THE THIRD ANNUAL HOLIDAY PUZZLE!!

Gabrielle Birchak/ December 14, 2021/ Ancient History, Modern History, Uncategorized

It’s that time of year again. It’s Decem­ber! For my long­time lis­ten­ers, you know what that means! For my new time lis­ten­ers, I’ll fill you in. Every year I do a puz­zle. And I post it on the inter­webs for you to solve. The first per­son to solve the puz­zle, and email me the cor­rect answers, will not only receive inter­web recog­ni­tion, but you will also receive a $40 Ama­zon gift card and a com­pli­men­ta­ry Math! Sci­ence! His­to­ry! stick­er! That’s right, I am upping the ante from last year’s amount along with oth­er cool stuff!

So with­out fur­ther ado, let’s get this par­ty started.

Ph.D. – that’s an acronym for Per­ma­nent­ly Have Desk­face. Any­body who has gone to grad­u­ate school would under­stand why some­one would per­ma­nent­ly have desk face because some­times your desk is the best place to take a nap. Actu­al­ly, Ph.D. stands for Doc­tor of Phi­los­o­phy. And this is the high­est of grad­u­ate degrees that you can pos­si­bly get. Some­times peo­ple go from their bachelor’s degree into their master’s degree and then on to their doc­tor­ate. And oth­er times, they jump straight into their Ph.D. from their doc­tor­ate. But, whether one gets a master’s degree or a doc­tor­ate, grad­u­ate School is rig­or­ous. Addi­tion­al­ly, those who receive these high­er degrees deserve so much respect for the amount of work they have put into their edu­ca­tion and the extent they go to in order to make the world a smarter place!

The word doc­tor derives from the Latin word doc­tor­a­tus. The term was first used in the Mid­dle Ages by the Catholic Church and their uni­ver­si­ties. The Catholic Church had the author­i­ty to pro­vide the license for teach­ing to those who could pass an aca­d­e­m­ic test, take an oath of alle­giance to the uni­ver­si­ty and the church, and pay a fee. This license was and is known as the doc­tor­ate, and in Latin, that is licen­tia docen­di.

There is debate as to where the doc­tor­ate orig­i­nat­ed from. How­ev­er, in the 1930s, the British Chris­t­ian Ara­bist Alfred Guil­laume pro­posed that these licens­es orig­i­nat­ed in Ara­bic edu­ca­tion in Mus­lim schools in the tenth cen­tu­ry. In Ara­bia aca­d­e­mics would receive an “autho­riza­tion” to teach, called the ijazah.[1]

Today the Doc­tor of Phi­los­o­phy doesn’t just rep­re­sent phi­los­o­phy. The word phi­los­o­phy refers to the love of wis­dom. So, one can have a Doc­tor of Phi­los­o­phy in a vari­ety of dif­fer­ent sub­jects, includ­ing math­e­mat­ics, physics, chem­istry, his­to­ry, lit­er­a­ture, philol­o­gy, the list goes on and on. Though the first doc­tor­ates were ini­tial­ly award­ed to only men, the first women to receive doc­tor­ates includ­ed Julian­na Morell in 1608, Ele­na Cornaro Pis­copia in 1678, and Lau­ra Bassi in 1732.[2]

Today, in the Unit­ed States, women aca­d­e­mics out­num­ber men when receiv­ing mas­ters and doc­tor­ate degrees. In 2020, in the Unit­ed States, over 40,000 doc­tor­ates were award­ed to women. Yeah! Fur­ther­more, some of these women hold mul­ti­ple grad­u­ate degrees! And such is the case of the nine pro­fes­sors of this year’s puz­zle. For the sake of the puz­zle, the nine pro­fes­sors are fic­tion­al, and their names have been changed to pro­tect the innocent.

With the hol­i­days approach­ing, nine pro­fes­sors decide to get togeth­er for game night and to share gifts. How­ev­er, the host, Ellen Shell­strop, for­got to inform some of the oth­er guests that there was a gift exchange. As a result, some of the oth­er eight pro­fes­sors brought gifts, and some of the oth­er eight pro­fes­sors did not.

