#logic problems

(Image description: Six issues of the puzzle magazine Official’s Logic Problems, in a slightly fanned-out stack. From top to bottom, they are green, yellow, red, pink, purple, and yellow-orange. The pink and yellow ones have been crossed out because I found them; they are from December 2000 and August 2000, respectively.)

Edit: if you do, please email me at [email protected]. Thanks!

Edit 2: if you don’t have any of these, please reblog!

Edit 3: You can post this picture and story outside Tumblr if you like. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, whatever. I just want this to go viral!

Don’t understand the issue... there is obviously a correct answer here

Both C and D can’t be correct, because they’re inconsistent. In C, the first half of the number assumes a description of the digits, while the second half assumes that the verbal numbers each translate to a digit. D is the same but reversed. Because of this inconsistency, it rules out the verbal sentence from describing either of those numbers in a logical manner. 

Meanwhile, despite the fact that B is consistent in its method of transcription, it can’t be the right answer either because it’s grammatically incorrect. If B were the right answer, it would be clear in the question, which would say two zeroes, two fours. Because the sentence does not pluralize zero or four, we know it can’t refer to B, which has a plural amount of each number.

I’m not into Star Trek anymore either. I used to be into TNG when I was young and I stuck with it through DS9 (which I never enjoyed as much) and Voyager (which I liked much better), but Captain Picard will always be MY Captain and the Enterprise D is MY space ship. I never got into any of the later spinoffs.

I have seen all 78 eps of TOS, I saw all the movies up through First Contact (after the hand-off), and my friends and I even got all gussied up like we were going to the formal opera, and we called our opening-night First Contact even "Prom Trek" since none of us had gone to prom (NO regrets: we gave ZERO fucks), and so we made our own prom circa age 26-28 doing something we loved.

I watched TNG S1-S5, and then probably saw half of S6, and really not much afterwards, though I tuned in for the final ep (and was DEEPLY disappointed). My true love there was Beverly. (Ah, Gates McFadden, one of the three main people responsible for the realization of SO MANY of my generation's fans of, "Oh...I'm a *LESBIAN*!!" ...the others are Gillian Anderson and Linda Hamilton.).

I have heard SUCH good things about DS9, but I was at uni at the time, and it was one at, like, 3:30 on Saturday afternoons...and it would break up the day, and I'd forget...it was so inconvenient and non-intuitive that I never remembered to watch it, so I've only seen a smattering of eps (including OF COURSE the Mirror episodes...SO GOOD!). I wanted to like it, but timing worked against me.

I watched and LOOOOVED Voyager. I shipped Captn Katie and Chakotay SO hard..."Resolutions" OMG OMG. I was TRULY hopeful that they would address Captn Katie's escalating instability and risk-taking. And I was even MORE hopeful when they did the ep where she locked herself in her cabin for 3 months. I wanted to see them ADDRESS her severe depression and loss of sense of self when separated from the structure of Starfleet that she was so committed to and dependent on. I wanted to see the Doc relieve her of command in order to address and TREAT her depression...to acknowledge that she needed HELP rather than enabling her and ignoring it. But...they skirted that, as they skirted EVERYTHING they built up.

I hate Brannon Braga with the fiery passion of 10,000 suns. I mean, when he was asked, in S1, how they were going to handle when Tuvok inevitably went into Pon Farr, and THAT ASSHAT was like, "What? Pon what? ...OH! Oh, but that's from the OLD show and this is a different show, so that doesn't apply." WTF YOU ASSHOLE OMG YOU'RE PART OF A WIDER CONTINUITY....AAAARRRFGGHGGHH!!! And...then they DID do ...something with it...and it fell TOTALLY flat for me.

I watched S1-S5 (again), and I WANTED to like "The Year of Hell," but it just didn't LAND for me Because Reset. I LOVED the episode where it turned out that Barclay was able to communicate with them...that slender connection to their home...that was VERY cool. And I LIKED Seven...but I didn't like that stupid catsuit...nor did I like that it became the Seven Of Nine Show.

I loved B'Lanna and Tom. I loved how they DID handle HER response to the obliteration of the Maquis and addressed that she was deliberately engaging in dangerous behaviors. I just wish they'd ALSO done that with Captn Katie; she was ENDANGERING THE WHOLE SHIP. I did appreciate that they revisited the concept, but with another character.

A friend had the headcanon (which is really just logic) that the Delaney twins from Stellar Cartography could almost NEVER rest because, typically, on a small ship working in well-travelled areas, just how much does Stellar Cartography DO? ....And then suddenly they're in a TOTALLY UNMAPPED AREA...and they need to recruit DOZENS to help them do all the mapping of this entirely un-documented area...but there are only 120-140 PEOPLE on board...so they must have never slept.

