Timothy Lynch and Robert Singh

If you consider where we were only seven years ago, the notion that the world and President Bush’s record would be the victim not to terrorism but to bad mortgages would have seemed incredible. And yet, the political terrain today is not made by the war on terror as much as it is by a war for banks. Iraq, it now turns out, was less expensive than the proposed bailout of American capitalism. America has not been crunched by WMD wielding terrorists – the great fear in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 – but by credit.

Both candidates are playing a necessarily cagey game on economics – the platform on which neither expected the 2008 race to be decided. National security differences have, if anything, lessened between Obama and McCain. The winner is going have to make Pakistan central to his version of the war on terror. It was actually Obama who spoke first to the Pakistan problem. Again, his threatened belligerence toward this nation belying assertions that he intends to render US foreign policy more humble and, in the eyes of Islamists, more likeable. He intends no such thing, if his emerging rhetoric is any guide.

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September 24, 2008

[Update] This week is over! The winner, and the current contest, will be announced here.

Today, we’ll start on the puzzles from Hexaflexagons, Probability Paradoxes, and the Tower of Hanoi. I’ll run three; that’s three more weeks of puzzle goodness.

Incidentally, don’t miss Don Albers’ lengthy interview with Gardner, updated weekly.

Last week: the final puzzle from Origami, Eleusis, and the Soma Cube. Gardner’s puzzle last week saw a bank teller inadvertently doubling a man’s withdrawal, having switched dollar and cent values. Doubling, that is, if one takes into account that pesky five-cent newspaper.

I’ve chosen a winner at random this week:

And the book goes to J. Snyder who, incidentally, correctly identified the equation as:

…a linear diophontine equation which is c + d/100 - 5/100 = 2*(d + c/100), where c=cents and d=dollars

The answer: $31.63

This week’s puzzle (a logic one, for all the philosopher-types out there) after the jump:

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