Mrenaud is correct! Very good. You don't win anything but very good nevertheless!!!

DT - I never heard the puzzle augmented with "unless it was raining". Is there such a variation on this puzzle that you know the answer to?

Derick

If it were raining, he had his umbrella with which he could reach the 10th floor button.

Here are some more.

1. Here's a relatively easy one. I like tall women with long, curly black hair who listen to opera and dance very well. My coworker is tall, has long, curly black hair, listens to opera, and dances extremely well. My coworker and I also get along very well. I am a very confident young man who has no problem with asking women out on dates, and I have no policy against dating coworkers. But I would never even consider asking my coworker out on a date. Why is this?

2. You are wandering around in a very complex labyrinth. You come to a fork in the path on which you are travelling; one fork will lead to the exit of the labyrinth while the other one will lead to a giant man-eating turtle. There is no way of telling which path leads where. But fortunately, the devious creator of this labyrinth has placed two wise men who exist to only help adventurers who decide to enter the labyrinth, at the fork where you stand. The two wise men are exactly identical except for in one respect; everything one of them says is the truth, and everything the other one says is a lie. There is also no way of telling which wise man is the truthteller and which is the liar. You are only allowed to ask one question between the two of them. How do you find out which path will lead to the exit of the labyrinth?

[ March 25, 2002: Message edited by: Marquis de Posa ]

1. Is your coworker a guy?

2. Ask either one: "Which way would HE say is the exit?" And then take the opposite. Does that work?

OK, here is a puzzle that had me baffled for quite a while. Maybe some of you will be able to figure it out right away. (I still can't even figure out what key I'm playing in). :rolleyes:

You have 12 balls and a balance-type scale. The balls all look identical but one weighs slightly more or less than the other 11. You have 3 chances to weigh the balls against eachother, in whatever combinations you choose. Can you determine which is the "oddball" and whether it is heavier or lighter than the rest?

First measurement: weigh four of the balls against another four of the balls. If the odd ball is on the scale, you would be able to see a difference in the weights of the two sides of the scale. Otherwise, if both sides weigh the same, the odd ball is among the four you have not weighed yet.

Second measurement: take the group of four balls that contains the odd ball. Weigh two of them against each other. If neither of these two balls are the odd ball...

Third measurement: measure the remaining two to find the odd ball.

Try the same thing with 27 balls and only 3 measurements.

Here's another puzzle; sort of difficult though...

Lisa likes 2 but not 22, 222, or 2222. She likes 109 but not 110. She likes 53 but not 35. She does not like 57 but likes 157. Would Lisa like 101 or 1001? And why?

[ March 26, 2002: Message edited by: Marquis de Posa ]

Lisa likes 101 because she likes prime numbers.

Derick

The first step is correct, weigh 4 against 4. Say that the side with #1-4 goes up and the side with #5-8 goes down. You do not know if the oddball is heavier or lighter than the rest. So now you must figure out if 1,2,3,or 4 is too light, or if 5,6,7,or 8 is too heavy.

Here is a fairly easy one: A man lives in a small, one room house. Each of the four walls has one window. Each window faces toward the south. A bear walks past one of the windows. What kind of a bear is it?

jgoo..... it is a polar bear, at the north pole.-----hey doesn't anyone want to try at the racehorse question?? hint, the horse is fictious, so don't say manofwar or secratariout(sp?)

Mrs. Great Fame?

I'm really lousy at these!

penny

The horses name must be What-do-you-think right?

Derick

Correct. Thats the only place in the world where all 4 windows could possibly face towards the south.

Derick, you are correct!

Here's a good one:

Nancy is a very attractive clerk in a candy store. She is 19 years old, is a Freshman at an Ivy League University, wears fashionable clothes, and is a highly competent mathematician. She has done a least squares analysis on her weight during the last two years and has found that the best fitting polynomial is a cubic equation. What does she weigh?

Derick

She weighs candy.

Candy! Is that the answer? I came up with 115 lbs. Oh well.

Derick

Here's a slightly easier version of the ball and scale puzzle that was posted earlier. You have 2187 balls (yes, that's two thousand one hundred eighty-seven) that are identical in every respect except for the fact that one of them is slightly heavier than all the rest. You have to find the heavy ball. The only device you have at your disposal in order to accomplish this is a balance that can only tell you whether the total weight of the objects you place on one side is greater than, equal to, or less than the total weight of the objects you place on the other side. You must complete the task in seven measurements.

(Note: assume the balance is large enough to hold as many balls as you want.)