Hello, try these top puzzles.
A couple I found, some I made.
I guess you made up [1] and probably [3], but a friend could have made it up.
for [3], I assume the man is inside the boat?
If so, he could have drowned under his own drool [what a pleasant thought] or he could have used his own body momentum to turn the ship.
Having thought of this - I've been inspired to think up some more problems - all with genuine solutions:
Some corrections to the previous set: Plus I'll give you 4: For Chris's 3), I think I had a teacher tell me once that teaching was the most dangerous job in America...
1) The court was trying a murder unrelated to the Widow's ex-husband's murder, so the public believe one of the men is "capable" of murder, but neither man could be found guilty of murdering the man about which the trial intends to determine. Question 2 is very correct (the second part of your answer) and makes an interesting problem when thought about on a more general scale... and Brad's teacher is wrong, but not that far off I must say...
"In terms of on-the-job safety, physical/mental health, and reputation, it's the most dangerous job in America." According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, meat-packing is America's most dangerous job.
2) Just to be contrary, a room can have no doors but many doorways. It just means that you don't have to bother to open the door. 1) they only need be identical twins since as the court could not determine which one it was, both would be aquitted
Good point.
Well done Jo and Chris, Jo's answer as president is correct [average of about 11% death rate in office] and Chris's answer is so close and indeed good that it's correct. For your 4, While your answer appears correct Arun, the illiterate group must have had a time in the first place, which obviously matches the time given on the clock [give or take time difference]. One question for number four chris, is the small group justified in not trusting the clock's accuracy?
Yes. Definitely
Chris, 4) Maybe the people who doubt its accuracy are very precise people and consider the one nanosecond out every trillion years makes the clock very inaccurate. But I don't think that's the answer. You said that you would post the answer if no one had guessed it by July 10th. Please!
OK - I left it for a few days just to see if anyone could guess. Not meaning to sound like a "sore loser", but you have to admit that most of these answers given are plausible..it's a bit like the following question:
Brad was right to say that the first number was how many 0's so forth, plus his answer is correct and the only one I have, though I have been looking in to it more...
A hint to the one about the boat:
Think about the stuff you don't know like for example who the men were or what the boat was made of or what colour the water was...
Some of these are pretty irrelevant!!!
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Sean Farres on Monday, August 05, 2002 - 05:21 pm:
Both number 3 and (of course) 4 are made by me...
They weren't that tough yet - wait until I show my real skills...
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Brad Rodgers on Sunday, July 07, 2002 - 10:08 pm:
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Julian Pulman on Monday, July 08, 2002 - 02:07 pm:
2) The obvious answer is through a window, but I assume by "no doors" you mean "no ways out". I think a true mathematician's answer would be declaring he was already on the outside, and the space bounded outside the walls was "the room".
4) The clock hadn't been started yet?
Julian
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Chris Tynan on Monday, July 08, 2002 - 06:13 pm:
For question [1] I suppose it could be correct, but I should have phrased my question far more clearly, the tape shown is about the murder in question and definitely concludes one of the men guilty of the crime committed, and the case is the case of the murder of the husband.
Still, an inventive solution so well done..
[HINT: Think why two men could both be so closely linked to a murder under the same circumstances]
4] Sorry, the clock is widely accepted as having the correct time - and noone tell me that time is a concept - 'cause I don't want to hear it.
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Jo Steer on Tuesday, July 09, 2002 - 01:24 pm:
This is probably not the most dangerous job in America from statistical records, but the quote above shows what Michael Ventura at http://www.austinchronicle.com/issues/dispatch/2000-10-13/cols_ventura.html thinks. He is talking about the president.
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Jo Steer on Tuesday, July 09, 2002 - 01:26 pm:
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Jo Steer on Tuesday, July 09, 2002 - 01:41 pm:
1) Maybe the man was acting in self defence? But you say that it shows him "murdering" the husband of the widow, so maybe not. The two men could have been triplets, and the third one who was not found had been the murderer and then disappeared. Or maybe no one could prove which triplet it was, even if it was one of the ones in the court.
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Chris Mycroft on Tuesday, July 09, 2002 - 02:09 pm:
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Jo Steer on Tuesday, July 09, 2002 - 04:06 pm:
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Chris Tynan on Tuesday, July 09, 2002 - 09:34 pm:
I was actually thinking of Siamese twins, thus they could not lock up one man since he would be attached to the other, one of whom is innocent, and locking up an innocent man is forbidden. Bet noone thought of that...
And question 4 still stands unanswered..
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Arun Iyer on Tuesday, July 09, 2002 - 09:50 pm:
it seems illiteracy is the answer...out of the large group of people,a small group is illiterate and as we know illiterate mind refuses to accept anything new...
love arun
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Chris Tynan on Tuesday, July 09, 2002 - 09:55 pm:
The answer is something more complex, and if noone guesses I'll post it tomorrow...
At least a few people replied this time, I may have to think up or get some new puzzles.
Chris
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Saul Foresta on Wednesday, July 10, 2002 - 12:17 am:
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Chris Tynan on Wednesday, July 10, 2002 - 06:18 pm:
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Yatir Halevi on Sunday, July 14, 2002 - 02:59 pm:
The way to escape from the room is to die...hmm...
Yatir
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Jo Steer on Monday, July 15, 2002 - 01:08 pm:
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Chris Tynan on Monday, July 15, 2002 - 06:34 pm:
The rather peculiar answer is that the people are members of a minor religous group. The founders of this group run several days behind everyone else in terms of time, because when everyone changed to the Gregorian calendar a long time ago, they did not, so they have a different calendar.
Admittedly, this was a very hard problem.
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Julian Pulman on Friday, July 19, 2002 - 12:47 am:
Q) What is the next term in the following series?
0,1,2,3,4,
Of course, the majority of people would reply their answer as "5", ie an = n.
But, actually, the answer is 0, I was using the formula an = n (mod 5). Similarly, the sequence could represent the ages of the first few people I could think of, 5 younger siblings and then my grandad aged 73 (0,1,2,3,4,73).
Getting more philosophical, to what extent does it matter that we get the right answer, from the wrong formula? What if my generating formula was actually an = n (mod n+1)? or how about an being the nth digit of 10/81? (n<8)
Curiously, the Schwartzchild Radius of a Black Hole was derived incorrectly in 1793, but yielding the correct formula...
Could such anomalies actually stunt development? If our formula satisfies observation (because it is true) why should we have reason to doubt our method of derivation when in fact it is entirely flawed? Sometimes, as history as shown, the correct derivation reveals that our formula is actually an implication of a far stronger, and more critical result - an example, the General Theory of Relativity which shows how space and time are actually not independant and that mysterious force called gravity which strangely brings objects together is only reminisent of the fact that mass/energy deforms spacetime - Newton's Law of Gravitation can be derived simply from these concepts.
Sorry to add this unrelated touch to the thread, so to return, I'll add to the riddles:
Poor Man has it
Rich Man wants it
It is stronger than God
It is more evil than Satan
And if you eat it, you will surely die
What is it?
Julian
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Saul Foresta on Friday, July 19, 2002 - 02:04 pm: