Water Rings

The water rings puzzle makes use of common objects, scraps of paper and drinking glasses, to work backward to find an original arrangement. This is a good puzzle to match theming in spaces involving entertaining, drinking, or cleaning up.

The setup for this puzzle starts with scraps of crumpled paper strewn around the room.

When players unfurl these scraps, they will find that they are torn pieces of paper. On each there will also be a circular mark.

The next step of the puzzle is to notice that the paper scraps are ripped from the same sheet of paper. By matching rips together, the players reconstruct the original sheet.

To complete the puzzle, players surmise that these circular marks were created from water rings left by glasses that were placed on them. The players find the glass with a base that matches each mark.

Each glass has a number on it, and the arrangement gives the code.

Note: When creating this puzzle, make sure to select glasses with very different bases (probably more distinct than that shown here). Consider using a shot glass, pub glass, oversized mug, and/or glasses with a non-circular base. This puzzle can be altered to use silhouettes from other types of objects.

Creating this puzzle is straightforward. Start with a collection of glasses with distinct bases (or throw in other objects if necessary). Get a large enough sheet of paper and make some marks that trace the bottom of these glasses/objects.

There are numerous ways you can make these marks. One way is to trace around the glass bases with a pen or pencil and then fill in to make it more noticeable and stylish. However, the way I did these is slather some acrylic paint on the glass bases and stamp them on the paper. The paint can be easily rinsed off the glass as long as it is done before the paint dries.

After that, rip the paper to have each mark on its own piece. Make sure each of the rips are unique so that players can match them up. Then, crumple up the pieces and scatter them around the room when you set it up.