THE SOUTHWORTH PLANETARIUM
207-780-4249       www.usm.maine.edu/planet
70 Falmouth Street  Portland, Maine 04103
43.6667° N                   70.2667° W
Founded January 1970

         "We've been waiting all year for this!"

 

 

 

THE DAILY ASTRONOMER

Friday, July 29, 2016

Froggerriann Squared!

 

For JC from the Mail room, who seems to love -and always solves- these puzzles.

 

 

You didn't think an entire school year would elapse without a visit from those despicable Frogerrians again, did you?    Well, you could be excused if you did, because the school year is almost over and we haven't seen hide, hair, tentacle, scale or phosphorescent bicuspid of these filthy, frivolous Froggerrrrians at all.   Well, now they're here for this year's penultimate quiz and they have made a right nuisance of themselves again!*

 

For those who joined us during the 2015-2016 DA school year, Forggerrians are those hyper intelligent, horribly annoying and often bored aliens who, apart from never spelling their names the same way twice,  love nothing more than visiting other solar systems and re arranging the planets just to irritate the almanac-compiling astronomers.      Sometimes -just for a lark- they'll toss in a  couple stars, asteroids, or even, as was the case in the highly complex 17-planet system around Lacaille 952, a dwarf galaxy.    (Hint: don't visit that place anytime soon. It's still a mess and, curiously, the indigenous inhabitants have recently soured on visitors from other star systems.) 

 

They visit us once a year and this time they decided to arrive just at the end. They also decided to try something new, damn it.      Instead of simply re arranging the planetary orbits, the fun-loving Frroggerrians put all nine planets into a 3 x 3 square arrangement. We've assigned each square a number, as seen below.

 
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Now, fortunately,  members of one the  239,198,537 alien races who consider themselves mortal enemies of the Froggerrians will soon come to set our solar system back to its original configuration.    Until then, we are asking you to figure out the new arrangement.    We have supplied you with a list of information and a set of clues.    Can you determine the this new solar system arrangement?    Solution arrives on Sunday.

 

INFORMATION

 

NORTH IS ABOVE; SOUTH IS BELOW; EAST IS TO THE RIGHT AND WEST IS TO THE LEFT.

(So, 5 is  directly north of 8.  8 is directly east of 7, but directly west of 9)

ORIGINAL PLANET ORDER

Mercury -  Venus - Earth  - Mars  -  Jupiter - Saturn - Uranus - Neptune - Pluto

 

TERRESTRIAL PLANETS are those small rocky planets closest to the Sun.  Namely,  Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars

 

JOVIAN PLANETS are those gaseous planets that are farther from the Sun.  Namely, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune.      

 

PRIME NUMBERS    2, 3, 5, and 7

 

A MULTIPLE is a number that is a product of that number of some integer (5, 10, 15, 20, 25 are all multiples of 5.) 

 

 

CLUES

1. Only one planet occupies a square number that is equal to its original orbit number.  (For instance, if this planet were Neptune -it isn't- then Neptune would be in square 8 because it was the eighth planet from the Sun.) 

 

2.  In this new square arrangement, if you took the first letter from each planet's name and assigned it to the square the corresponding planet occupies, each diagonal would form a word.  So, too, would one of the columns. 

 

3.  Only one row does not contain a terrestrial planet

 

4.  Saturn occupies square 7

 

5.  Uranus has terrestrial planets directly north, directly east and directly west, but a jovian planet directly to its south.

 

6.   Venus occupies a square labeled with a prime number.

 

7.   The number of Earth's square is a multiple of its original orbit number, 3.

 

8.  Mercury is in a column somewhere to the west of Mars.

 

 

GOOD LUCK!!

 

*You see, when the DA school year begins, we roll a 20-sided die named Horwindil (not to be confused with our official garden gnome of the same name.)  By rolling Horwindil -die, not gnome- we determine the time when the Froggerriiians will visit us.  In September 2015, we rolled a bold faced '20,' indicating that their visitation would be late in the year.    So,  during the next school year, which starts Sept 1, they could show up again at once or we might have to wait a long time again before they appear.