Didn't I just say that a major news story would break soon?

The big story today, of course, is Sen. McCain's cancellation of his campaign plans to focus on the financial crisis. Most notably, McCain has asked Sen. Obama if a delay in the debate is possible, but the Obama campaign has responded clearly that they wish to go on.

McCain has suspended many of his own campaign activities, including ads and appearances. Most notably, McCain will not be appearing on the David Letterman show tonight. Instead, he'll be traveling to Washington, D.C., to work on the bailout bill with his fellow senators, which could potentially reach as much as US$700 billion.

While the U.S. Senate puzzles through their numbers and how to structure the bill, here's your chance to work through your own structure of numbers. All you have to do is replace each letter with a particular number, so the resulting equation true. It may seem tough, but it's much easier than the number puzzle the senate has to work through. At least in this one, you get hints, and you can be sure there is a right answer!



Click here to see the rules for this puzzle.

The object of this puzzle is to replace each letter with a number so that the equation is true.

The rules are as follows:
• Each letter represents only one digit, 0-9, throughout the problem.
• Different letters represent different digits, and no two letters represent the same digit.
• Any letter that represents the leftmost digit in a number never represents 0.
• When solved, the equation must be true.
• There is only one possible solution.

To start solving the problem, click on any box, and change that box's letter to a number, and then hit the tab key. If that letter appears more than once, the other instances of that same letter will also be changed to that same number. You won't be alerted if you enter the same digit for two different letters, so be careful!

The Hint button will tell you one digit, and which letter represents that digit. The Restore button will set each text box back to its original letter. The Check button will let you know whether your solution is correct.

Let everyone know how you did in the comments!

• 0 comments »

Oops. Obama may have just made a big mistake.

Last week, Vice Presidential Republican Candidate Sarah Palin made this now-famous comment in an exchange with one of McCain's aides, after being warned about the vicious assault she'd be facing once her candidacy was announced:

Palin: “Thanks for the warning. By the way, do you know what they say the difference is between a hockey mom and a Pit Bull?”

McCain aide: “No, Governor.”

Palin: “A hockey mom wears lipstick.”

Comments like that, and the attitude to back it up, have given her approval ratings above 50% in some polls.

With this comment still fresh in people's minds, Senator Obama made the following comments today, in reference to the McCain/Palin campaign:

“You can put lipstick on a pig, but it’s still a pig,” Obama said. “You can wrap an old fish in a piece of paper called ‘change,’ it’s still going to stink.”

The reactions have already been strong and swift.

If we take Obama, and add his comment about lipstick on a pig, and add this in as a Palin reference, does that equal a win for McCain? I don't know whether that's true, but I do know that there's only one way to replace the letters below with numbers so that the equation is true. Can you solve it?



Click here to see the rules for this puzzle.

The object of this puzzle is to replace each letter with a number so that the equation is true.

The rules are as follows:
• Each letter represents only one digit, 0-9, throughout the problem.
• Different letters represent different digits, and no two letters represent the same digit.
• Any letter that represents the leftmost digit in a number never represents 0.
• When solved, the equation must be true.
• There is only one possible solution.

To start solving the problem, click on any box, and change that box's letter to a number, and then hit the tab key. If that letter appears more than once, the other instances of that same letter will also be changed to that same number. You won't be alerted if you enter the same digit for two different letters, so be careful!

The Hint button will tell you one digit, and which letter represents that digit. The Restore button will set each text box back to its original letter. The Check button will let you know whether your solution is correct.

Let everyone know how you did in the comments!

• 0 comments »

It's the weekend, so why don't we enjoy ourselves, forget about politics, and turn to the lighter side of the news?

You may or may not have heard about this, but Apple, Inc. founder and CEO Steve Jobs' death was reported earlier this week. How can I call this the lighter side of the news? It turned out that the reports of Steve Jobs being dead were false.

On it's own, this might have been just a mildly interesting story. Just a few days earlier, though, Dolly Parton's death was also falsely reported!

Yes, many famous people have had premature obituaries printed about them, but two such mistakes happening so closely together is unusual (not counting the CNN.com incident).

While you work on the puzzle below, I'm going to double check the status of Abe Vigoda and Generalissimo Francisco Franco.


Click here to see the rules for this puzzle.

The object of this puzzle is to replace each letter with a number so that the equation is true.

The rules are as follows:
• Each letter represents only one digit, 0-9, throughout the problem.
• Different letters represent different digits, and no two letters represent the same digit.
• Any letter that represents the leftmost digit in a number never represents 0.
• When solved, the equation must be true.
• There is only one possible solution.

To start solving the problem, click on any box, and change that box's letter to a number, and then hit the tab key. If that letter appears more than once, the other instances of that same letter will also be changed to that same number. You won't be alerted if you enter the same digit for two different letters, so be careful!

The Hint button will tell you one digit, and which letter represents that digit. The Restore button will set each text box back to its original letter. The Check button will let you know whether your solution is correct.

Let everyone know how you did in the comments!

• 0 comments »

As of today, it's official! Obama has been designated as the official Democratic Party presidential candidate for the US 2008 election. Since few of us were surprised at the outcome, I've created another alphametic puzzle that will give you something to which you can look forward.

Strangely enough, Barack H. Obama's name works perfectly as an equation. The question, as always, is exactly which equation this represents:


Click here to see the rules for this puzzle.

The object of this puzzle is to replace each letter with a number so that the equation is true.

The rules are as follows:
• Each letter represents only one digit, 0-9, throughout the problem.
• Different letters represent different digits, and no two letters represent the same digit.
• Any letter that represents the leftmost digit in a number never represents 0.
• When solved, the equation must be true.
• There is only one possible solution.

To start solving the problem, click on any box, and change that box's letter to a number, and then hit the tab key. If that letter appears more than once, the other instances of that same letter will also be changed to that same number. You won't be alerted if you enter the same digit for two different letters, so be careful!

The Hint button will tell you one digit, and which letter represents that digit. The Restore button will set each text box back to its original letter. The Check button will let you know whether your solution is correct.

Let everyone know how you did in the comments!

• 0 comments »

Before you ask, NO, I didn't misspell the name of the group Run DMC. The DNC to which I'm referring is the Democratic National Committee, whose convention is being held in Denver, Colorado, this week to officially determine which candidate they will run (granted, few of us are in suspense as to whether Obama will win the nomination of the democrats).

In honor of that, I've created an interesting math problem for my visitors.


Click here to see the rules for this puzzle.

This puzzle is called an alphametic, otherwise known as a cryptarithm (alt. spelling: cryptorithm), or simply cryptarithmetic. The object is to replace each letter with a number so that the equation is true.

The rules are as follows:
• Each letter represents only one digit, 0-9, throughout the problem.
• Different letters represent different digits, and no two letters represent the same digit.
• Any letter that represents the leftmost digit in a number never represents 0.
• When solved, the equation must be true.
• There is only one possible solution.

To start solving the problem, click on any box, and change that box's letter to a number, and then hit the tab key. If that letter appears more than once, the other instances of that same letter will also be changed to that same number. You won't be alerted if you enter the same digit for two different letters, so be careful!

The Hint button will tell you one digit, and which letter represents that digit. The Restore button will set each text box back to its original letter. The Check button will let you know whether your solution is correct.

Let everyone know how you did in the comments!

• 0 comments »