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Peegue's Puzzle Page
Welcome to the fourth edition of Peegue's Puzzle Page. As you know, Peegue is the mayor of Wondertown and, as such, comes across all sorts of problems that need to be solved. Can you help?
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Puzzle #1: Word Search
Peegue is fascinated with words and has hidden these thirty two Wonderland words in the letter jumble to the right:
BONUS, BOXES, BUTTON, CHOMPER, CLOUD CITY, COILY, COINS, CREEPY KEEP, FIRE ISLAND, FOGGY PEAK, GHOST, KABOOM, LAVA, LINKSPHERE, LOOF, MOTHERSHIP, PEEGUE, PRISM, QOOKIE, RAINBOW, REFLECTOR, SCOUGE, SECRETWORLDS, SPIKES, STAR, STICKYCUBE, STINKY, TELEPORTER, TRAMPOLINE, WONDERLAND, WONDERTOWN, ZBOT.
Words can be written backwards, diagonally, and they can overlap. Can you find them all?
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Puzzle #2: The Prime Maze
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Peegue is also fascinated with numbers and has created a whole maze based on prime numbers. You must traverse the maze from the dark red to the dark purple circle, following these rules:
* You can only step into an adjacent circle (for example, from the orange "4" you can move to the red "3", the yellow "6", the black "10", or the pink "12").
* Keep a running score. Each time you step onto a new circle, you add that circle's number to your score. For example, starting at the red "3", stepping onto the orange "4", and then onto the black "10", your total score so far is 17.
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* The most important rule: Your total score is only ever allowed to be a prime number! Prime numbers are those counting numbers that have exactly two distinct divisors, "one" and the number itself. The first twenty prime numbers are 2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13, 17, 19, 23, 29, 31, 37, 41, 43, 47, 53, 59, 61, 67, 71, ... So from the black "10" above (with a score of 17) you could only move to the yellow "6" (for a new score of 23) or the pink "12" (for a new score of 29), but not to any other cirlce (since in each case your new total is no longer prime).
Your first goal: Get out of the maze! Your second goal: Once you have found one route, try to find the route that lets you exit with the largest possible score. Better have some paper and a pencil handy for this one!
Both of these puzzles might take some time to work out, so don't give up too easily. Make time on a Sunday morning, grab a cup of tea or coffee, put your thinking cap on, and let the puzzles percolate in your mind.
If you think you have the answer (or you -gulp!- give up), you can send Peegue an e-mail at peegue@midnightsynergy.com. You will receive an automated reply with the link to the solutions. (Make sure that you add Peegue to your address-book if you use a spamfilter, so that the reply doesn't land in your junk folder).
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