawg at the same time. Each staff person was in the Lawg to check on a different statistic. While looking at the Lawg, each person ate a snack (one snack is Nutella smeared on a banana) and had a beverage. Three of the beverages contain alcohol (adult root beer, champagne, and hard cider); three beverages do not contain alcohol (herbal tea, 25% lemonade / 75% seltzer mix, and Vernor's ginger ale).
From the clues below, can you determine which statistic each staff person reviewed, which snack and beverage she consumed, and which anonymous animal displayed in the sheet while she was in the Lawg?
A solving grid is
available at this link. The solution will be published on December 2. If you'd like to check your answer before then, PM your solution to greenegirl on Ravelry.
1. The six Staffers are: the anonymous Aurochs, the champagne drinker, kaypendragon, the one drinking a mixture of lemonade and seltzer, the Prefect snacking on a mug brownie, and the Prefect checking on OWL 50% submissions. The four Prefects are: the Bat, the one eating carrots, gwenschweitzer, and the one checking October classes to see which books have been returned to the library.
2. If she could have seen it, CathyCake would have been pleased as her Capybara icon matches her Ravenclaw horoscope. When gwenschweitzer looked at the icons in the sheet, she secretly wished she was the Kraken, Googled "Aurochs" to figure out what it is, and laughed at the miniature Nyan cat icon.
3. Picklemommy, CathyCake, and elekanahmen chose alcoholic beverages. The person who chose adult root beer thought hard before putting her ice cream in a bowl rather than making a float. The Kraken is enjoying her herbal tea.
4. DrusillaWormwood is so enamored with Quidditch this term that she just can't stop looking at the turn in statistics. One of the other Prefects snacked on kettle corn while staring in awe at the way Ravenclaw crushed the second Headmistress Challenge. PickleMommy is keeping her Eagle eye on the big picture of our total points for the term.
5. The Aurochs is snacking on ice cream, the Bat is drinking Vernor's ginger ale, the nyan cat is drinking hard cider while checking the OWL 50% submissions, and the Kraken is snacking on a granola bar.
Answers to October's Cryptograms
I received correct responses from knitsNhikes and Xallanthia. October's cryptograms all came from
The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. LeGuin. I reread the book in order to find quotes. It's been years since I last read it and I had forgotten most of it. I love LeGuin's writing. She turns phrases in intriguing ways, as I hope these quotes demonstrate. I particularly enjoyed the introduction at the beginning of the novel, which was an essay on writing fiction written by LeGuin a couple years after the novel was first published. I had to stop myself from turning the entire introduction into one long cryptogram :-)
1. Anything carried to its logical extreme becomes depressing, if not carcinogenic.
2. I'll make my report as if I told a story, for I was taught as a child on my homeward that truth is a matter of the imagination. (homeward should have been homeworld; autocorrect messed it up when I generated the cryptograms and I didn't notice!)
3. One voice speaking truth is a greater force than fleets and armies, given time; plenty of time.
4. I fear liars, and I fear tricksters, and worst I fear the bitter truth. And so I rule my country well. Because only fear rules men. Nothing else works. Nothing else lasts long enough.
5. You don't see yet, Genry, why we perfected and practice foretelling? . . . To exhibit the perfect uselessness of knowing the answer to the wrong question.
6. If civilization has an opposite, it is war. Of those two things, you have either one or the other. Not both.
7. To oppose something is to maintain it.
8. There is neither source nor end, for all things are in the center of time. As all the stars may be reflected in a round raindrop falling in the night: so too do all the stars reflect the raindrop. There is neither darkness nor death, for all things are in the light of the moment, and their end and their beginning are one.
9. I know people, I know towns, farms, hills and rivers and rocks, I know how the sun at sunset in autumn falls on the side of a certain lowland in the hills; but what is the sense of giving a boundary to all of that, of giving it a name and ceasing to love where the name ceases to apply?
10. Light is the left hand of darkness and darkness the right hand of light. Two are one, life and death, lying together like lovers in kemmer, the hands joined together, like the end and the way.