So, our cast of char­ac­ters is, obvi­ous­ly, Ellen Shell­strop. (See what I did there?) The oth­er eight pro­fes­sors include Eva Polas­tri, Buffy Sum­n­ers, Michelle Burn­ham, Annal­isa Keat­ing, Bessie Knope (it’s like the merg­ing to two Amy Poehler char­ac­ters), Mis­cha Hawthorne, Kimiko Miyashira, and Sophie Burset. As not­ed before, each of these women holds mul­ti­ple advanced degrees.

PART ONE OF THE PUZZLE

Part one of the puz­zle goes as fol­lows: Sophie has more degrees than Eva. Kimiko has more degrees than Bessie but less than Annal­isa. Buffy has as many degrees as Annal­isa. Buffy has few­er degrees than Ellen, who has as many degrees as Eva. Both Mis­cha and Michelle have few­er degrees than Eva, but only one of the pro­fes­sors has one less than Eva. Mis­cha has few­er degrees than Bessie. Not one of these women has exact­ly sev­en degrees. Michelle has more degrees than Annal­isa. Each of these amaz­ing women holds from two to nine degrees. Up to this point, Ellen and Sophie have been men­tioned only once.

The first part of the puz­zle is to list these pro­fes­sors from most degrees to least degrees and write down how many degrees they each have.  

Now, I was going to do a puz­zle about who has the high­est stu­dent debt, but I think the answer to that one is kind of obvious.

Now that we know who has the most degrees let’s play games! Ellen has set out three tables. At table one is a bag of mar­bles, at table two is a deck of cards, and at table three is the game Monopoly.

PART TWO! TABLE ONE!

Table one puz­zle is as fol­lows: Ellen placed five dif­fer­ent col­ored mar­bles in a bag, which were red, green, blue, orange, and pur­ple. There are 40 mar­bles in the bag. This includes 8 red mar­bles, 7 green mar­bles, 6 blue mar­bles, 9 orange mar­bles, and 10 pur­ple mar­bles. She then asks the group, “What is the prob­a­bil­i­ty that Buffy will pull out an orange or green mar­ble?” They all got the answer right because they are brilliant!

What do you think the answer is? In per­cent­age please.

PART TWO! TABLE TWO! 

At table two, Ellen holds out thir­teen cards that are all face down. These thir­teen cards hold a full suit, which is Ace through King. How­ev­er, they are not in order. Ellen takes the cards, makes a deck, then takes the top card and puts it at the bot­tom of the deck and counts out loud “one!” She then takes the next card off the top of the deck and places it on the table face up. This card is an Ace.

She pulls two more cards off the top, one and then two, and puts them on the bot­tom and pulls out anoth­er card and places it on the table fac­ing up, announc­ing “two!” This card is a 2.

Then, again, she pulls three more cards off the top, one, then two, then three, and puts them on the bot­tom of the deck, one, then two, then three. She then pulls out anoth­er card, places it on the table face up, announc­ing “three.” This card is a 3!

She repeats this process for num­bers four through thir­teen, with the Jack rep­re­sent­ing 11, the Queen rep­re­sent­ing 12, and the King rep­re­sent­ing 13. This leaves only one card left. She places the final card on the table face up, and it is a King, which is 13.

What was the orig­i­nal order of the deck of cards before Ellen started?

PART TWO! TABLE THREE! 

Final­ly, they get to table three, and Ellen announces that she will go set the gifts out and make food while every­body plays a game of Monop­oly. About 30 min­utes go by as Ellen orga­nizes the gifts and sets out food when she hears Michelle yell, “Bessie, you cheat­ed! I quit!” Ellen comes run­ning in to see what hap­pened. Bessie announces that she land­ed on Park Place. Since she already had Board­walk, she now has a monop­oly. Michelle tells every­body to look at the dice. Bessie had rolled a sev­en to land on Park Place. How did Bessie cheat?

