Welcome to Jurassic Park
Among the many benefits of having a time machine, one of my favourites is that it gives me plenty of time to catch up on my reading.
“What book do you have there?” asked the Actuary, walking in on me while I was engrossed in a paperback novel.
I held the cover up for him to see. “Jurassic Park. It was one of my favourite books as a teenager, and I thought it was time I re-read it.”
“I never realised that you were interested in dinosaurs. Well, if that’s the case, how about I take you back in time and show you some of the real things?”
I opened my mouth to explain that, just because I enjoyed a book about people being chased by escaped velociraptors, that didn’t mean I wanted to be chased by one myself. However, before I could get so much as a word out, the Actuary had dashed off to the control room and we were on our way back to several million years BC.
“Welcome to the real Jurassic Park,” said the Actuary, throwing the time machine door open to a world that looked as foreign to me as an alien planet.
A huge plain spread out before us, filled with giant creatures like the ones I had been imagining only a few minutes earlier and it took me a few moments to convince myself it was actually real and not just a set from a Hollywood movie.
“Can they hurt us?” I asked the Actuary.
“No,” he replied. “I deliberately chose an area inhabited by herbivores. I can assure you that we are completely safe. That creature over there is a stegosaurus and that one is a triceratops.”
“What about that one?” I said, pointing to a dinosaur that had just appeared over the crest of a nearby hill.
“Ah,” said the Actuary. “That might be a problem.” “Why?”
“You know how I said this area was populated exclusively by herbivores? Well, I may have been just a teensy bit wrong, and if we don’t want to end up on today’s lunch menu, I think we should…”
“What?”
“Run!”
To find out what the dinosaur that is chasing the Actuary looks like, solve the nonogram above. The aim of a nonogram is to colour in cells in the puzzle grid, according to the number clues at the side and top of the grid, in order to reveal a hidden picture. The number clues tell you how many squares in a row or column need to be filled in. For instance, a number clue of “2, 4” at the end of a row means that in that row there is a set of two consecutive filled squares, followed by one or more blank squares, followed by a set of four consecutive filled squares, in that order. Example:
For your chance to win a $50 book voucher, solve the nonogram and email your solution to: inthemargin@actuaries.asn.au.
NINTH MIRAGE ACTUARIES 190 SOLUTION
In solution to the Wordoku puzzle given in Actuaries 190 is:
17 correct answers were submitted. The winner of this month’s prize, selected randomly from among the correct entries, was Mark Heydon, who will receive a $50 book voucher.
CPD: Actuaries Institute Members can claim two CPD points for every hour of reading articles on Actuaries Digital.