Do we remember geometry of roads to locate an address? London taxi drivers seem to have a special ability to remember a route. MRI scans of these men show more activity in a part of their brain. However, that is only a part of the story. How do people without any knowledge of the three ‘R’s locate an address by simply responding to oral instructions? Do we respond to geometry instinctively? Questions galore and we really do not know those answers.

PUZZLE 1: Last weekend, Goose’s Games on the Boardwalk at Ocean City opened with a banner Saturday that gave a good start to the summer earnings of the five game booth attendants, including the “Water Clowns” operator. Can you win a pair of soft dice by finding the full name (one first name is Kevin, one surname Sands) of each Goose’s Game attendant and how much he or she earned on Memorial Day Saturday?

PUZZLE 2: When Butch Moondance robbed the Gallup-Santa Fe Express, he took a total of $2500 from four of the passengers. Each of the four victims, including Annie Starr, lost a different sum to the infamous outlaw. From the sheriff’s report below, you should be able to solve the Great Train Robbery Logic Problem of where on the train Butch held up each person (one was robbed while sitting in the passenger coach) and how much money he stole from him or her.

1. Immediately after robbing Doc Masterson of his whole bankroll, Butch held up another of the victims in the sleeper car ? for $250 more than he got from Doc.

2. Of the four, Wyatt Hitchcock did not lose the most to Butch.

3. Immediately after robbing the victim who was trying to hide behind a barrel in the baggage car, Butch Moondance took Belle Cody’s cash, $750 less than he stole from the victim in the baggage car.

4. The person Butch held up in the dining car didn't lose the smallest sum, $250, to the gunman.

Solutions on February 13

CORRECT ENTRIES

January 16

Sreechandra Bannerjee, Hazra Road, Calcutta- 19; Soumya Bit , Burdwan; Harjesh Bawa, Radha Bazar, Calcutta-1; Subhrata Ranjan Das, Bhubaneshwar; Devichand Khemkar, Silliguri; S.P.S.Jain, New Delhi; Anirban Gupta; Subhash Kumar Sengupta, Guwahati; A.K. Sinha Ray, Bhubaneswar; Arunjyoti Samadder, Calcutta-20; Suhas Kumar Agarwal, Asansol; Anirudhha Sengupta, Chirkunda; Anisur Rahman, Raiganj; C.K. Moorthy, Adra; P.K. Banerjee, Bokaro Steel City; Anuradha Srivastava, Dhanbad; B.K. Goswami, Jorhat.

Please send your entries to knowhow@abpmail.com within 10 days. For snail-mail, the address is Brainstorming, KnowHOW, 6, Prafulla Sarkar Street, Calcutta- 700 001. Please send complete solutions not one-line entries.

PUZZLE CRACKED

Solution (January 16): The five-featured antiques on the Summerset episode of The Traveling Antiques Show are Carl Waldorf, Fish Pond Game, flea market in Wales, $1,500 Diane Sperry, Puzzle Jug, attic of house, $1,000 Greta Yeager, Betty Lamp, Aunt Agatha, $750 Joan Zimmer, Pickle Castor, estate sale, $500 Herb Thacker, Dr Brophy’s bottle, old barn, $250.

Here are the clues to the solution by brainstormer Harjesh Bawa: Since Yeager’s item (Rs 750) is worth more than the item found in the old barn, it’s clear that between Thacker and Zimmer, Thacker must have found his item in the old barn since Zimmer had bought his item in an estate sale. Thus, Yeager’s Betty lamp was given to him by aunt Agatha since waldorf and the puzzle jug aren’t related to aunt Agatha.