I think they should NEVER EVER let Chakotay fly the shuttles; they couldn't REPLACE them...and he kept crashing or damaging them or (check out the Coffee Nebula) just, you know, ACCIDENTALLY LEAVING SHUTTLECRAFT BEHIND by flying down to the planet and then BEAMING BACK UP.

I missed it when they stopped emphasizing that there was a SHORTAGE of resources. When Janeway couldn't have her coffee? SO awesome. When Neelix was cooking weird variations of the same thing? SO GOOD. I missed that as they forgot that resources were limited and caution was SUPER necessary.

I watched the series finale and was like...Chakotay and SEVEN??? WTF??? And I wanted not to see it END with them returning...I wanted to see the conflict of "Now we're FINALLY back to Starfleet YAY!" ...and the realization that, after HAVING to function independently for so long, finding it VERY difficult to fit into the demands of a command structure again. I wanted to see the reaction to how things had changed in the Alpha Quadrant...the Maquis adjusting to the annihilation of the Maquis...SO many missed opportunities.

I tried to watch Enterprise. I tried. I mean...Scott Bakula. Hoshi. COOL stuff. And yet, they managed to make SCOTT BAKULA--a man who could make the cut of a dress look GOOD and who could sing, dance, play piano, play football...do ANYTHING (see: Quantum Leap) while seeming personable and likeable...they managed to make him BORING. WTF???? I thought Enterprise was a boringly hot mess...but their Mirror episodes were good. I mean...EMPRESS HOSHI? YES, PLEASE. And the ep where T'Pol told the story of her grandmother who got trapped on earth and "invented" velcro so that she could sell the patent and get money for the family who helped her (I call it the T'Nana episode because it was T'Pol's Nana, yo)...I liked that...but I liked the novel "Strangers from the Sky" better....and it's the same plot.

And since then, and especially with the reboot...I just have walked away; I've DONE my time with Trek. I am no longer enamoured, and yet I still appreciate it.

I REALLY love, even now, some of my favorite Pocket Books novels (from before Pocket made the rules so rigid that the novels were no longer just authorized fanfic). My FAVE ones are "The Entropy Effect," "Ishmael" (Barbara Hambly steathily got them to PUBLISH a Star Trek/Here Come the Brides crossover!!!! With Doctor Who jokes! And there's TIME TRAVEL!), and Jean Lorrah's PUBLISHED Sarek and Amanda novels (which ENTIRELY have the backstory that is from her zines that were my first serious fanfic knowing it was fanfic).

March 20, 2017 - Day 274

It all started the night of June 4, 2019. I was browsing eBay when I found a very special lot of six Official’s Logic Problems magazines. It didn’t say which issues they were; all it said was that they ranged from 2000 to 2004. Here they were:

(Image description: Six issues of the puzzle magazine Official’s Logic Problems, in a slightly fanned-out stack. From top to bottom, the magazines are green, yellow, red, pink, purple, and yellow-orange. The pink and yellow ones have been crossed out because @saturdaynightlivedork found them.)

For those of you who don’t know (most of you probably don’t), Official’s Logic Problems is a long-gone puzzle magazine. The puzzles in it had such a nerdy, artsy style. (Check out the “official’s logic problems” tag on my blog for examples.) This title had its last issue circa 2005-2006. These are harder to find than hens’ teeth, and these mean a lot to me.

Fast-forward to the next day. My aunt (a licensed cosmetologist) was coming over to give me a haircut. I was sitting in the chair, getting my hair chopped off, when I clicked the link I’d sent Mom and discovered that “This item is no longer available.”

Someone had probably beat us to them.

I had a meltdown. I bit myself. I couldn’t stop crying. This was the chance of a lifetime, and it got snuffed out.

After the haircut, Mom called my brother to see if he’d bought them for me. (He had an eBay account; Mom didn’t. We didn’t know that you could buy things from there without an account.)

He hadn’t. Someone had indeed beat us to those six Official’s Logic Problems magazines.

More meltdown. I felt so helpless. I couldn’t stop talking about the “Big Six”, as I had dubbed them, for months.

Today (May 1, 2020), it’s been ten months. I still need four of those magazines. I still hate myself for not putting my foot down and asking my brother to buy them sooner. I still worry that whoever bought them has thrown them away or recycled them. (I hold no grudge against whoever bought them; I just would love to have my own copies.)

And that’s why I’ve been asking people to reblog the picture of the Big Four.

So please, do your part. Let my story be heard. Reblog the posts I’ve made about the Big Four (this one included). Someone out there has got to have a grandparent or aunt or uncle or teacher or someone who has at least one.

You don’t have to keep the picture and story to Tumblr. Post it anywhere. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, I don’t care. I just want the picture to be seen and the story to be heard.

Thank you.

Update, June 8, 2020: THE PINK ONE HAS BEEN FOUND!!! 👏 Five left to go!

I was just starting fifth grade when I became enamored of logic puzzle magazines.

I loved this puzzle: