The Riddle Thread….

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  • This topic has 2,250 replies, 179 voices, and was last updated 3 years ago by noitallmr.
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  • #1069280

    the plane crashed into a building

    the occupants of the building survived

    #1069281
    oomis
    Participant

    SO where were the survivors buried?

    #1069282
    blinky
    Participant

    Doc, and Mod. 80’s first answer is correct! (though 80 i have to give you credit your answers make sense) So everyone get married!!

    squeak- did you really?

    oomis, silly- you don’t bury survivors!!

    #1069283
    squeak
    Participant

    oomis- find out after 120 years.

    #1069284
    Dr. Pepper
    Participant

    oomis1105-

    Squeak and I were having a debate about you. Can you head over to the Purses on Dates thread and resolve it?

    Thanks

    #1069285

    Dr. Pepper

    Thank you very much for your detailed explanation of the solution.

    blinky

    As per Wikipedia:

    the phrase ‘hoist with one’s own petard’ means to fall into one’s own trap

    (a “petard” was a type of bomb or grenade used a long time ago – it literally means “blown up with one’s own explosive”.)

    #1069286
    Dr. Pepper
    Participant

    I can only try

    I’d sooner be concerned about the binomial distribution. The other one, generally speaking, requires calculus.

    #1069287

    Fire it up!

    Your entire tour group has been shipwrecked and is now stranded on a desert island.

    You managed to salvage an oil lamp, and three pots of oil.

    One of the pots contains seven gallons of oil, the other two contain five gallons each.

    Upon closer inspection, you notice that the seven-gallon pot is full, while the other two are empty.

    You would like to light the oil lamp at night to signal passing ships.

    Fortunately, your island is close to shipping lanes.

    You now know that there is a four-hour window in which the lamp can be lit.

    There is always a cruise ship that passes by between 10:00 PM and 2:00 AM, and if your lamp is lit when it passes, a rescue helicopter is sure to arrive the next day.

    -A gallon of oil burns for exactly one hour.

    -If you pour off a smaller amount into a five-gallon pot, you may not have enough fuel to last the full four hours.

    What do you need to do in order to end up with exactly four gallons of oil in one of the pots?

    #1069288

    Please replace the following sentence in the “Fire it up!” puzzle:

    …with this one…

    “-You have a functional watch, so you know that at exactly 10:00 PM the pirates disappear, and at exactly 2:00 AM they reappear.”

    #1069289
    blinky
    Participant

    See if you can figure out what these words all have in common?

    1. Banana

    2. Dresser

    3. Grammar

    4. Potato

    5. Revive

    6. Uneven

    7. Assess

    #1069290
    Dr. Pepper
    Participant

    Disregarding the first letter- the word is a palindrome.

    #1069291
    blinky
    Participant

    Thats what i thought at first (great minds think alike?) but its really if you take the first letter and put it at the end of the word you read the original word.

    #1069292

    rather an alindrome

    #1069293
    Dr. Pepper
    Participant

    Same thing.

    #1069294
    blinky
    Participant

    no you said that if you take away the first letter, im saying to put that letter at the end of the word and read it backward (its very similar)

    #1069295
    Dr. Pepper
    Participant

    I didn’t say to get rid of it, I said to disregard it. (Keep it there but move it when you rotate the rest of the word around the y-axis.)

    #1069296
    blinky
    Participant

    Fine, you can rotate the world to get the answer, all i gotta do is walk a few steps:)

    #1069297
    Dr. Pepper
    Participant

    For those of you who didn’t remember- I was trying to replay the conversation from when the question was first asked.

    Click here.

    #1069298

    after clicking “here” i saw this riddle

    1. What makes the number 8,549,176,320 unique?

    i have a different answer:

    EVERY number is unique

    #1069299
    baron fritz
    Participant

    after clicking here i saw # 1 (like mod 80) and the answer is that they are in alphabetical order

    #1069300
    LAer
    Member

    baron fritz, it’s the only number that contains all the numbers from 0-9 in alphabetical order.

    #1069301

    Make no mis-steak

    You are on a desert island with a barbecue grill, a raw steak, matches, and a full seven-gallon jug of fuel.

    The steak should be slow-cooked for exactly four hours in order to achieve maximum barbecue flavor without overcooking.

