Puzzles Archive
I like puzzles. The Riddler (now The Fiddler) gives me something new to chew on most weeks, sometimes with pencil and paper, sometimes in code.
“Fiddler on the Proof” offers weekly mathematical puzzles as well as other discussion about the puzzling community. The Fiddler is a spiritual successor to The Riddler column at FiveThirtyEight, which ran for eight years under the stewardship of Zach Wissner-Gross and Ollie Roeder.
— The Fiddler on Substack
Below is a collection of my solutions, spanning the FiveThirtyEight era and beyond.
2023
| Date | Puzzle | My Solution | Code |
|---|---|---|---|
| Jan 27 | Five-letter guessing game | blog | — |
| Jan 23 | Drone vs. scooter metric | blog | — |
2022
| Date | Puzzle | My Solution | Code |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dec 16 | Gift exchange chaos | blog | — |
| Oct 21 | Mexican Lottery | blog | — |
| Oct 14 | Birthday collisions | blog | — |
| Sept 16 | Longest anigram | blog | — |
| Sept 9 | Cookie sheet packing | blog | — |
| July 1 | Two Astronomers’ Towers | — | |
| June 24 | Goat tower parking | — | |
| June 17 | Elevensies / urn probabilities | — | |
| May 13 | Nonconformist dice | — | |
| Jan 7 | Triangle trek | — |
2021
| Date | Puzzle | My Solution | Code |
|---|---|---|---|
| Apr 23 | Random voting | — | |
| Apr 16 | Lunar phase speed | — | |
| Apr 9 | One-way out | code | |
| Apr 2 | Outthink the Sphinx | — | |
| Mar 26 | March Mathness | — | |
| Mar 19 | Square residues mod 10 | — | |
| Mar 12 | Biggest pie | — | |
| Mar 5 | Batting .299 | — | |
| Feb 19 | Riddler Jenga | (link coming) | — |
| Dec 13 | Fencing Relay | — |
Older Solutions
Some earlier solutions are still available at my old site. Others may eventually be added here as I find time to polish them.