1 year ago today, on October 9, 2007, the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) reached a record closing high of 14,164.53, which still stands. Today, the stock market, due to the financial crisis, closed at 8,579.19, a fall of 39.01%! Even worse, this may not be the bottom of the current stock market plunge.

Most of the drop, of course, has taken place in recent days. Over the last 4 days, the market has dropped 17%. If we assume that this rate were to continue steadily, which it won't due to market mechanisms, it would only take another 19-20 days for the DJIA to reach zero. This example isn't mean to scare you or be a prediction, but rather as a dramatization of the scale of the recent drop.

Your challenge is to put the 1-year stock market chart below back together before the real stock market gets put back together. Or, you could simply try and do it as fast as you can, which will still be quicker than the real market gets put back together.

Open the puzzle by clicking here!

Click here to see the rules for this puzzle.

To work on the jigsaw puzzle, click on the above link to open the modal window that contains the puzzle. The clock will start when you use your mouse to pick up the first piece. Move the pieces around by clicking and dargging them with your mouse. You can use this to arrange pieces on the board, and to connect pieces by placing your selected piece close enough to a connecting piece that one piece's nub locks into the other's void. You can close the window by clicking the circular area in the upper right corner of the window.

Let everyone know how you did in the comments!

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Every year at this time, Global Finance, an American magazine, release their list of the safest banks in the world. The list takes into consideration long-term credit ratings from Moody's, Standard & Poor's, and Fitch, as well as total assets of each bank.

At this writing, they haven't released the full 2008 list, but they have released the top 10. With the financial crisis going as it is today, especially with all the bank failures, this list arrives just in time, and will probably generate more interest than it has in previous years.

Can you name the Global Finance's 2008 10 safest banks in the world in 10 minutes?

I'll even start you off with a few hints:
• There's only one US bank on the list
• Places like WaMu (Washington Mutual), AIG, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and Lehman Brothers aren't on the list.

Let everyone know how you did in the comments!

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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!

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This has been an amazing, and scary, weekend for financial news!

The big news, of course, is the formerly long-respected brokerage Lehman Brothers filing for bankruptcy.

Their financial troubles are based in the subprime mortgage-lending crisis, which is affecting many other financial firms, as well. Merrill Lynch is facing a takeover by Bank of America.

Wall Street, and other financial markets around the globe, are expected to react sharply today.

However, not all the financial news is bad. As I write this, crude oil is trading below $100 per barrel for the first time in many months.

Now that we've seen how the professionals handle the financial maze, it's your turn. You're the blue dot at the top and your challenge is to work your way through the dollar sign-shaped maze, to reach the other blue dot at the bottom.



Click here to see the rules for this puzzle.

The object of the game is to find a path through the maze and reach the goal as quickly as you can, and with as little backtracking and as few hints as possible.

To begin, click anywhere in the maze area. Anytime you click outside of the maze, you must click in it again to resume playing or use any of the functions described here, although the timer will continue running.

You can then move through the maze by using the I key to move up, K to move down, J to move left, and L to move right. As you move, you'll leave a blue trail through the maze.

The timer starts when you make your first move through the maze. You may pause the timer by pressing the P key, and the timer will automatically resume when you make your next move.

You may backtrack, but the computer will keep track of how many steps you backtracked, and those steps will be marked with a trail that's a lighter blue that your regular trail.

You can get a hint concerning which way to go by pressing the H key (marked in red), and get the full solution by pressing the S key (also marked in red). You can get a completely new maze, in the same shape, by reloading it with the R key.

When you reach the goal, you'll be notified of your time, how many steps you took, how many steps you backtracked, and how many hints you required. If you like, reload the maze, and try and beat your own best time!

Let everyone know how you did in the comments!

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The big news in technology today, of course, is the announcment and release of the new iPod Touch, released by Apple and announced by the formerly late Steve Jobs.

No, that wasn't Apple's only announcement. After all, there's also the new “nano-chromatic” iPod nanos, and the announcement of the new iTunes 8 download being made available. The poor iPod classic getting upgraded to 120GB almost gets lost in the, er, shuffle (which also got upgraded today).

However, out of all the new releases, we can make an educated guess that, out of all of today's announcements, it's the iPod Touch that is most likely to shake things up.

Speaking of shuffling and shaking things up, that's just what we're going to do with today's puzzle. Your challenge today is to see how many English words you can make from the letters in IPOD TOUCH in 10 minutes. There are 130 words, not including the words “pod” and “touch”, that can be made from this phrase. How many can you name?

Click here to see the rules for this puzzle.

The object of this puzzle is to name as many words as possible from the given phrase above.
• The clock will start counting down as soon as the first letter is typed in the answer box.
• Each letter may only be used as often as it appears in the given phrase.
• The only words included in the answers are those found in the Official Scrabble® Players Dictionary, as used in the USA, Canada, and Israel. Words from the Official Scrabble® Words International that do not appear in the Official Scrabble® Players Dictionary are not included.
• Other words may be excluded, as described in the article above.

Let everyone know how you did in the comments!

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Google has had an interesting week, hasn't it?

First, a comic book is leaked, discussing Google Chrome, their new open source web browser. It creates plenty of buzz, and the browser itself was relased on Tuesday.

The big launch comes, many people download it, and a few even read the EULA. Those that did read it were horrified, as the agreement seemed to give Google the rights over any content you submitted through their browser. Fortunately, Google quickly removed the vague language from the EULA.

Just when everything was starting to settle down, a serious security flaw was found in Google Chrome!

In the real world, chrome has the reputation of making something look good, but not doing anything to improve the workings. Let's hope Google Chrome doesn't take on this association.

While Google works to put Chrome back together, why don't you try and put Google itself back together? Below is a mixture of three images. Below are the description, in the order they're employed in the puzzle (which, as you'll see in the instructions below, is important):

1. The Googleplex welcome sign


2. Google co-founder Sergey Brin (with the purple background)


3. Google co-founder Larry Page (with the dark classroom background)

(Java required)
Click here to see the rules for this puzzle.

The object of this puzzle, called FlipSwitch (conceived and programmed by Eric Harshbarger), is to put together any 1 of the 3 images used. The images are designated in a certain order, as described above. Each time you click a particular square, that square's image, as well as the images in each square in the same row and column, will move forward to the next image in the sequence. Any square containing the 3rd image will be changed to the 1st image.

The Scramble button will give you a new arrangement of picture pieces with which to work. The Increment button will move each square's image to the next one in sequence. The Solve button will show one completed picture. To see the complete set of pictures, click Solve, then click Increment to go through the complete pictures one by one.

Let everyone know how you did in the comments!

(Googleplex welcome sign image courtey of Coolcaesar. Sergey Brin image courtesy of James Duncan Davidson/O'Reilly Media, Inc.. Larry Page image courtesy of Ehud Kenan.)

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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 »