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Post by Jeddak on Dec 18, 2017 19:20:00 GMT -5
Damn, that solution was elegant in its simplicity. And now I feel like an idiot.
As for the car battery puzzle - the lights are on? That seems way too simple, though.
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Post by Dizzy D on Dec 19, 2017 6:53:06 GMT -5
I think that line about the hands of the clock was just a reference to last week's Puzzler. It doesn't seem to figure in to the answer: RAY: The question is, how many bouts have to be fought in order to determine one winner? One winner. So, you start off with 247 people. Divide that group in half, right? Half of them are gonna wrestle the other half. Then you're gonna lose half of those people. TOM: Right. RAY: And that half is gonna wrestle, right? You could go and do all this, but there's a simpler way to figure it out. TOM: There is? RAY: According to John LaTorre, who sent this to us, he claims that Albert Einstein used this as an example of elegant reasoning. That is, reaching a conclusion in the fewest number of steps in his math lectures. And here's the answer. Since you can't have any ties, every bout must have a winner and a loser. And since the thing is a single-elimination, everyone will lose once, and only once, except for whom? TOM: One guy! The winner. RAY: Therefore, how many losers are we gonna have? TOM: Two hundred and forty-six. RAY: How many matches are we gonna have? TOM: Two hundred and forty-six. And this week we have a car question: RAY: This puzzler was submitted by Shelly Payne. Here it is: Several years ago my father-in-law, who lives in Minnesota had trouble with his late model Cadillac DeVille. His battery kept dying every couple of days. He would get it jump started and it would run fine for a few days, but then would die again. So he took it to the dealership. They checked it out. They couldn't find anything wrong. One morning after there had been several inches of snow he went out and sure enough, what? The battery was dead. So he jump started it and went into town to get a cup of coffee at the local drug store. Now being that he lives in such a small town, he went and parked right in front of the drug store. And while he was drinking his coffee, he complained to the pharmacist about how his car was driving him nuts. The pharmacist asked, "Is that your car right out there?" And he said, "Why, yes, that is my car." And the pharmacist said, "I know why your battery is dying." What did the pharmacist notice? He probably noticed melted snow around the car, I guess? |
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Post by Rob Allen on Dec 26, 2017 16:30:58 GMT -5
I never would have guessed this:
RAY: Here's the answer. What the pharmacist noticed was that there was snow on the roof of the car -- he had just started it and driven over there. There was probably even snow on the hood. But, there was no snow on the trunk because the trunk light was staying on; and that bulb, believe it or not, was generating enough heat to keep the snow from accumulating on the trunk.
This week's Puzzler:
RAY: Most city buses are ugly, noisy, smelly, big, and slow. And in Our Fair City, they don't even have the decency to pull over to discharge or admit passengers -- they stop in the middle of the street.
But I discovered something interesting lately. About half the time when I drive to work in the morning, I don't mind following the city bus. In fact, I look forward to it. The question is: Why? Here's a hint: If it's snowing, I don't want to follow the bus.
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Post by Rob Allen on Jan 30, 2018 15:42:59 GMT -5
I've really neglected this thread; the weekly Puzzlers have been accumulating. First, here's the answer to the last one, about why Ray wants to follow a bus unless it's snowing:
TOM: So why do you sometimes want to follow the bus? Get a nice whiff of diesel fumes. Wakes you right up. It's like ... is that it? There's caffeine in diesel fuel?
RAY: Remember I gave this hint: If it's snowing, I usually don't want to follow the bus. I didn't want to mislead anyone, thinking that the bus would be blazing the trail for me.
TOM: So, if it's snowing you don't want to follow the bus.
RAY: And the reason I don't want to follow the bus is when it's snowing, the sun isn't out. Now, everyone knows that the sun rises in the east and sets in the west.
TOM: Get out!
RAY: But it doesn't. It only does that a couple of times a year. In the winter, in fact, in the dead of winter, the first day of winter, it rises the farthest southeast that it ever rises, and it sets the farthest southwest. That is, if you live in the Northern Hemisphere. And when I drive to work, one leg of my long, long journey to work is facing the rising sun, southeast. And because I leave so, what? Early in the morning, it's right on the horizon and nothing except a big, fat bus will allow me to see well enough. So, he gets blinded. You let him run the pedestrians over!
