Professor Layton: My Anti-WoW

I might have mentioned my affinity for puzzles. When I was younger, I’d frequently read Clue books as well as Encyclopedia Brown and try to solve them for fun. After a strong recommendation from a friend and seeing it crop up on various gaming sites that I go to, I decided to give Professor Layton and the Curious Village a try. The game is for the DS and it’s been around for a while in Japan. But it came out recently for the US players.

Here’s a quick trailer:

I’m hooked!

Anyway, the game has a TON of brain teasers and other problems to solve. There’s a lot of riddles. If you catch me in the BA chatroom, you can often hear my cries of agony and frustration and whoops of joy when I finally solve it after staring at the problem for an hour. The puzzles vary in difficulty.

9 out of 10 Matt’s would recommend this game for ANY gamer. The 1 Matt is too busy playing to give his recommendation.

Examples

Here’s a few straight out of the game:

1: Fifteen people are trapped aboard a ship that’s going to sink in exactly 20 minutes. Their only chance for survival is the five person life raft stowed on their vessel. To make matters worse, the waters around the ship are teeming with man-eating sharks, so swimming to safety is out of the question.

A round trip to the nearest island and back to the boat takes nine minutes on the raft. How many people will live to see dry land?

2: Five suspects are called into police headquarters for questioning and give the following statements.

A) One of the five of us is lying
B) Two of the five of us are lying
C) I know these guys and three of the five are lying
D) Out of the five, only four of us are lying
E) All five of us are liars!

The police want to release those that are telling the truth. How many people should they let go?

3: Imagine a digital clock. How many times will the clock display three or more of the same number in a row over the course of one day? Keep in mind, this digital clock is on a 12 hour scale that only shows hours and minutes.

Answers

(Highlight below)

1: 13 people. 5 go to the island, 1 brings the boat back. He takes on another 4 people to the island and comes back. That’s enough time to get an additional 4 more people. 5 + 4  + 4.

2: 1 person. Everyone is accusing a different number of people. It has to be one suspect assuming anyone is telling the truth. It would appear that suspect D gets to walk.

3: 34. 01:11, 02:22, 03:33, 04:44, 05:55, 11:11, 12:22, 10:00, 11:10, 11:12, 11:13, 11:14, 11:15, 11:16, 11:17, 11:18, 11:19. This is only for the first 12 hours. Multiply that amount by 2 (17 x 2 = 34).

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