Newsgroups: rec.puzzles
From: hoey@zogwarg.etl.army.mil (Dan Hoey)
Date: 15 Jul 91 21:36:50 GMT
Subject: Stamps spoiler: (was Chris? & Balls & Balances)

tho...@guardian.wpi.edu (Richard John Yanco) writes:

>     ..  "Dad wants one-cent, two-cent, three-cent, five-cent, and
>ten-cent," she replied.  "He said to get four each of two sorts and
>three each of the others, but I've forgotten which."
>    [the exact money is] "Just these dimes."
>                                            [J.A.H. Hunter]

Neat.  The easy way to solve this is to sell her three each, for
3x(1+2+3+5+10) = 42 cents.  Two more stamps must be bought, and they
must make eight cents (since 18 is too much), so the fourth stamps are
a three and a five.

OBnews: Will Shortz has finally given us a combinatorial puzzle again
on NPR!  Put letters in a square grid.  As in the game of Boggle, you
can read words out in a (possibly self-intersecting) path of
horizontal, vertical, and diagonal steps.  Find the smallest number of
letters from which the names of the nine planets can be read: mercury,
venus, earth, mars, jupiter, saturn, uranus, neptune, and pluto.
Since seventeen letters are used, that's a lower bound, but you can't
achieve it.

Please don't post answers before 28 July, when this puzzle ends.

Dan