TOM: I mean, all you can see, of course, is the back of the bus. That's good enough.
RAY: It's better than anything else you can see.
TOM: Better than having a bright light shining in your eyes, which is what usually happens when the police pick you up.
And a bunch of new Puzzlers. Answer as many as you can!
1. RAY: I'm going to read a list of words. Your assignment, if you choose to accept it, is to tell me what these words have in common. Here they are: "Deft"; like, he made a deft move. "First"; he came in first. "Calmness"; he was overcome by calmness. "Canopy"; he opened a can of peas and carrots for dinner.
TOM: Wait a minute. Shouldn't you be using the plural, "canopies"?
RAY: Right. Let's try that again. "Canopy"; a canopy covered the boat so he wouldn't get wet. "Laughing"; it was no laughing matter. "Stupid"; needs no further explanation. "Crab cake," as in, "My brother made me crab cakes for dinner, and I ate a bottle of antacid when I got home." And "hijack"; I was hoping that our producer's flight would be hijacked to Bora Bora.
Got any idea what these words have in common?
2. RAY: This comes from the days of knights and kings and fair maidens and...
TOM: And people named Rowena.
RAY: Rowena. There you go. Turns out that the fair maiden Rowena wishes to wed.
TOM: Aha!
RAY: And her father, the evil king, has devised a way to drive off suitors. He has a little quiz for them, and here it is.
It's very simple. There are three boxes on the table, OK? One is made of gold. One is made of silver. And the third is made of...
TOM: Tofu.
RAY: Lead. Inside one of these boxes is a picture of the fair Rowena. And it is the job of the knight, the white knight, to figure out which--without opening them, of course, which one has her picture. Now, to assist him in this endeavor there are inscriptions on each of the boxes.
The gold box says, "Rowena's picture is in this box."
The silver box says, "The picture ain't in this box."
And the lead box says, "The picture ain't in the gold box."
TOM: Yeah. But he also gives him a hint, right? He's going to give him a hint.
RAY: Yes. The hint is, one of the statements, and only one, is true.
TOM: Excellent!
RAY: The question is: Where's the picture?
3. RAY: This is another in the series of my "driving back and forth to work" puzzlers. To get home, I wind my way through the back streets of Cambridge, going through various neighborhoods, some of which have businesses of one kind or another: industrial buildings, little factories, warehouses or office buildings and the like.
There's one building I pass every day that makes me chuckle. This building bears the name of the enterprise contained within its walls. I laugh because its name seems incongruous with the building.
There are many other buildings just like this one. And, as a matter of fact, if you went into this building to ask for a demonstration of the product they sell...
TOM: They wouldn't be able to give you one.
RAY: Right! However, if they took you to a building, perhaps next door or a few doors down, they could easily give you a demonstration of the product that they sell.
Here's a hint: I can safely say that each and every one of us has used the product that they sell.
4. RAY: As promised, this week's puzzler is automotive in nature, although you don't need elaborate automotive knowledge to figure it out.
TOM: Will there be declarification? Obfuscation? Will inky shadows be mentioned?
RAY: You never know! This was sent in by David Lane. He writes,
"One day, I drove my very reliable 1993 Toyota Corolla to the store. When I came out, it wouldn't start. The starter motor was silent. I turned the key, and there was no sound whatsoever. Repeatedly turning the key sometimes produced some clicking sounds under the dash but most of the time it produced nothing.
"I kept trying and, finally, after many tries, the starter motor kicked in and the car started right up. I considered myself pretty lucky.
"On the way home, I glanced at the dashboard. All the gauges read normal, and there were no warning lights on. But I noticed something, and immediately knew what the problem was.
"When I got home, I fixed it in just a few minutes."
So, what was wrong with David's car?
5. RAY: Imagine this: It's the first day of summer. You decide to rent a little rowboat at the dock and go for a ride. You begin to paddle upstream. Did I tell you you've got two oars in the water?
TOM: People say I don't have two oars in the water. What do they mean by that?
RAY: You're rowing upstream. You get a mile from where you put your boat in the water, and your hat flies off. You say, "Ah, forget it!" You keep rowing.
Suddenly, you realize that your two tickets to that night's Sleepy LaBeef concert are inside the sweatband of the hat. At that moment, when you realize you've also lost the tickets, you've rowed away from the hat for 10 minutes.
You turn around and you start rowing again, trying to get to the hat. You're rowing with the same intensity that you were when you were going upstream.
You catch up with the hat right at the point that you first put the boat in the water.
How fast is the current moving?
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Post by Jeddak on Jan 30, 2018 17:10:49 GMT -5
I'll tackle the second one.
If the gold box's statement is correct, then the silver box's would also be true. Can't be.
If the silver box is correct, then the other two can't both be incorrect; they contradict each other.
So the lead box is correct, and Rowena's picture is not in the gold box. (Gold's statement is therefore incorrect; good.) And the silver statement must also be false, so the picture must in fact be in the silver box.
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Crimebuster
CCF Podcast Guru
Making comics!
Posts: 3,958 
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Post by Crimebuster on Jan 30, 2018 18:43:23 GMT -5
The first one, each word includes three letters in alphabetical order.
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Post by Rob Allen on Feb 7, 2018 13:10:37 GMT -5
You guys were two for two - both answers above are correct! Here are the official answers to all of them:
1. RAY: Well, you could actually solve it by just using the first two words.What all of these words have in common is they all contain three consecutive letters of the alphabet.
TOM: Oh really!
RAY: Is that sneaky?
TOM: So they do.
RAY: D-E-F-R-S-T-L-M-N, N-O-P in canopy. G-H-I in laughing, et cetera, et cetera, S-T-U in stupid.
TOM: Very, very good.
RAY: A-B-C in crab cake.
2. RAY: You got it? One is correct, and the other two are incorrect. And, if you look at one and three, they're contradictory.
TOM: I like this, because if one of them is true, the gold box can't be true. The inscription on the gold box cannot be true, because if it is, then the inscription on the silver box must also be true.
RAY: And that can't happen.
TOM: So, the statement on the third box, the lead box, is the only one that can be true. I love it!
RAY: The statement on the third box is the only one that can be true. The first one must be false, and the second box, which says, "Rowena's picture is not in this box," that is also false, which means that her picture is -
TOM: In the silver box!
3. RAY: What's unique about this building is that it's a one-story building. And the reason they can't demonstrate the product that they sell in this one-story building is that they sell elevators. It is the ABC Elevator Company. And every time I see it, I say, "What a stupid building to have chosen." And, of course, the other answer is they could be selling escalators.
4. RAY: What was wrong? What he noticed was the clock was flashing.
The clock was flashing because the flow of current from the battery to everything in the car had been interrupted by a loose and corroded connection.
By repeatedly trying to start the car, he eventually got lucky and enough current managed to jump through the corrosion to start it. Even though the car started, the clock didn't reset. So, he saw the flashing clock and he got home.
He took out his little wrench, removed the battery cable, cleaned it up a little bit, put it back on and everything was fine. Pretty nifty, huh?
TOM: Wow, that's quite good.
5. RAY: So, let me go over the salient points here.
TOM: Wow, yeah.
RAY: You go upstream for a mile.
TOM: A mile.
RAY: Against the current.
TOM: The current is working against you.
RAY: The hat falls off into the water. You say, forget it. You keep rowing for ten minutes. At which point, you remember the tickets.
TOM: You turn around.
RAY: You turn around, during which time, that hat is --
TOM: All this time, the hat's been going the other way.
RAY: Going the other way, baby.
TOM: Because the current is pushing it.
RAY: And you catch up with the hat right at the dock where you in fact rented the boat. So, the hat has actually traveled a mile.
TOM: Traveled one mile.
RAY: That's the only thing you really know.
TOM: Yeah, because you dropped it when you were a mile away from the dock, and you caught it at the dock. So the hat, I got that, the hat has traveled; that's a key point.
RAY: That's key, well, and good thing we gave you that information. So, the hat traveled a mile. So, we want to find out how fast the river's going. If we only knew how long the hat was traveling that mile, we could use the famous formula, distance = rate x time --
TOM: And we do know.
RAY: And we do know.
TOM: We do know.
RAY: Because imagine that there is no current, and your hat falls off into the water. If you row away from the hat for ten minutes, how long would it take you to get back to the hat? It would take you ten minutes.
TOM: Exactly.
RAY: Well, it turns out the current doesn't make any difference, because the same current that's pushing the hat downstream, once you've turned around, is pushing you downstream at the same rate. So, in fact, if you row away from the hat for ten minutes and then turn around when you've decided to go back and retrieve it, it takes you ten minutes to get back to the hat.
