I guess I'm not the only astronomy geek as I, too, thought VS was talking about the Pleiades!

You will note that my riddle states:

We live in Heaven
With the clouds and sun.

The Pleiades, of course, cannot be seen on cloudy nights or in sunshine, but rainbows are often seen when there are both clouds and sun.

Here's a cryptarithm I made up a long time ago, which was published in The Journal of Recreational Mathematics. Each letter in these two equations represents a digit from 0 to 9. The letters are consistent in both equations; that is, the "O" in "TWO" represents the same digit as the "O" in "FOUR" and so on.

ONE + ONE = TWO

ONE + FOUR = FIVE

There are two possible solutions.

I think I got it!

0 = R
1 = V
2 = O
3 = N
4 = T
5 = I
6 = E
7 = W
8 = U
9 = F

so

ONE + ONE = TWO
is
236 + 236 = 472

and

ONE + FOUR = FIVE
is
236 + 9280 = 9516


Whoo hoo!





edited to add explanation/process:

First, R must equal zero because e+e=o AND e+r=e
Then, O must be an even number because e+e=o
Next, T must be 1 plus or minus I because o+o=t and o+o=i
Next, N or U must be greater than 5 because n+u or n+n must be greater than 10 (for o+o=t and o+o=i)
Finally, O must either be 2 or 4 because T cannot be greater than 9 (e+e=o and o+o=t)

I think those are the main steps I took to get to the solution.

This is quite correct, of course.

The other possible solution is:

286 + 286 = 572

and

286 + 3210 = 3496

Somebody else want to propose a puzzle or riddle?

Also: Does anybody want to answer by challenge in "Defending the Indefensible?" That is one of my favorite threads, and I hate to see it die out, and I don't want to answer my own challenge. Thanks.

Bumping this up because it's been dead for a while.

Here is a problem I recently made up:

I live with a certain number of cats, a certain number of birds, and no other animals. All together, my animal companions have 26 eyes and 34 legs. How many cats and how many birds do I live with? (Assume all the animals are normal and healthy!)

4 cats
9 birds

Quite a collection!

This is, of course, quite correct.

Here's sort of a word puzzle for fans of old movies.

I'm thinking of the name of a very famous movie star of yesteryear (first and last name.) This person's name alternates consonants and vowels. This person's name also contains each of the vowels A, E, I, O, and U exactly one time each. Who is it?

A relative forwards to me what she recalls as having been a recent integer-sequence puzzle, which she attributes to Marilyn vos Savant. Any ideas as to the generating function, or is she mis-remembering?

4, 4, 1, 2, 1, 1, 2, 2, 3, . . .

Is it 2,2,3,3,4,4?

I have one, but you will probably get it easily.

One day while working at your huge law office in beautiful Charlotte, NC you receive an email. It says "Your mother's sister has 3 nieces and nephews. 1 died and the other lives with his father out west."

Where is the third one?

Here's a good one:

Imagine a duck in a bottle. You have to get him out. You cannot damage the bottle or the duck in any way. It's a normal sized duck in a glass champagne bottle. How do you get him out? The only clue I can give you is:

You get him out the same way you got him in.

Reading the letter.

Gods. I spent so much time on this one. Imagine him out!

I could not figure that one out for the life of me.

Bela Lugosi

(I was reminded by my avatar)