Puzzle which door

The Problem Site. Quote Puzzler. Tile Puzzler. Loading profile Logged in as:. Password recovery. Go Pro! Wisely Choosing A Door The "three door puzzle" is an interesting and unusual probability question. Here's the math behind the question. Exponential Growth and Coronavirus. A Question and Answer session with Professor Puzzler about the math behind infection spread. Book Scrounger. Another thing you can do is to spread the lock of a door puzzle out over a greater area.

PCs might have to place or turn a key piece simultaneously for a door te open. And forcing the party to split up this way, could impose other challenges. But the best puzzles challenge both the players and their characters. You can challenge the characters by having them uncover all the clues and key pieces to the door puzzle. They can:. All of these challenge the character. Only solving the puzzle itself challenges the player. And even then you can reward players who roll a successful intelligence check with minor hints.

These puzzles are therefore less optimal for using as door puzzles. They only challenge the players not their characters. Another common critique is that door puzzles can feel contrived. Do NOT just stick a sudoku to a door and call it an immersive puzzle. And by the Gods resist the temptation to have PCs unravel your christmas lights! While extremely convienent, also NOT a door puzzle. Instead ask yourself: Why would anyone place a magical or mechanical puzzle on a door?

There should be a perfectly logical reason for the puzzle being there. Door puzzles are put there to filter out those who can solve the puzzle from those who cannot. For instance, the rune puzzle might be placed on a door by a wizard as a test of intelligence for other wizards who wish to uncover arcane secrets. Or it could be some form of celestial that only good characters can speak out loud. Maybe it is not meant as a puzzle at all but part of an alien language.

However outlandish the reason, it must be a natural part of your fantastical gaming world. When we challenge the players they often feel less connected to the story and that characters.

This especially happens when they go into puzzle solving mode. One way to enhance or improve the game immersion, is to introduce time pressure and to make opening the door important to the characters.

For instance, instead of just solving the rune door puzzle a character could hear the cries of his loved ones from behind the door slowly dying away.

The ongoing drama will keep players in-character and creates a sense of urgency. And also, door puzzles do not necessarily have to be placed onto doors. You can place a door puzzle onto any object that you can unseal. Be it an ancient tomb or a magical sword. Finally, the easiest way to create immersion in the game is to provide players with physical clues they can touch and manipulate.

Sharing and investigating physical puzzle pieces also helps create a more cooperative game. This way, puzzles are an ideal vehicle for improving immersion. But when you are using ten door puzzles, and each has a different set of key pieces to keep track of, things can get pretty complicated fast.

Here are some helpful steps for layering your door puzzles. Step 1. Define areas in your dungeon The first step is to define a number of areas in your dungeon equal to the number of puzzle you want to use.

Step 2. Define the order of exploration Next, define in which order you want PCs to be able to unlock each area. Obviously, the first room s PCs enter should be the first area. It should contain all the key puzzles pieces and clues to enter the second area. If an area has only one door leading to it, you can simply place a puzzle on that door. But if there a multiple doors leading to an area, you can place the same puzzle on each of those doors.

Draw seven distinct points on a piece of paper such that regardless of which three are chosen, at least two will be exactly one unit e. As far as I know, there is only one way to do this. An ant is in one corner of a room shaped like a cube. It wants to go to the opposite corner.

What is the shortest path that the ant can take, and how long is it? I place 8 coins on a table in a line with random sides up. You can look at the coins and then flip one coin. You leave and your friend enters. Come up with a strategy so that your friend can determine which coin you flipped. You have a square cafeteria tray with four quarters on it - one in each corner. Again, we are in a dark room. You do not know which quarters have the heads side up and which have the tails side up.

Your goal is to flip over any coins you want and then ask if they are all heads. If they, are then you win. If they are not, then I rotate the tray randomly and we repeat the process. Can you ensure that you will eventually win? Do not physically do this - it will ruin it. There are two quarters on a table. One is glued in place, the other is adjacent to it.

If you roll the quarter that isn't glued around the one that is glued until it reaches the position it started from, how many degrees will it have rotated by? When I say "roll around" you can pretend the edges of the quarters are like gears. Some people find "how many degrees will it have rotated by" to be ambiguous so here's what I mean: If it starts with the head facing up and moves until the head is facing down, that is degrees. If the head rotates from up to down and all the way around to up again, that is degrees.

Once you are convinced you know the answer, try it. There is a duck in the middle of a perfectly circular pond radius 1. There is a fox running around the outside of the pond at speed 1. The duck is injured in a way that it can only take off from land. How slowly can the duck swim in order to still be able to make it to the edge of the pond without the fox meeting it there? The fox can only run around the pond. They are both points. The duck has no constraints on the derivative of its velocity.

You have two identical glasses, filled to the same level. One has water in it and the other has wine. You take a teaspoon of the wine, pour it into the water, and mix them up.

You then take a teaspoon of the water with a little wine in it , pour it into the wine and mix it up. Is there more water in the wine, or more wine in the water? If a car is traveling at 60 miles per hour, what part is stationary?

What part is going miles per hour? Bob flips fair coins. Alice flips What is the probability that Alice gets strictly more heads than Bob? You're in a boat with a big rock, in a swimming pool. You toss the rock overboard. What happens to the level of the water in the pool?

You are given a round table, and a large number of coins. You alternate with an opponent placing a coin on the table, not overlapping the edge or any other coins. The winner is the last player who can place a coin. You get to decide who goes first. Do you have a winning strategy? There is a straight line of N foxholes, and one fox. Every night, the fox moves from his current foxhole to the one either immediately to his left, or immediately to his right.

Every day, you get to look in one fox hole. Give a strategy to guarantee finding the fox in the fewest number of days. There is an island with red and blue eyed monks. There are no reflections, and nobody speaks about eye color. If they find out their eyes are red, they kill themselves at midnight that night.

You go to the island and see that at least one has red eyes. You say "At least one of you has red eyes. If so, when? There are three people who want to have a duel. You are person C. You get to shoot first. What should you do in order to maximize the chance that you will live, assuming that A and B are logical and also want to maximize their chances of survival? Hint: this would not be here if the answer was completely trivial. You have two lengths of fuse.

Each burns for an hour, exactly. They do not burn at a steady rate, so if you cut one in half, then you do not know if a half will burn for 1 second or 59 minutes though the sum of the times of the two halves is one hour. How do you time exactly 45 minutes?

You have a cow in a circular pen radius 1. You want it to only eat half of the grass in the pen. Assume the cow is a point. You tether the cow to the edge of the pen circular enclosure. How long should its tether be so that it can eat exactly half the grass?

There is a prison with inmates. The warden strikes a deal with them. There is a room with a light in it controlled by a light switch. Each day, the warden will take a random prisoner to that room. At some point, a prisoner must say "We have all been in the room! If he or she is wrong, then all will never be set free.

The initial state of the light is not known on or off. Talking is allowed ahead of time, but not after the process begins. Also, the process will begin on a random day, so you do not know if you are the first in or not.

You are a prisoner. What plan do you propose in order to ensure that you will gain your freedom?