    Fortunately, you know that each gallon of fuel burns for exactly one hour, and you have two empty five-gallon jugs.

    How do you measure exactly four gallons of fuel?

    (asked previously here in a significantly more verbose story)

    #1069302
    Dr. Pepper
    Participant

    Can you make a mark on the jug?

    #1069303
    blueberrymuffin
    Participant

    A person has a jar of blue pills and a jar of red pills. He must take one blue pill and one red pill every day until both jars are finished. On the second to last day he finds himself in pitch black darkness (for the purpose of the riddle!) and cannot see the colors of the pills. The red and blue pills have the exact same texture, size and shape (and so do the jars) yet this man is able to take one blue pill and one red pill. How?

    #1069304

    Dr. Pepper-

    Hmmm… – that’s a possibility I hadn’t thought of (a mark at the two-gallon line of one of the five-gallon jugs). But, the answer is no – you have no way of marking the jugs, be it a scratch, dent, stain, etc.

    Here’s a hint – environmentalists won’t like the solution.


    blueberrymuffin-

    Hi.

    I may be missing something, but based on your question, it doesn’t seem to matter which day it is – just take one from each jar.

    #1069305
    blueberrymuffin
    Participant

    “I may be missing something, but based on your question, it doesn’t seem to matter which day it is – just take one from each jar.”

    OMG!I’m so sorry-I forgot to say that he poured all four pills into his hand and they got mixed up together. He had 2 blue pills and 2 red pills in his hand. How did he manage to take one red and one blue?

    #1069306
    squeak
    Participant

    Simple. In his hand he holds four pills, two of which are 100% blue and two are 100% red. Statistically, this is equivalent to all four pills being 50% blue and 50% red.

    All he has to do is consume two pills before the lights go back on and he has had the statistical equivalent of 1 blue and 1 red.

    #1069307
    squeak
    Participant

    This is why it pays to be well versed in statistics.

    For example, imagine a mouse is being chased by 9 cats and gets cornered. A simple-minded mouse would turn into a quick snack. But the enlightened mouse would realize that statistically he is 90% cat and 10% mouse, as are his pursuers.

    Another example that helped me (just to prove that squeak <> mouse) personally. I went to a kiddush where there were 15 bottles of decent mashke. If I were to take a shot from each bottle I would have quickly become drunk and been carted off. Luckily, I noticed that most people were not drinking at all – I counted only 15 people out of about 100 having drinks. So we were each able to easily drink 15 shots, knowing that we were only consuming 2.25 shots, statistically.

    I made it home, though I have no idea what happened to the others. I must have blacked out for a bit.

    #1069308
    smartcookie
    Member

    Were they glow in the dark pills? 😉

    #1069309
    blueberrymuffin
    Participant

    Squeak-

    Sounds pretty convincing but that is not the answer I’m looking for.

    smartcookie-

    No, they were not glow in the dark pills.

    Nu,does anyone have the answer….?

    #1069310

    blueberrymuffin-

    Crush the pills into powder, mix the powdered pills thoroughly, and swallow half.

    #1069311
    squeak
    Participant

    Eat all 4, and you are guaranteed to have eaten 1 of each

    #1069312

    personally i have exhausted all my brain cells

    i am ready for the answer to the pills, and to the jugs

    #1069313

    excellent and simple icot

    or on your lines, take half of every pill

    #1069314

    Moderator-80

    1) Pour the seven-gallon jug into one of the five gallon jugs until the five-gallon jug is full.

    2) Empty the seven-gallon jug into the other five gallon jug. You will now have an empty seven-gallon jug, a full five-gallon jug and a five-gallon jug containing two gallons.

    3) Fill the now-empty seven-gallon jug with seawater.

    4) Pour seawater from the seven-gallon jug into the five-gallon jug that contains two gallons of oil until the five-gallon jug is full of a water-oil mix. You will now have a seven-gallon jug containing four gallons of seawater, a five-gallon jug full of oil, and a five-gallon jug full of a water-oil mix.

    6) Empty the seven-gallon jug containing four gallons of seawater into the now-empty five-gallon jug. You will now have an empty seven-gallon jug, a five-gallon jug full of oil and a five-gallon jug containing four gallons of seawater.