PART THREE! OPENING GIFTS!

Next, all the pro­fes­sors get up and decide to open their gifts. How­ev­er, since Ellen for­got to tell every­body that there was a gift exchange, so some peo­ple did not bring gifts. Nev­er­the­less, every­body is hav­ing a good time and decides to open gifts. Under the tree, there are 56 gifts. If each of the nine pro­fes­sors pur­chased a gift for all those at the par­ty, how many gifts would there be?

So, the unwrap­ping com­menced! All the pro­fes­sors want­ed to let Ellen go first since she was so gen­er­ous with the drinks, food, and gam­ing. Round­ing up and down to solve the fol­low­ing puz­zle, fig­ure out how many gifts each pro­fes­sor received.

After Ellen opened all of her gifts, there were 47 gifts left. Michelle, Annal­isa, and Bessie have the same num­ber of gifts, which totaled almost 32% of the remain­ing gifts after Ellen opened hers. When added togeth­er, Sophie and Kimiko received the same num­ber of gifts that was 60% more than Ellen received. Eva, Buffy, and Mis­cha each received the same num­ber of gifts, which when added togeth­er were 30% more than what Sophie and Kimiko received. How many gifts did each pro­fes­sor receive? Which pro­fes­sor bought her­self a gift?

By the time the evening was over every­body had a won­der­ful time! There was much par­ty­ing, intel­li­gent ban­ter, love and friend­ship exchanged between all nine pro­fes­sors that defined the true mean­ing of sisterhood.

So, this is the com­plete puz­zle! To recap, here are the answers I will need to receive:

1. How many degrees does each pro­fes­sor have?
2. What is the prob­a­bil­i­ty is that Buffy could pull out an orange or green marble?
3. What was the orig­i­nal order of the deck of cards before Ellen start­ed lay­ing out the cards?
4. How did Bessie cheat at Monopoly?
5. How many gifts should have been under the tree?
6. How many gifts did each pro­fes­sor receive?
7. Who bought her­self a gift?

Once you solve the puz­zle, send me an email! The first per­son to send the cor­rect answers to Gabrielle@mathsciencehistory.com will win a $40 Ama­zon gift card and a Math! Sci­ence! His­to­ry! die-cut stick­er. Please sub­mit your answers along with an email where I can send you your eGift card! Please put the head­er “MATH SCIENCE HISTORY HOLIDAY PUZZLE 2021” in the sub­ject so that I see it. Also, please note: if you are in anoth­er coun­try, please let me know so that I can send a gift card that is site and cur­ren­cy-spe­cif­ic for your location.

If you’re enjoy­ing this puz­zle, I have an extra puz­zle post­ed at Patre­on for my patrons. If you would like to see it and become a Patre­on patron, come on over to Patreon.com/mathsciencehistory, pick a tier and join the con­ver­sa­tion. Depend­ing on the tier you choose, you can receive all kinds of addi­tion­al ben­e­fits and ear­ly con­tent, includ­ing my newest Math! Sci­ence! His­to­ry! stick­er. Your patron­age at Patre­on helps to pay for my equip­ment and to keep the pod­cast up and running!

Thank you so much for playing!!

Until 2022, Carpe Diem!

Gabrielle

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These puz­zles were inspired by Braingle.com, World’s Most Incred­i­ble Puz­zles by Charles Bar­ry Townsend, Math­e­mat­i­cal Puz­zles by Peter Win­kler, and my awe­some dad John Birchak!

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[1] Syed Farid Alatas, “From Jāmi’ Ah to Uni­ver­si­ty: Mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism and Christian–Muslim Dia­logue,” Cur­rent Soci­ol­o­gy 54, no. 1 (Jan­u­ary 1, 2006): 112–32, https://doi.org/10.1177/0011392106058837.

[2] S. Gris­wold Mor­ley, “Juliana Morell: Prob­lems,” His­pan­ic Review 9, no. 1 (1941): 137–50, https://doi.org/10.2307/469691.