[MSL]

Letters Question

Insert 2 consecutive letters of the alphabet to make English words (they can be inserted at the beginning, middle or end) and note that the letters must be consecutive within the word, e.g. mae + uv = mauve. Try:

cin
aost
boat

Now try inserting three consecutive letters:

ine
cay
ack


ANSWER:
2 consecutive letters: cabin, almost, bobcat
3 consecutive letters: define, canopy, hijack

[MSL]

A horse conundrum

  A tsar is old and must will his fortune to 1 of his 2 sons. He makes a proposition. His two sons will ride their horses in a race, and whichever horse crosses the finish line last will win the fortune for its owner. During the race, the two brothers wander aimlessly for days, neither willing to cross the finish line. In desperation, they ask a wise woman for advice. She tells them something; then the brothers leap onto the horses and charge toward the finish line. What did the wise woman say?

ANSWER: The rules of the race were that the owner of the horse that crosses the finish line last wins the fortune. The wise woman simply told them to switch horses.

[MSL]

Cake question

  How would you cut a rectangular cake into 2 equal pieces when a rectangular piece has already been cut out of it? (The cut piece can be of any size and orientation.) You are only allowed to make one straight cut.

 ANSWERS: There are 2 solutions to this problem. Let’s start with the easiest solution. If you make one straight horizontal cut along the height of the cake, the resulting slices are of equal sizes. But this solution may not work so well on a cake with icing. So let’s rethink:
 In general, when a straight cut is made at any angle through the center of a rectangle, the resulting pieces are always of equal area. So let’s consider our situation. What if we make a straight cut such that it passes through the center of both the rectangles? Since the cut halves both the rectangles, the resulting 2 pieces are guaranteed to have equal area. Each piece has an area equal to half the original cake minus half the area of the missing rectangular piece. This results in two pieces of equal size, assuming the cake’s height is same at all points.

[MSL]

  About puzzles in Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puzzle. And a recent photo of many puzzles from a local bookshop: . Pretty!

[PageRank]

Yeah. Real puzzles.