TOM: What was the question?
RAY: What row were those Sleepy La Beef tickets in?
TOM: The question was, how fast is the river flowing?
RAY: Right. You row away from the hat for ten minutes. It takes you ten minutes to get back to the hat. So, in fact, you've been rowing for 20 minutes, and the hat, been drifting for 20 minutes downstream, during which time it's gone a mile. So, in a third of an hour, it went a mile. The current must be going at three miles per hour.
TOM: Yeah, and that's all you really had to know, because you know that the hat has gone one mile in 20 minutes. You know that. That's it.
RAY: There you go.
TOM: And that's how fast, the answer is, the river is flowing at one mile in 20 minutes. No one says it's got to be in miles per hour. You didn't tell us that.
And the new Puzzler for this week:
RAY: This was sent by a guy named John Tomasetti from somewhere out there, some dot com place, dot com. Anyway, he says this is a real-life situation, actually happened to me, etc., etc.
He has a 1982 Jeep CJ7, and it had sticky front-brake calipers. So he decided that he was going to rebuild them himself.
"So," he said, "I bought the rebuilding kits for both front wheels and proceeded to rebuild the calipers myself. The rebuilding kits included all the necessary o-rings and dust boots, as well as new steel pistons to complete the job. I proceeded to rebuild both of these front calipers, feeling good that I had no spare parts left over. I was satisfied that I did the rebuild job correctly, and, in fact, that my work was flawless.
"However," he goes on, "when I finished the job, I couldn't seem to bleed the brakes properly. The pedal went to the floor as if there were air trapped in the system. I must have bled a gallon of brake fluid through the system to no avail, but there were no leaks. Finally, I took the Jeep to a shop, and, using their professional equipment, they bled them--to no avail."
TOM: Wow!
RAY: Finally they say, "You need a new master cylinder." They, what? Replaced the master cylinder three times to no avail. They checked the lines, they checked the rear brakes--everything in perfect condition. They gave up.
TOM: Wow! Now what? I'm awed!
RAY: After five days, three more master cylinders, and many more gallons of brake fluid, he takes the thing to the Jeep dealer. They bleed the brakes, they put in master cylinders, they do all this and, finally, someone figures it out, and it cost no money to get it fixed.
TOM: Yeah!
RAY: So, what did they do? What did this one brilliant guy notice...
TOM: Yeah, as he stood there, saying, "Hey!"
RAY: "Hey!"
TOM: "Hey, jerk!" Yeah.
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Post by Rob Allen on Feb 12, 2018 13:06:40 GMT -5
Here's what the brilliant guy noticed:
RAY: What had happened was the following:
TOM: Boy, this is good.
RAY: John rebuilt both calipers. In other words, he took them--I can only imagine--put them on his dining room table, took them all apart, installed the new kits that he had--flawlessly, I might add--and reinstalled them. But in doing so, he put the left one on the right and the right one on the left, and by making that mistake, the bleeder--that is, the little valve you open to let air escape from the system--was at the bottom of each caliper, because he had flipped them around, and not at the top where, what?
TOM: The air goes.
RAY: The air is. If you take a liquid that has air in it too, and you flip it upside down, no matter what you do, the air always goes to the top.
TOM: You can try this out with a bottle of orange soda.
RAY: You can.
TOM: Which we do every week here.
RAY: And no matter how much bleeding you do, there is so much air, which is compressible, trapped in the system, that you cannot get a brake pedal no matter how many master cylinders you put in. What this fellow noticed is the same thing that we noticed with poor Jim Pritchard, after he bought 18 gallons of brake fluid from us and replaced the master cylinder four or five times, that the calipers needed to be put in the right place and then the thing bled just like that.
And this week's Puzzler:
RAY: Now, this puzzler is lengthy and complex and obfuscated and full of useless information. So pay attention.
Our producer, Dougie Berman, is walking home from work late one afternoon. About 2:15, as he approaches his house, he notices that there is a car parked in front of his house with the engine running. And in the driver's seat is a man and while this car is sitting there Dougie notices someone coming from the direction of his house carrying what looks like a huge pile of rags. The man opens the back door, throws the rags in the back seat and jumps in the car. The driver puts the thing in gear and they speed away.
