Puzzles

Remember the word/logic puzzles from when you were a kid?

Example – you have a fox, a goose and a bag of grain. Your goal is to get all three to the other side of the river without anyone eating anyone else.*

What I had was fifteen Audtiobookstand size shipping boxes (20cm x 30cm) and a slightly larger box containing two Liberty Wooden Puzzles. The car is on the street level, the house up on the hill. My choices are simple; open the garage door and haul everything into the elevator or carry the boxes up the sixty stairs.

I looked at the garage door, I looked at the stairs.

I thought of the fox, goose and bag of grain. Carrying the boxes up the stairs in groups of four shouldn’t be all that bad, right? Kind of like the grocery bag and small child relay that many of us have done with infants, shopping and living above the ground level in an apartment building.

(Prop door open – carry sleeping baby in car seat and bag of groceries to do. Run back – emptying out the car as fast as possible, both to not let the child out of your sight and to finish prior to said infant waking and screaming with displeasure.

Haul all of above inside the stair well, then repeat 1/2 flight byt 1/2 flight till you land sweating and exhausted in front of your door, just the time that the darling wakes well rested and hungary. Attempt to distract child till cold and frozen food is put away. Failing that – attempt to feed and store groceries at the same time. At last – give up, lay down with said infant and crash.

Compared to (good grief – that was over 22 years ago!) managing groceries and baby, carrying boxes up 20 steps at a time is a breeze. Much more so than figuring out where to jam the books and audiobooks on the overflowing shelves.

-Holly
Heidelberg, Germany

*there might be shorter ways – but you leave the fox and grain, taking the goose across. You come back. Take the fox across and bring back the goose. Leave the goose and take across the bag of grain. Come back and take the goose across.

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3 Responses to Puzzles

  1. Sonja says:

    Welcome back home. Hope see you soon again. Thanks again for all this wonderful E-mails.
    Relax and relax for many weeks.

  2. Pat says:

    welcome home

  3. Carmen says:

    Good exercise, anyway.

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