19 November 2024

Puzzle from real life – the coffee cleaning

Every couple of months or so, I face this dilemma. If you make your own cappuccino at home, you are familiar with the wand that heats and foams the milk. Now that wand has a head in the end which looks like the picture on your left. This has 4 small holes in the end – see middle picture. This is where the steam comes out from. Now, because it gets exposed to milk, from time to time it needs to be cleaned.

The cleaning instrument is a simple, small sharp needle – see picture on the right. All you have to do is put the needle in each of the four holes, give it a good spin and then at the end, soak it in water.

Now comes the problem. Once I have given one hole a good clean, I go to the next one. Once I am done with that, I get confused which one to go to next. Which one did I already do? Remember, there are no ways to identify a hole and I certainly do not want to put any scratches on the surface. If I do adjacent ones, for all you know, I have been doing the same two all the time. Because you are spinning the head, you are not sure your final orientation is the same the original one.

What might be a couple of tricks to make sure that with only four cleans, I get each one of them only once?

See answer here…

Category: Coffee, Puzzles | 2 Comments on Puzzle from real life – the coffee cleaning
12 November 2024

Now for a quiz on the lakes of the world

Growing up in India, as young students, we had learnt that the two largest lakes in the world were the Caspian Sea and the Black Sea. While trying to study up the lakes of the world this week, I realized that Black Sea is not considered a lake. It is an inland ocean. I wonder what is being taught in India these days.

Also, when looking up the lakes by size, I could not find one particular lake that we had learnt about in India – the Aral Sea. I have now learnt that the whole lake does not exist any more! It used to be the fourth largest lake in the world. Man made irrigation projects have diverted all the river sources and now it is a desert!

See if you know or can guess the answers to the following:

1. What is the country with most lakes? (it has more lakes than the rest of the world combined)
2. What is the highest navigable lake?
3. What is the lowest lying lake?
4. What is the largest lake in the Antarctica? (it is the 16th largest in the world)
5. What is the largest lake with salt water on one side and fresh water on the other?
6. What is the lake which has more species of fish than any other lake?
7. What is the largest lake in Europe?
8. What is the largest lake that is entirely within one country?
9. What is the longest freshwater lake?
and lastly, a weird one…
10. What is the largest alkaline lake? (it is also the largest desert lake in the world)

You can check here for your answers.

Category: Maps, Puzzles | LEAVE A COMMENT
11 November 2024

From the bartender’s corner: Coffee Rum

Picked up the first drink from the book I had mentioned before. Tried a coffee and rum cocktail. With some sugar syrup.

Not a big fan. The coffee was completely overwhelming. As it is rum does not have much of a nose or even a palate. The coffee completely took over. On Sharmila’s suggestion, tried the same with some small bites of dark chocolate. That opened up the taste buds a little better.

Next time, I might experiment with half the amount of coffee and see if things improve.

Category: Cocktails | LEAVE A COMMENT