Dougie goes into the house. He plays with the dogs. He opens his mail. He takes a nap. Et cetera, et cetera. Several days later he notices that all of his clothes have been stolen.
TOM: Took him a few days to notice.
RAY: So, he calls the police to make a report, and they come down. You know, the inspector comes down and says, well, what happened? And Dougie explains everything. And Dougie's standing there in his underwear, because what? All of his clothes have been stolen and he can't -- it's weeks now. And the police asked him if he noticed anything about the guys. Dougie said, no, they were average height, average build, average weight. Then they asked, what about the car? Do you know something about that? Well, Dougie said, I happened to be a student of the automotive field, and I did notice that it was an '89 Corolla, midnight blue. I noticed of course that the engine was running. I noticed that it had Massachusetts license plates, and there was a dent in the trunk. And the police said, we'll get back to you. Weeks go by. Weeks.
Finally, the police call him up and say, we have the car and two suspects and we just need you to come down and identify your stuff.
Dougie comes down to the police station and he looks at the two guys, but he doesn't recognize them because he's not that attentive to details. He goes up into the parking lot, and sure enough, there's the car. There's an '89 blue Corolla, midnight blue, Mass. plates, dent in the trunk.
And Dougie remembers that there was one thing that he forgot to tell the police about the car. He walks over very quickly and looks inside the car for one second, and walks away and says that's not the car. These aren't the guys. What did Dougie look at? A quick look inside and walked away and Dougie said, can't go to work for another two weeks. I won't have any clothes.
So that's the question: What did Dougie look at?
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Post by Rob Allen on Mar 9, 2018 12:38:17 GMT -5
Another couple of weeks have gone by, so we have multiple Puzzlers again. Blame the Emerald City Con for taking up my time & energy.
First, the answer to the last Puzzler:
RAY: Now you noticed when I stated the puzzler, Dougie was behind the car and he saw the car pull away from him. So he saw the dent, and he saw the Mass. plates. But there was something else he noticed when the car pulled away that he forgot to tell the police.
So when he looked inside the car at the police headquarters, Dougie saw the car had a manual shift, and knew right away this couldn't be the car. Because what he had seen when they pulled away was the momentary flash of the reverse lights, as the shifter passed from park, through reverse and neutral into drive.
And with the engine running, if the thieves had been sitting there in neutral, they merely would have shifted into first gear, and taken off. If they were sitting there with the engine running in reverse, the reverse lights would have been on the whole time.
And if the reverse lights didn't work, then Dougie wouldn't have noticed them blinking. He could only have noticed them blinking if they were working, and if the car were in park, and that means the car he originally saw was an automatic.
And the new ones:
1. RAY: Imagine that you have in front of you fifty coins. They all look exactly alike except one of them is a fake. Because it's a fake, it weighs a couple of grams more than a real coin. So, if you had a balance scale, and you knew which was the bogus coin, you would put it on one side of the scale, a good coin on the other side...
TOM: ...and it would be immediately obvious from this imbalance which was the phony coin, because it's heavier than a real coin.
RAY: Right. Knowing that, you have in front of you fifty coins -- one of which is bogus. The question is, what is the fewest number of weighings on a balance scale that you need to perform to determine which coin is bogus?
TOM: And-- Part B of the puzzler: Tell us how you got that number.
2. RAY: This was submitted by Tim Sullivan. And I don't know if the facts are correct, but the flavor of it is so good that it makes no difference if the particulars are right.
He writes, "Years ago, when railroads used steam locomotives, the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad had a busy freight line running south from Rochester, New York.
"A single locomotive of the 2-8-2 type had two wheels in the front, which didn't do much of anything, eight wheels behind those, which were the drivers, four on each side, and two wheels in the back, which supported the weight. This 2-8-2 locomotive could handle a train of 80 cars.
"But on this particular run south from Rochester, it HAD to have these 80 cars. It couldn't make it with say, 60."
The question is, why did it need the 80 cars?
And the hint is that there's something unusual about the run between Rochester and wherever it was going.
3. RAY: This week's Puzzler was sent to me from Bruce Robinson, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of Tennessee. I think he sent it some time in 1980.
TOM: He's probably quit or retired by now.
RAY: There are 25 jealous people who live in the squares of a five-by-five grid. We're gonna number the squares, starting in the upper left-hand corner, 1 through 25.
