Mirror Image

On the other hand, a monster is prowling around the perimeter of a perfectly circular pond. You're sitting in a raft in the middle of the pond.

E4
How much of yourself can you see in a mirror? Anyone knowing even a teensy bit of the laws of reflection can work out that not all mirrors can reflect your whole body (obviously, we're not talking about our backs here). However, a mirror that's about half as long as you're tall and placed on a wall where its top edge is in line with your eyes and the top of your head, will reflect you in your grand and august entirety. Cool, no? But here's the thing - the closer you go to a window, the more of the outside becomes visible yet the closer you go to a mirror, a similar amount of that same exalted you is reflected back. Why? Just a thought. Think about it before answering.
On the other hand, a monster is prowling around the perimeter of a perfectly circular pond. You're sitting in a raft in the middle of the pond. The monster can move at four times the speed at which you can swim, but if you can reach the shore before the monster, you can escape. So how will you escape from the monster? What's your strategy going to be to make it to the shore before becoming a meal?
DEAR MS
(The problem was to fill in the blanks in a sentence where each of the missing words was an anagram of the earlier word plus an extra letter. - MS)
Rites-Of-Passage Dept:
The answer is: "I do not like IT," said the man with the black TIE. "The RITE may be impressive, but when you INTER a man, you RETAIN a CERTAIN degree of propriety. REACTION against CREMATION will set in when the IMPORTANCE of this is realised."
 - Anupa Jacob, anupajaes@gmail.com
The sentence was a little baffling. The first three words could be easily found, but for the fourth word 'item' seemed to be more apt. One more option is 'time'. But finding the fifth word was difficult. Then the word 'black' gave a clue. After finalising RITE, the fifth word took some time: INTER. After the fifth word, again it became easy. Anyway, it took more than two hours to arrive at a meaningful sentence!
- J Gayathri Devi,
jgdpsg@gmail.com
(The other problem was to convert 'AT' to 'AS' using the following four rules? (1) You can add 'T' at the end of a string ending with 'S'; (2) For a string 'Ax', you can write it as 'Axx'; (3) Whenever you find a 'TTT' string, you can turn it to an 'S'; (4) Whenever you find an 'SS', you can remove it from the string. - MS)
AT-Long-LASt Dept:
AT to ATT (using rule #2); to ATTTT (using rule #2); to ATTTTTTTT (using rule #2); to ATTTTTS (using rule #3); to ATTSS (using rule #3); to ATTSST (using rule #1); to ATTT (using rule #4); to, finally, AS (using rule #3).
- Dhruv Narayan,
dhruv510@gmail.com
(The last question was on a chess puzzle involving a knight and a mini chessboard as explained below. - MS)
Knight-Crawlers Dept:
The movement of the knight in the 4x5 mini chessboard, when the top row is numbered as 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and second row as 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 and so on, with the last row numbered as 16, 17, 18, 19, 20 is as follows: 16-13-20-9-2-11-18-15-4-7-14-5-8-1-12-19-10-3-6-17.
- Guruchandran P S,
posaguarisi@gmail.com    
The knight gallops thus: Square 1-8-5-14-17-6-3-12-19-10-13-16-7-4-15-18-11-2-9-20. and reaches the 20th square without hopping on any square twice. Mission accomplished!!
- Saifuddin S F Khomosi,
saif_sfk@hotmail.com
ENDGAME(S)
(To get in touch with Mukul, email him at mukul.mindsport@gmail.com)

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