NeoPets Riddles (Lenny Conundrums) and Answers Here

Why?

The books are stacked up against each other (there's a picture accompanying the problem:

(hope you can see it - linked directly from NP)

So, if he ate starting on page 1 (right past cover, assuming there are no unnumbered pages, which are not mentioned in the problem) and all the way to last page of last book -- he had to go through all pages and all but front cover of first book and back cover of last book.

I vote for 302!

Lenny Conundrum
Yup...302

yeah...I saw it now

Wow, this is an old one!

The trick (that many people miss :wink:) is to note how books are shelved:

. . . . .

1. The first volume goes on the far left of the set, spine out, so "page 1" is on the right; that is, all the worm eats of the first book is (possibly) one page (which we can ignore) and the front cover.
   
   
2. Then it eats through the full widths of volumes 2, 3, and 4.
   
   
3. The last volume is at the far right of the site, spine out, so "the last page" is on the left; that is, all the worm eats of the last book is the back cover and (possibly) the last page (which we can ignore).

With a cover width of four millimeters, we get 4 + 4 = 8 from (a) and (c).

With a book width of 62 millimeters, we get 3(62) = 186 from (b).

The total width, then, should be 8 + 186 = 194 millimeters.

As always, please check my work.

Eliz.

. . .Old Questions
. . .PUZZLES AND RIDDLES FOR BRAINY CHILDREN (look at #2)

I agree with stapel, that is also the answer that I came up with because the bindings are facing us

you were just quicker than me at getting it up on the board hehe

192 it is!

lenny answer
refigure your answer. The statement says that the 62 millimeters includes the 4 mil for front and back so that is a duplicate addition in your equation

the calculation should be (5 books x 62 milmetres) - 8 milmetres for the bindings of book 1 and five, front and back respectively, total of 302

never mind just reread your calculation and now understand the trick. thanks for the insight

darn it...id already put in 302

lenny answer
your calculation is still a bit off i think. you still need to include some milmetres for book 1 page 1 and book 5 the last page. so how much should be included

So, wait.. is the answer 194 or 192?

194 is close but have to put in something for book 1 page one it eats and book 5 last page dont know how many pages

i put 194 and hope this is one of tnt's round to the nearest things

Yeah, I calculated before I came and got 194. In regard to the pages, if each book is 200 pages long, which is quite short for a "volume", each page would be 0.29mm thick (0.58mm for 2 pages). So at the very most, it would be around 195-196mm. But since we don't know how many pages each volume is, it's impossible to calculate the width of one page.

Since we have no information on the number of pages in a volume, I see no way of computing the thickness of one page precisely. But online resources seem to imply per-page thicknesses (assuming 50-pound offset book stock) of about 0.01 millimeters per sheet.

(Note: A thickness of 0.29 mm per sheet would put us up around 70-pound bond paper; that is, they would have printed the books on sheets similar in thickness to ink-jet photo-type papers. This seems highly unlikely.)

Assuming normal paper weights, adding "the first page" and "the last page" to the present measurement would take us from 194 mm to something like 194.02 mm.

As I said before, I think we can safely ignore these two sheets. I could be wrong, of course....

Eliz.

I don't think that adding these minor page lengths is true. Think about it - when you dash in the beginning of a run, do you count the starting line as an additional length to the run? I don't think so. The first page and the last page in this case are the starting and finishing line of the bookworm. Exactly as you don't run through the starting line, the worm doesn't eat through the first and last page.

Hahah, it was 194. Thanks, you guys.

Anyone get a neomail from TNT? I see that it says the round has been judged, but I don't see an neomail from them yet, just wondered what the answer ended up being