TOM: So the first row starts with 1, the second row starts with 6, the third row starts with 11, and so forth.
RAY: Right. Remember, each person is jealous of his adjacent neighbor. Not his diagonal neighbor, but the person up or down or left or right of him. Each aspires to move into the apartment of his adjacent neighbor.
The question is very simple: What is the fewest number of total moves that can accomplish this?
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Post by Prince Hal on Mar 11, 2018 23:38:01 GMT -5
3. RAY: This week's Puzzler was sent to me from Bruce Robinson, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of Tennessee. I think he sent it some time in 1980. TOM: He's probably quit or retired by now. RAY: There are 25 jealous people who live in the squares of a five-by-five grid. We're gonna number the squares, starting in the upper left-hand corner, 1 through 25. TOM: So the first row starts with 1, the second row starts with 6, the third row starts with 11, and so forth. RAY: Right. Remember, each person is jealous of his adjacent neighbor. Not his diagonal neighbor, but the person up or down or left or right of him. Each aspires to move into the apartment of his adjacent neighbor. The question is very simple: What is the fewest number of total moves that can accomplish this? Reminds of this puzzle that was the Rubik's Cube of the prehistoric era, i.e. when I was a kid.  |
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Post by Dizzy D on Mar 12, 2018 3:03:44 GMT -5
I think we've done the first one before though with a different number of coins. Also odd that the fake coin weighs more than the rest (usually fake coins weigh less).
Amount of times you need to weigh:
Round one: 16 coins left, 16 coins right, 18 coins held apart. If they balance, your coin is in the 18.
Round two: 6 coins left, 6 coins right, 4 or 6 coins held apart.
Round three: 2 coins left, 2 coins right, 2 held apart.
Round four: 1 coin left, 1 coin right.
Can move the numbers around a little, but I think 4 is the minimum for this number.
Number 2: Don't know anything about Rochester, but I know a little about trains and usually the length is determined by
a) how much passengers/cargo needs to be moved.
b) the length of the platforms at each station it needs to stop.
c) single-track or double track? (There are some places over here where there is still single track, so you need to have passage points for trains that go in different directions. That limits the amount of trains you can run at the same time, so usually you put in a longer train to compensate for that.
I don't think it's any of those though. More likely:
d) We're dealing with a steam engine and those need a lot of fuel, heavy fuel. Still 20 cars of coal seems excessive.
Is the landscape particularly hilly around Rochester?
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Post by Rob Allen on Mar 12, 2018 17:58:43 GMT -5
Dizzy D is right on the money with one, and that last conjecture about the Rochester landscape is very relevant to the answer.
1. RAY: The answer is 4 weighings. Now how did we get this number? At first blush, you would think, because of other puzzlers of this ilk, that you would divide the 50 coins in half and 50 is conveniently divided in half, right?
TOM: Yeah. So, you'd do 25 and 25. That's weighing number one.You find out that it's on the left side.
RAY: Then you do 12 and 12 with one leftover, and assume the worst case scenario, one of them's heavier.
TOM: Then six and six. That's three weighings. Three and three. That's four weighings. And you're done for. It takes five.
RAY: So, you had to come up with something a little more clever. And what you do is divide the coins into three piles. Two piles of 17 and one of 16.
And so, you take the two piles of 17 and you put those on the scale, and you keep the 16 pile aside, right?
Right away, you can see that you're going to eliminate not half the coins, but two thirds of the coins.So, let's assume that one of the 17 is the heavier one. You throw everything else away.
TOM: And you've only made one weighing. And you've narrowed it down to 17.
RAY: Now, you could divide the 17 in half, but better still, divide it thirds and you've got six and six and five. And that's the second weighing.
TOM: Then three and three. And one and one, and that's it.
RAY: And then, and bingo! And the key is, once you figure out the idea that you're going to divide it into three piles and not two, it jumps right out at you.
2. RAY: Here's the answer. The hint I gave was that there was something unusual between Rochester and wherever the train is headed. And what's unusual is this route consists of a bunch of hills that are pretty closely spaced. Imagine the following scenario.
The train with 60 cars is trying to climb one of these hills. As it nears the top, it is pulling all 60 cars up the hill. And, the engineer says, the drivers are beginning to slip. I ain't gonna make it. If only I had some help!
