| The Problem
What is curious about the sentence, "Show this bold Prussian that praises
slaughter, slaughter brings rout"?
A Dream Solution
(from a "female A-level student")
Last night, for about fifteen minutes, I studied the sentence, but could
not solve the problem. I went to sleep thinking about it. About 4 am I
woke with a dream. In the dream, I was waiting for someone in an empty
room. I was rather anxious, as I had an appointment for which I was late.
A woman, presumably the "someone", arrived, and I handed her a slip of
paper. (I think the slip had this problem printed on it.)
She read the paper and started to laugh, I couldn't see what was funny,
especially as a battle had just started outside. I demanded to know what
was going on, but she just shrugged her shoulders, saying, "Oh, the
Prussians are coming." I said, "Surely, it's the Persians." We argued
about this, until I remembered I was late and I ran out into the battle.
The battle, however, disappeared as I ran towards a small terraced house.
Inside, a group of people were sitting around a table. They looked at me,
and all except a very fierce balding man started to laugh. The man shouted
for quiet, and told me to stop hanging around in doorways. I couldn't
move, however, as my left leg was missing. All I could say was, "My leg
hurts."
Someone helped me to a chair, and a girl sitting opposite suggested that I
might feel better if I took my head off. I was grateful for this
suggestion, but my head wouldn't come off.
The fierce man shook his head and said, "Too many vowels, too many
letters". My head started to float away -- and I woke up.
I don't usually wake up in the middle of the night. Possibly I woke up
because my leg had become tangled in the bedclothes and was hurting. As I
wrote down the dream, I tried to find some significance in the arrangement
of the vowels, vowels being almost the last thing mentioned in the dream.
Failing in this, I gave up and went back to sleep. I then woke up at my
usual time, and didn't remember any more dreams.
I re-read the dream this afternoon, and it struck me that perhaps I should
remove the first letter (head?) of each word to form the sentence, "How his
old Russian hat raises laughter, laughter rings out." I wondered briefly
if there was another solution, but it seemed very unlikely that by chance
one sentence should be formed from another in such a way.
|
| Someone directed me here, but I deleted the mail before getting
the name. If it was you, Topher, thanks. Actually, thanks to
whoever directed me.
I entered a reply in the note on dreaming in color, about how I
used to solve my homework & exam problems that way. These would
be linear programing or queuing theory problems, that required
formulation as well as solving them. Now, it is possible that it's
all coincidence, but I find it hard to believe that my dreams would
tell me how to set up the equations, and that the answer is "100
pallets" for a capacity constrained manufacturing floor, and that
100 turns out to be the correct answer just by chance. Of course,
I was wrong sometimes too; I always re-did the analysis looking
for flaws. This started in HS in geomitry (sp?....I flunked spelling!)
and still happens today, when I have a particually annoying problem
at work. However, it only happens after I've spent a lot of time
working on the problem in my 'conscious' state, much longer than
looking at a problem for 15 minutes or so.
This has gotten kinda long-winded, but what I was wanted to know
was is he still looking for people for the research? If so, I've
no problem being a 'guinnea pig'. (sp..again) Did anyone answer
your first message?
Mary
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| RE: .2
Steve Kallis solved all three puzzles, but did so while awake.
As a writer he couldn't resist the challenge of coming up with some
clever, believable dream images which contained the answers in a
hidden symbolic form. This was the only response I got. I decided
to hold onto his response and not post it until someone came along
who was "really curious" about the correct answers. I did this
in hopes that someone new to the conference would try to solve the
puzzles in their sleep.
Since he published the problems only four months ago and has been
pursuing this for a number of years, I think that it is a good bet
that he is still interested. I set the time limit only because
I thought people might be interested in the answers, and, more
importantly, so I could post any answers I got without interfereing
with other peoples desire to try to solve them for themselves.
To be a guinea pig, you can either:
1) Write up a detailed account, the more detailed the better,
of your past experiences in sleep problem solving, and sending
them to him.
2) Try to solve the problems he presents, and if you succeed
(or get what you think may be "something" but still don't
know the answer) then send him an account.
Or of course both. If you prefer, I can forward anything you want
to him.
Topher
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