Still Helping the Villagers Solve Their Maths Problems

Actually, I’ve had a good run on Professor Layton and the Curious Village this morning.

I managed to figure out how to cross from island to island while only visiting each one once—they allowed me to build a bridge, but I’m still quite proud of myself for figuring that one out.

(But last night I had to get Nick to help me figure out how many of twenty people trapped on a sinking boat I could save if it took the five-person life-raft nine minutes to make a round trip to a nearby island; it never occurred to me that it would be halfway back to the island when the ship actually sank. Of course, it also didn’t occur to me that one person would have to stay on the raft to pilot it. And, carrying on the tradition of creepy messages that began with the dead-dog puzzle, this one ended with the message “Let’s spare a thought for the two who lost their lives.” This aspect of the game is starting to freak me out.)

I also managed to figure out two of those “If you give me two years, I’ll be twice as old as you” and “My age is your age plus half my age” maths puzzles, which I’m feeling pretty smug about.

I completely failed to figure out how many coins, interspersed among a twisted rope, I would be allowed to keep when the rope was pulled taut, if I were only allowed to keep the ones above the rope. I did try and follow the pattern of the rope, but it was so twisty I became thoroughly confused as to which was top and which was bottom.

But I did manage to complete an eight-piece sliding puzzle to make an apple with a worm in the middle. Of course, according to the ticker at the top, it took me something like six hundred moves.

But it was the mouse puzzle that made me realise that I’m not cut out intellectually for these sorts of puzzles.

The mouse puzzle pointed out that mice reproduce at twelve babies every month, and baby mice can reproduce once they are a month old. So, the puzzle asked, if you buy a mouse the day after it’s born and bring it home, how many mice will you have after a year?

I didn’t try any complicated multiplication, you’ll be happy to hear. I figured there wasn’t any point, since I was never going to work out the correct answer, and it occurred to me that knowing the genders of any subsequent babies would be necessary for correct calculations.

Then I had what I thought was a brainwave.

What, I thought to myself, if my mouse is a boy? Then I won’t have any baby mice at all! And I’ll only have one mouse at the end of the year.

(The mouse clearly wasn’t a boy. In keeping with strict gender roles, it had a pink bow on its head, the poor thing.)

The answer was one, of course.

But I could have saved myself a lot of effort had it only occurred to me that mice—whether male or female—can’t actually reproduce asexually.