The Codes and Ciphers series continues to offer fun puzzles and games to demonstrate examples of cryptography, secret patterns, or other such hidden information. This is to help us all get better at solving puzzles and treasure hunts! 

I was excited to see different submissions (and correct answers) for MW Puzzle Fun #22.  There are quite a few clever puzzlers out there working their minds – which in turn expands my own.  I learn a lot from creating the ‘Puzzle Funs’ and receiving/reading submissions.  I appreciate all those participating.

First, it must be said, there are other possibilities than the intended solution.  I share an example of ‘correct submissions’ afterwards. This is sometimes what happens when working on armchair treasure hunts. There are a few possibilities to a puzzle’s solution.  The intended solution, though, will be the one that best fits in with all other clues for the hunt. 

In the following, singular puzzle, however, this is not the case. There could be other options.

First the intended solution:

There is an old ‘dice game’ that asks, ‘How many Polar Bears sitting around an ice hole?’   A person in the know will roll a few dice – let’s say they roll two 5’s, and a 6.  The answer is found by the position of the pips on the dice.  The center pip (the ONE) is the ice hole.  Any pips surrounding this ‘ice hole’ are Polar Bears.  So the 5’s each have 4 polar bears. The 6, none.  The answer would be 8 in the previous example roll. In the game, the person keeps rolling dice and giving the answer until finally the pattern is realized.

But let’s look at MW Puzzle Fun #22 with that Question in mind.  How many Polar Bears sitting around the Ice Holes?

The answer to the last set of dice is 6.

But I received some other answers which found patterns in the dice.   They worked out too. Below is an example of one of them:

astree (username) suggested the following:

In each row pick a die in alternating 1st, 2nd, 1st, and 2nd position, and multiply by 2 (since this is puzzle #22).  This gives results

6 = 3 x 2
4 = 2 x 2
2 = 1 x 2
6 = 3 x 2

Wonderful thinking!

Without any context to the puzzle, there could be other correct answers. Thank you for sharing them!

But…… if you see dice in a hunt, maybe they are pointing to the old dice game of Polar Bears – especially if there is shown some polar bears in an illustration or something. Who knows!