    7) Pour oil from the five-gallon jug containing five gallons of oil into the five-gallon jug containing four gallons of seawater until the second jug is topped off with a five-gallon oil-seawater mix. The first jug will now contain four gallons of oil.

    #1069315

    im sorry icot i didnt post your answer. im currently having software problems and am unable to moderate.

    #1069316

    Moderator-80-

    I like your answer to the “pills” puzzle better than mine.

    It’s less messy, and is obviously the correct answer, since it fits the “second-to-last-day” scenario precisely, while mine isn’t specific to that.

    #1069317
    blueberrymuffin
    Participant

    Moderator-80 you got it right on the button!

    The man has 2 blue pills and 2 red pills. if he takes a half of each pill he ends up with:

    0.5 blue + 0.5 blue = 1 blue

    0.5 red + 0.5 red = 1 red

    #1069318
    blueberrymuffin
    Participant

    OK- here are another two riddles:

    1)A blind man has a bag of 30 white socks mixed with 30 black socks. What is the minimum amount of socks he must take out in order for him to have a pair of matching socks?

    2)A dying man tells his two sons to race each other on their horses and whoever’s horse arrives to the finish line LAST, will inherit the father’s entire fortune. The two sons get onto their horses but neither one starts moving since they each want to arrive last. Finally an old,wise man comes along and tells them something. A few minutes later both sons take off on the horses as fast as they can and one of them wins. WHAT DID THE OLD MAN TELL THEM?

    #1069319

    Moderator-80-

    “Choished b’keshairim, I should never be…”

    Actually, my first thought was that it was probably someone else who posted it.

    But, I had to get a chepeh in – eye yam what eye yam ???

    #1069320

    i only thought of the pill answer after icot gave his answer.

    mine was only a variation of his.

    as to the barbecue riddle, i must protest

    although you did say desert island, still, i believe using seawater was unfairly adding a new factor into the puzzle. now some riddles like the pill one have as their answer a ‘practical’ solution within the bounds of fairness, but riddles of jugs and liquid and other mathematical riddles generally have a purely mathematical solution, and although the answer you gave was correct, i dont feel in was in the mathematical riddle spirit.

    #1069321

    3 socks

    the man told them the father was in debt?

    #1069322
    squeak
    Participant

    Told them to switch horses. The winner is actually the loser, since it is his brother’s horse that finished first.

    #1069323

    There are no external (i.e. environmental) objects needed to solve this one.

    Three Canteens

    Two men wandering in the desert come upon a trail. In hope of finding help sooner, they decide to split up, each taking half of their remaining water, and to set off in opposite directions.

    They have only one 14-cup canteen full of water, and two empty canteens that will hold nine cups and five cups, respectively.

    The only way for them to measure water is by pouting water from one canteen into the other until the first is empty or the second is full.

    How can they measure seven cups into each of the two larger canteens?

    (from a puzzle magazine)

    #1069324

    Moderator-80-

    I was going to give a second hint – that the solution can be achieved on a desert island, but not in a desert – however, the answer was posted before I did so.

    “Dr. Pepper” actually did try a solution that involved “outside the box” thinking.

    #1069325
    baron fritz
    Participant

    bluberry muffin

    #1 is 2-3 he will pull out one black and the next will be black or if its white the 3rd will match

    #2 switch horses

    #1069326
    Dr. Pepper
    Participant

    This is for ICOT (but anyone can feel free to give a shot at it).

    You buy an 8-pack of 20oz. soda. The package says that 1 in 12 wins a free 20oz. soda- check under the cap to see if you win.

    What are the chances of exactly three of the caps winning?

    #1069327
    squeak
    Participant

    OK sorry

    #1069328
    blueberrymuffin
    Participant

    Squeak, Baron Fritz, mod-80 –

    You goy the correct answers to my riddles!

    Dr.Pepper-

    That’s no riddle- it’s an honest-to-goodness probability word problem!And I have no patience for math (even though I’m supposed to be studying for a math CLEP!)!

    #1069330
    blueberrymuffin
    Participant

    “Squeak, Baron Fritz, mod-80 –

    You goy the correct answers to my riddles!”

    Sorry- I meant to say “…got the correct answers…”

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