Perplex City: Season 1, Cards #029 - #032
Continuing my Perplex City solutations. Spoilers!
- #029 - Beware The Puzzle Monsters: MmMm, puzzle mOOonsters. Four of the six Earth cities were easy (Rome, Oslo, London, and Paris) which initially led me to believe that the odd city out would not be in Europe. Being lovingly Amerikkkan, the last two cities gave me some pause: they're Barcelona (whom I can only recall from the Olympic games) and Stockholm (which, sure, I've heard of, but certainly couldn't tell you anything about). Of those six cities, the correct answer is Barcelona, and apparently because it has four vowels in its name whereas all the others have two. Uh huh. Lame.
- #030 - End of the Line: No wonder I didn't recognize anything on this card: Gyvann exists only within Perplex City and is "a Cubist prophet and founder of The Brother of the Six". The riddle initially had me thinking of a die -- six faces, power of three, twelve edges, but that didn't fit in with the rest of the clues ("aid the builder, but am not bricks" and "my self is one, divine, holy"). After examining the wiki entry above some more, we see "the first to achieve one-ness with the Cube", and there's definite spiritual significance. Its full name is the "Receda Cube" and that is an acceptable answer.
- #031 - St. Ives: I've heard something very similar to this before, so checked Wikipedia for "St. Ives", which lead me immediately to the nursery rhyme "As I Was Going to St Ives". The rhyme has a number of possible solutions depending on how you actually interpret it: 1 (the narrator met these folks on their way FROM St Ives, not to), 0 or 1 (the narrator is not of "kits, cats, sacks, and wives" unless, of course, the narrator is, in fact, a wife), 2800 or 2801 (assuming count the sacks as animate objects and/or the husband who isn't included in the list) and so on and so forth. Perplex City accepts 1 as the answer. The cat pictured on the card is Melvin, owned by Mind Candy's graphic designer Olli Leivers.
- #032 - Cow Cow Cow Cow Cow: Erm. OoOok. Sheep in cow's clothing? Sheep in a cowstack? The solution form just asks "What's the odd one out?" and, nearly as easy as #007 Easy As..., "sheep" is the proper answer. This card refers to the Whipsmart Ice website which, in "Pastures Green", has a single sheep leaning on the fence staring at all the cows. Clicking on him causes him to say something really fast ("bloody clever cows").