Mark Hooper

Puzzles

Container puzzle

I like solving puzzles, and I also enjoy designing them. While I worked at the port, I'd send around a puzzle every Friday. Just a bit of fun - something to talk about in the communal kitchen. This one is about weighing shipping containers. I blatently stole the idea for this puzzle from the mathematician Paul Solomon. Anyhow, try them. They’re fun. Kids would be good at them too. For each of the six questions, you have to rank the coloured containers from heaviest to lightest. The results will be different for each puzzle. For example, it's not the case that green is always the heaviest. Assume that if the colour is the same then the weight is the same, and that the fulcrum of the scale is always in the middle.

I also write themed New-York-style crosswords, like this one below about research ethics. One of my silly life goals is to publish a puzzle in the New York Times.

ethics crossword