And the help would come from an additional 20 cars attached to the back of the train still on the down slope of the previous hill. The force of gravity is going to push the train up over the next hill!
3. RAY: So, if you draw this grid, the square in the upper left-hand corner we could say is one, and the one next to it is two, three, four, five, and then the line below that is six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11, 12, right? All the way to 25. Got it?
TOM: I got it.
RAY: Now, each person who lives on the floor aspires to move into the apartment of one of his adjacent neighbors. So number one can move to square number two, or number six, for example.
TOM: But not diagonally.
RAY: Not diagonally. Number two can move to number one.
TOM: Or number three, or number seven.
RAY: There you go.
TOM: I can visualize all that.
RAY: So, here's the question. Why would anyone live in such a stupid building? No, the question is, what is the fewest number of total moves that will allow every person to move to an adjacent square.
TOM: All right. I see --
RAY: I know Doug Mayer has been, did you get the answer, Mayer? He says, no, I didn't get the answer.
TOM: Well, unencumbered by the thought process, I concluded right away when you gave this problem --
RAY: It had to be one or zero, right?
TOM: -- that the answer was, it was either going to be 26 --
RAY: Ah! Very good!
TOM: -- or millions.
RAY: Well, millions is close.
TOM: Millions is closer, huh?
RAY: If you don't number them one through 25, but instead, letter them.
TOM: Yeah.
RAY: And not A, B, C, D, E. Let's letter the first one A.
TOM: Yeah.
RAY: The next one B, the next one A, the next one B, et cetera, et cetera.
TOM: Oh, oh, oh.
RAY: Then, everyone who's on an A square must, by definition, move to what?
TOM: A B square.
RAY: Right.
TOM: And then, vice versa.
RAY: And everyone who's on a B square must move to an A square. It's pretty obvious if you draw it out.
TOM: Yeah. That's true.
RAY: Yeah. Now, if you add them up, by some stroke of bad luck, you got 13 A squares and only 12 B squares.
TOM: Someone's got to move out of the building.
RAY: They've got them mixed up, like. So, there are no fewest number of moves. It is impossible for this to happen. I know, it was a little sneaky.
TOM: It's impossible!
RAY: Poor Mayer just threw a waste basket at me! He was up to 26,215 moves, and he almost had it!
And the new Puzzler. I know we have people here who are familiar with European comics; how about European motorcycles?
RAY: A listener sent in a few basic facts for a puzzler.
TOM: And let me guess. You've embellished and obfuscated?
RAY: Of course. He said, "Some years ago, I was in the service stationed overseas. While I was there, I decided it would be fun to buy a motorcycle, the intention being that I would drive it while I was stationed in Europe. When my tour of duty was over, I would ship the bike back to the United States.
"While I'm at the motorcycle shop, the owner, recognizing that I'm a serviceman, says, 'You're going to ship this back to the States when your tour is over?'
"And I say, 'Yeah, as a matter of fact, I am.'
"He says, 'There's something you'll have to change before you can drive this thing in America.'
"I ask him, 'Can I buy this thing from you?'
"He says, 'No, I don't have one -- but you'll certainly have no trouble getting one when you get home.'
"The question is, what did I have to change on this bike before it would be legal to drive in America?"
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Post by Rob Allen on Mar 19, 2018 13:51:56 GMT -5
Here's the answer about the motorcycle:
TOM: This is either going to be brilliant or bo-o-o-gus.
RAY: Well, I happen to have --
TOM: I have to say, I have been thinking about this.
RAY: Well, that's always dangerous.
TOM: That's dangerous.
RAY: As luck would have it, I read this email ages ago.
TOM: Yeah.
RAY: And a friend of ours, Mark Nichols, has a buddy, Hayden, who's --
TOM: Yeah?
RAY: -- from England and bought his motorcycle there, just like this guy did.
TOM: Yeah. Well, I have already narrowed it down to England.
RAY: He didn't buy it in Germany or France.
TOM: I already, I already knew that.
RAY: He buys his motorcycle in England and --
TOM: And he had to buy a different mirror.
RAY: A... no. You're close.
TOM: Not a different mirror?
RAY: No, and I asked him, "Did you have to change the headlight?" And he says "Yes, in fact, I did because the Brits drive on the left-hand side of the road, and the reflector in the headlight is aimed to the left."
TOM: Oh.
RAY: So that, if you're driving straight down the road, and traffic is coming toward you, and you're driving now straight down the road in America, your headlight --
TOM: It's going to be --
RAY: -- will be blinding people as they approach you because the reflectors in American headlights aim the beam slightly to the right for right-hand driving.
TOM: Wow. See, well, I didn't know that.
RAY: Well.
TOM: I didn't, and I decided it had to be the mirror and had to be England. But then, I didn't like that answer because there are plenty of motorcycles --
RAY: And you were ready to pounce on me. I can see the bo- just forming on your lips.
TOM: It was. But I, no, this is fine. Even though it may be bogus, you're not sure anyway.
And this week's Puzzler:
RAY: The other day in the shop I had two Toyota Camrys each side by side. One of them didn't run. It cranked and you turn the key and wa, wa, wa, but it wouldn't fire up. And the other one was in for an emissions test. So I tell Ralph to do these two cars. So he takes the emissions tester probe. He sticks it in the tailpipe of the car, which he is supposed to do the emissions test on. He opens the hood. The next thing I know he is cranking this car, wa, wa, wa.
TOM: It won't start.
RAY: He then takes the probe out of the tailpipe, sticks it in the other car. He gets into the car that wouldn't start. And he turns the key and of course, it doesn't start. It does the same thing that the first car did. Wa, wa, wa. I say to him, "What the hell are you doing?"
TOM: You must have assumed that he went to the wrong car.
RAY: That's what I assumed at first. I didn't know what he was doing. He then explains to me what he is doing. I say ah ha! What's he doing?
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Post by Rob Allen on Mar 27, 2018 12:45:15 GMT -5
And the answer is:
TOM: You must have assumed that he went to the wrong car.
RAY: That's what I assumed at first. I didn't know what he was doing. He then explains to me what he is doing. I say ah ha! What was he doing? Well, he knew that the first Camry, the one that came in for the emissions test, ran. He sticks the probe in the tailpipe, and opens the hood, and disables the ignition system so that the car will not start. So, now he basically has this car, number one, like car number two. He turns the key, and he reads the emissions on the machine. He reads it's got like 3,000 parts per million of unburned hydrocarbons. Obviously, because it won't start.
TOM: Stuff is going out the tailpipe!
RAY: The injectors are squirting fuel and it's not getting combusted. When he puts the probe in the other car's tailpipe, he's looking to see if it has the same kind of emissions. If it does, then he knows that the fuel system's working. The pump's working, the injectors are firing off. And if he sees that there are no emissions with the same cranking time, then he knows that it's a fuel system problem, and not an electrical system problem. Pretty cute, huh?
TOM: So, what did he find out?
RAY: I don't know, I fired him before he could say so.
TOM: Wow, he's a genius of a guy!
The new Puzzler:
RAY: We're back. You're listening to Car Talk with us, Click and Clack, the Tappet Brothers, and we're here to discuss cars, car repair and of course, the new Puzzler.
TOM: The new quasi-automotive?
RAY: So to speak. It's quasi-automotive. I'm going to have to drop some hints here and there, but I'll read it to you just like I got it. This came from a fellow named Dan Gallagher. He says, "You guys are such turkeys. Last week's Puzzler was so incredibly lame, I feel embarrassed for you." That could have been...
TOM: Anything! Any one of a thousand Puzzlers.
RAY: And he claims to have sent this Puzzler before, and he could have. He says, "Here it is again." Now, pay careful attention!
TOM: Yeah, I'm gonna.
RAY: "In qualifying for the camel trophy off-road race, potential drivers and their teammates were told that they had to traverse a course in as close a time as their partners without the use of timepieces, like clocks and watches, etc. For example, the first man of the two-man team would drive the course. Through the woods, over bridges, through streams, and then return to the starting point and give his vehicle, his truck, to his partner, who would then drive the same course and try to finish it in as close to the time of his partner. So, if the partner finished in, say, four minutes and 25 seconds, the other guy would try to duplicate that. But how could he do that without the use of any kind of clock or timepiece? How could he possibly finish in the same time?
TOM: Oh?
RAY: That's the question. So, the guys that won the race figured out a way to finish in the same time. It had nothing to do with a string and a lighter, but it's close.
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Apr 8, 2018 19:06:05 GMT -5
Is there a cruise control on the truck?
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