{"id":4736,"date":"2011-05-02T15:12:00","date_gmt":"2011-05-02T22:12:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/defectiveyeti.com\/?p=4736"},"modified":"2011-05-02T16:26:30","modified_gmt":"2011-05-02T23:26:30","slug":"accio","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/defectiveyeti.com\/wordpress\/2011\/05\/02\/accio\/","title":{"rendered":"Accio!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yesterday afternoon my friend A<\/a> treated a bunch of kids to a Harry Potter treasure hunt. He loosely based it on some of my puzzle hunts of yore<\/a>. <\/p>\n

I contributed the following logic problem to the endeavor:<\/p>\n

Wands are used by wizards and witches to channel their power. Each is composed of a wooden casing and a magical core, the combination of which makes it distinct from all others.<\/p>\n

Four members of the house of Slytherin have wands of different lengths, different woods, and different cores. From the clues below, can you determine who owns which wand?<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Draco Malfoy’s wand is longer than both the wand that contains the dragon heartstring and the wand that contains the veela hair, but shorter than the cherry wand.<\/li>\n

    <\/p>\n

  2. Salazar Slytherin’s wand is shorter than both the cherry wand and the elder wand, but longer than the wand that contains the dragon heartstring.<\/li>\n

    <\/p>\n

  3. Lucius Malfoy’s wand is longer than both the walnut wand and the wand that contains the unicorn hair.<\/li>\n

    <\/p>\n

  4. Bellatrix Lestrange’s wand is shorter than both the wand that contains the phoenix feather and the yew wand.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    S O L U T I O N<\/H3><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
    Slytherin<\/th>\nWood<\/th>\nCore<\/th>\n<\/tr>\n
    Bellatrix<\/td>\n          <\/td>\n          <\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
    Draco<\/td>\n<\/td>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
    Lucius<\/td>\n<\/td>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
    Salazar<\/td>\n<\/td>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

    The puzzle can be solved with only the information above. However, since this was aimed at youngsters, I provided two additional clues. Feel free to use them if you get stumped, or want to verify that your answer is correct:<\/p>\n

    \n
      \n
    1. [spoiler]Both the longest wand and the shortest wand are made from the wood of trees that produce food.[\/spoiler]<\/li>\n

      <\/p>\n

    2. [spoiler]Neither the longest wand nor the shortest wand contain a hair.[\/spoiler]<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/div>\n

      I was pleased with how it turned out. Having exactly one clue per Slytherin struck me as elegant, it has a bit of a twist, and the challenge was about perfect for the target audience of fourth graders. The challenge of solving the puzzle, I mean. The challenge of writing about “wands” and “length” without making the target audience of fourth graders snicker uncontrollably was one I didn’t even bother to tackle.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

      Yesterday afternoon my friend A treated a bunch of kids to a Harry Potter treasure hunt. He loosely based it on some of my puzzle hunts of yore. I contributed the following logic problem to the endeavor: Wands are used by wizards and witches to channel their power. Each is composed of a wooden casing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4736","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-games"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/defectiveyeti.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4736","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/defectiveyeti.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/defectiveyeti.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/defectiveyeti.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/defectiveyeti.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4736"}],"version-history":[{"count":49,"href":"https:\/\/defectiveyeti.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4736\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4773,"href":"https:\/\/defectiveyeti.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4736\/revisions\/4773"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/defectiveyeti.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4736"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/defectiveyeti.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4736"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/defectiveyeti.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4736"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}