June 3, 2008 at 9:14 pm
· Filed under Intelligent Questions, Logic Puzzles
The Trainee Technician
A 120 wire cable has been laid firmly underground between two telephone exchanges located 10km apart.
Unfortunately after the cable was laid it was discovered to be the wrong type, the problem is the individual wires are not labeled. There is no visual way of knowing which wire is which and thus connections at either end is not immediately possible.
You are a trainee technician and your boss has asked you to identify and label the wires at both ends without ripping it all up. You have no transport and only a battery and light bulb to test continuity. You do have tape and pen for labeling the wires.
Question: What is the shortest distance in kilometers you will need to walk to correctly identify and label each wire?
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June 3, 2008 at 9:11 pm
· Filed under Intelligent Questions, Logic Puzzles
The Card Trick
I ask Alex to pick any 5 cards out of a deck with no Jokers.
He can inspect then shuffle the deck before picking any five cards. He picks out 5 cards then hands them to me (Peter can’t see any of this). I look at the cards and I pick 1 card out and give it back to Alex. I then arrange the other four cards in a special way, and give those 4 cards all face down, and in a neat pile, to Peter.
Peter looks at the 4 cards i gave him, and says out loud which card Alex is holding (suit and number).
Question: How?
The solution uses pure logic, not sleight of hand. All Peter needs to know is the order of the cards and what is on their face, nothing more.
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June 2, 2008 at 3:32 am
· Filed under Intelligent Questions, Logic Puzzles, Animals
The Monkey and the Coconut
Ten people land on a deserted island. There they find lots of coconuts and a monkey. During their first day they gather coconuts and put them all in a community pile. After working all day they decide to sleep and divide them into ten equal piles the next morning.
That night one castaway wakes up hungry and decides to take his share early. After dividing up the coconuts he finds he is one coconut short of ten equal piles. He also notices the monkey holding one more coconut. So he tries to take the monkey’s coconut to have a total evenly divisible by 10. However when he tries to take it the monkey conks him on the head with it and kills him.
Later another castaway wakes up hungry and decides to take his share early. On the way to the coconuts he finds the body of the first castaway, which pleases him because he will now be entitled to 1/9 of the total pile. After dividing them up into nine piles he is again one coconut short and tries to take the monkey’s slightly bloodied coconut. The monkey conks the second man on the head and kills him.
Question: One by one each of the remaining castaways goes through the same process, until the 10th person to wake up gets the entire pile for himself. What is the smallest number of possible coconuts in the pile, not counting the monkeys?
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June 1, 2008 at 11:55 pm
· Filed under Intelligent Questions, Family, Logic Puzzles
Where is the Father?
A mother is 21 years older than her child. In exactly 6 years from now, the mother will be exactly 5 times as old as the child.
Question: Where’s the father?
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June 1, 2008 at 11:54 pm
· Filed under Business, Intelligent Questions, Logic Puzzles, Math
The Waiter
Three men in a cafe order a meal the total cost of which is $15. They each contribute $5. The waiter takes the money to the chef who recognizes the three as friends and asks the waiter to return $5 to the men.
The waiter is not only poor at mathematics but dishonest and instead of going to the trouble of splitting the $5 between the three he simply gives them $1 each and pockets the remaining $2 for himself.
Now, each of the men effectively paid $4, the total paid is therefore $12. Add the $2 in the waiters pocket and this comes to $14…..where has the other $1 gone from the original $15?
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