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Thu 11 Dec, 2003 05:33 pm
Not as great as my others, so I'll give you all a few to work with.
A farmer has one rock weighing 40 pounds. Using a balance scale and this rock, he can measure 40 pound units of wheat, which he sells at the market. One day, his neighbor comes by and borrows the rock. After a few days, the neighbor returns and tells the farmer that he has some bad news and some good news.
The bad news is that he dropped the 40 pound rock and it broke into four pieces. The good news, he says, is that the farmer can now use these four fragments to measure any amount from 1 to 40 pounds, to an accuracy of one pound. How much does each rock fragment weigh?
Busy as a bee
Round as a cup
Mississippi River can't fill it up
I stand beside the holy man,
The royal couple fears my wrath,
No-one moves the way I can,
Forever on a crooked path.
One day you return to the forrest of the kind-but-not-so-bright forest people and find that they actually are bright. Apperently their new king, after you left, bought a set of 4 volumes of books on the subject of solving perplexing riddles. He read them, and placed them on his bookshelf when he was done. Now as a new rule, all who wish to enter the village must solve a riddle to gain admittance.
So you walk up to the entrance and a worm comes out to meet you. He says.. "To pass you must answer me this. Since all the forrest people became smart I thought I would learn as well by reading the four volumes of books on solving riddles. Now four volumes is alot to read, so I thought I would take it two volumes at a time. Yesterday I decided to get through the first two volumes. So I wiggled my way to the first page of volume one and ate all the way to the last page of volume 2, then wiggled out and went home.
Then today I took the next two volumes starting at the first page of volume 3 and eating through to the last page of volume 4.
I eat in a straight line and it is horizontal. Now each cover of the book is 1 cm thick and all the pages of each book are 2 cm. So each book is 4 cm thick.
So finally the question is.....What distance did I eat through?"
Note: The answer is not 12 or 16 and you didn't squash the worm and walk past.
Tetsuo
I've PM-ed a response to the 'rock' and the 'worm' questions, but I have to admit not being any good at the other kind.
post them here if you wish, and i would like an explanation to your rock answer =P (i cant seem to get 2, or 5-8, etc.)
Ok.
Rocks.
I made the weights of the rocks 1, 3, 9, 27.
Note that if you add, say, the 1lb rock to the pan that contains the grain and then weigh it against a, say, 3lb weight the result will be 2lb of grain when the pans balance. So subtraction works.
1 = 1; 3-1 = 2; 3 = 3; 3+1 = 4; 9-(3+1) = 5;
9-3 = 6: 9+1-3 = 7; 9-1 = 8; 9 = 9; 9+1 = 10.
9+3-1 = 11; 9+3 = 12; 9+3+1 = 13; 27-(9+3+1) = 14; 27-(9+3) = 15;
27+1-(9+3) = 16: 27-(9+1) = 17; 27-9 = 18; 27+1-9 = 19; 27+3-(9+1) = 20.
27+3-9 = 21; 27+3+1-9 = 22: 27-(3+1) = 23; 27-3 = 24: 27+1-3 = 25;
27-1 = 26; 27 = 27; 27+1 = 28: 27+3-1 = 29; 27+3 = 30.
27+3+1 = 31; 27+9-(3+1) = 32; 27+9-3 = 33: 27+9+1-3 = 34; 27+9-1 = 35;
27+9 = 36; 27+9+1 + 37; 27+9+3-1 = 38; 27+9+3 = 39; 27+9+3+1 = 40
This is essentially counting to base three; i.e. the numbers between 1 and 40 that divide by 9 can be produced using only 9 and 27. The numbers divisible by 3 but not divisible by 9 must be either 3 more or three less than one of these and can be produced by adding or subtracting 3. The remainig numbers must be either 1 more or one less than these and can be produced by adding or subtracting 1.
Books.
When numbered volumes of books are placed in order in a bookshelf, the front cover of volume I is against the back cover of volume II and so on. (Take a look and you will see)
If the worm ate its way from page one of Vol I to the last page of Vol II it would only have eaten through two covers and through no pages. Each cover is 1cm thick, so it has eaten a 2cm path.
It does this again from page one Vol III to the last page of Vol IV so the total path eaten must be 4cm.
Very good.
Anyone know the rhyming ones? i only know the answer to one of them =P
The second one is strange. It seems to be a mix of two old nursery rhymes.
As round as an apple,
As deep as a cup,
All the kings men can't fill me up.
Answer: A well
Round as a biscuit,
Busy as a bee,
Prettiest little face I ever did see.
Answer: A watch
The way this one is set, neither of those seems to fit.
The third one is a Knight in chess.
I know this thread is dead but I just stumbled upon this place and thought I'd let you know the answer in case you haven't figured it out, yet:
Busy as a bee
Round as a cup
Mississippi River can't fill it up
Answer: a sieve
Happy riddling! :wink:
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