Dog's Mead and the Dunk Family
Problem: Find Ms. Grooby's age.

This puzzle is tough but can be solved by using logic, a little educated guesswork, and a lot of patience. It is English in origin and concerns a farm in southern England that has been in the Dunk family for some years. A part of the farm is a rectangular piece of ground known as Dog's Mead.


Across
1 Area of Dog's Mead in square yards
5 Age of Farmer Dunk's daughter, Martha
6 The difference between the length and breadth of Dog's Mead in Yards
7 The number of roods in Dog's Mead times number nine down
8 The year Littly Piggly came into occupation by the Dunk Family
10 Farmer Dunk's age
11 The year Farmer Dunk's youngest child, Mary, was born
14 The perimeter of Dog's Mead in yards
15 The cube of Farmer Dunk's walking speed in miles per hour
16 Number fifteen across minus number nine down

Down
1 The value of Dog's Mead in shillings per acre
2 The square of Ms. Grooby's age
3 The age of Mary
4 The value of Dog's Mead in pounds sterling
6 The age of Farmer Dunk's first born, Edward, who will be twice as old as Mary next year
7 The square, in yards, of the breadth of Dog's Mead
8 The number of minutes Farmer Dunk needs to walk one and one third times around Dog's Mead
9 See number ten down
10 Ten across times nine down
12 One more than the sum of the digits in the second column down
13 The length of tenure, in years, of Little Piggly by the Dunk family

Miscellaneous Information
20 shillings = 1 pound sterling
1 acre = 4,840 square yards
1 rood = 1/4 acre

You win a long lost Porsche 916! Congratulations.

Did you actually do it, or did you look for the answer elsewhere?

Maybe you should delete your posted answers so the rest of the folks can work on it without knowing the answers.

Regards,

Karl

okay...i know

OK, I deleted my answers, but Aaron has to delete the quote too, or else the cat stays out of the bag.

Besides how is anyone to know I'm right unless they actually do the puzzle?

BTW, I used a spread sheet after I determined the necessary equations, and figured out a couple of obvious (to a mathematician) clues. Also, I did fill in the entire puzzle. It took about 1 1/2 hours from the time I printed out the page. One of the first thing I figured out was the answer to 9 down. I also took an educated guess on the answer to 15 across.

The puzzle IS fun to do. You start reading the clues and you're like... "What the F$#@" How am I supposed to know how old Mary is?

There is a variation of this pzzle as well. Search the internet for Dog's Mead for the varations.

I completed this once when I was about 20 years old. I was interning at Pratt & Whitney Aircraft Engines in West Palm Beach (military division) at the time, and I was sort of cocky. (aka smart-ass).

A bunch of the engineers in my department gave me this puzzle to do (i.e., to keep me occupied for a long time). One hour later, I handed them the answers.

None of them had every been able to complete it and they thought I was kidding. I worked out the answers in front of them using just a calculator and some paper and they all pretty much crapped their pants. I showed them.

Then they gave me some real work to do!

I was supposed to be out changing the brake master cylinder in my race car, but after I looked at the puzzle I couldn't stop until I solved it. Stuff like that has always piqued my interest.