Riddles Without Answers (Pages43)

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SYMBOLS
Needs math past
arithmetic and basic

probability.
>=P
CPU
Requires knowing how to

play chess.
Physics knowledge is
helpful.
I don't know the solution
to this problem myself.
Requires calculator/
RIDDLE INDEX
computer power.
FORUM
relatively easy
easy
relatively medium
med
relatively hard
hard
microsoft
m$
computer science
cs
putnam
http://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~wwu/riddles/medium.shtml (1 of 44)2/27/2012 10:38:34 PM
putnam
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criticisms?
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your own?
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relatively medium
how many places are there on the earth that one could walk one
mile south, then one mile west, then one mile north and end up in
the same spot? to be precise, let's assume the earth is a solid
smooth sphere, so oceans and mountains and other such things do
not exist. you can start at any point on the sphere. also, the
rotation of the earth has nothing to do with the solution; you can
assume you're walking on a static sphere if that makes the
GLOBE
TRAVERSAL
problem less complicated to you.

Hint 1: think you've figured it out? do you know that there's more
than one? in fact, there are more than two. also note that walking
north from the north pole (or south from the south pole) is illogical
and therefore does not enter into the problem. all normal
assumptions about directions will be used.
Hint 2: christopher columbus.
You want to send a valuable object to a friend securely. You have a

box which can be fitted with multiple locks, and you have several
locks and their corresponding keys. However, your friend does not
have any keys to your locks, and if you send a key in an unlocked
box, the key could be copied en route. How can you send the object
securely?
Alternative, more precise phrasing: Andy and Grant are staying in
different rooms in the same hotel. Andy needs to give a gold
GHETTO
ENCRYPTION I
pendant to Grant, but spies are trying to assassinate Andy and

Grant so neither of them can leave their room. The only way they
can transfer objects is by using the bellhops. Both Andy and Grant
have a safe with a large clasp that can be secured with a padlock.
Both Andy and Grant have a padlock and a corresponding key. (So
1 gold pendant, 2 safes, 2 padlocks, and 2 keys.) But the bellhops
are thieves. Anything that is not padlocked in the safe will be
stolen by the bellhops - including any unlocked padlocks, the keys
or the pendant. How can Andy transfer the gold pendant to Grant
without it being stolen? (where both sides have encryption
capability, and where unsecured items are taken away rather than
just copied?)
Three coworkers would like to know their average salary. However,
GHETTO
ENCRYPTION II
they are self-conscious and don't want to tell each other their own
salaries, for fear of either being ridiculed or getting their houses
robbed. How can they find their average salary, without disclosing
their own salaries?
arrange the numbers 1 to 8 in the grid below such that adjacent

numbers are not in adjacent boxes (horizontally, vertically, or
diagonally).
ADJACENCY GRID
8
the arrangement above, for example, is wrong because 3 and 4, 4
and 5, 6 and 7, and 7 and 8 are adjacent.
you die and the devil says he'll let you go to heaven if you beat him
in a game. the devil sits you down at a round table. he gives
himself and you a huge pile of quarters. he says "ok, we'll take
turns putting quarters down, no overlapping allowed, and the
FAUSTIAN
ROUND TABLE
COIN GAME
quarters must rest on the table surface. the first guy who can't put
a quarter down loses." you guys are about to start playing, and the
devil says that he'll go first. however, at this point you immediately
interject, and ask if you can go first instead. you make this
interjection because you are very smart, and you know that if you
go first, you can guarantee victory. explain how you can guarantee
victory.
using 31 dominoes, where one domino covers exactly two squares,

can you cover all the empty squares on this chessboard (which has
only 62 spaces, since two opposite corner squares are removed). if
so, how? if not, why? prove your claim.
DOMINOES ON A
CHESSBOARD
Why are manholes round?
MANHOLES
Note: This is a famous Microsoft question. Yet amusingly, the

Microsoft campus uses square manholes.
SQUARE
DIVISION
draw a square. divide it into four identical squares. remove the

bottom left hand square. now divide the resulting shape into four
identical shapes.
EQUILATERAL
TRIANGLE
DIVISION
draw an equilateral triangle (all sides same length). divide it into

four identical shapes. remove the bottom left hand shape. now
divide the resulting shape into four identical shapes.
You are in a room with three light switches, each of which controls
one of three light bulbs in the next room. Your task is to determine
LIGHT BULBS
AND SWITCHES
which switch controls which bulb. All lights are initially off, and
you can't see into one room from the other. You are allowed only
one chance to enter the room with the light bulbs. How can you
determine which lightswitch goes with which light bulb?
Add punctuation to the following phrase to make something
PUNCTUATION I
gramatically and logically coherent:

is is not not not is not is is is is not is not is it not
You have a 5x5 piece of paper. Two diagonally opposite corners of

this paper are truncated as shown in the diagram below. You also
have scissors. Show how to cut up the 5x5 paper into two pieces,
so that the two pieces can then be interlocked to form a 6x4
rectangle.
PAPER CUTTING
In the city of Funkytown, the following facts are true:
POPULATION OF
FUNKYTOWN
No two inhabitants have exactly the same number of hairs.
No inhabitant has exactly 483,207 hairs.
There are more inhabitants than there are hairs on the head
of any one inhabitant.
What is the largest possible number of inhabitants of Funkytown?

Note: I recently (11/24/2002 8:00PM) read this puzzle in a book
by Henry Ernest Dudeney, England's greatest puzzle creator. So
writing credits to him.
You have two thermoses. The first contains a liter of milk, the
second contains a liter of pure chocolate syrup. You pour one cup
CHOCOLATE
MILK
of milk out from the first thermos to the second one. Then, after
mixing that, you take one cup of the mixture from the second
thermos, and pour it back into the first thermos. After completing
these two operations, which thermos is more pure?
There is an island of monks where everyone has either brown eyes

or red eyes. Monks who have red eyes are cursed, and are
supposed to commit suicide at midnight. However, no one ever
talks about what color eyes they have, because the monks have a
vow of silence. Also, there are no reflective surfaces on the whole
island. Thus, no one knows their own eye color; they can only see
the eye colors of other people, and not say anything about them.
Life goes on, with brown-eyed monks and red-eyed monks living
happily together in peace, and no one ever committing suicide.
Then one day a tourist visits the island monastery, and, not
knowing that he's not supposed to talk about eyes, he states the
observation "At least one of you has red eyes." Having acquired
this new information, something dramatic happens among the
monks. What happens?
BROWN EYES
AND RED EYES
Hint: First consider the case where there are only a few monks on
the island, some with brown and some with red. Work through the
logic and find out what happens over time. Then generalize for the
case of M monks on the island, N of which have red eyes.
Update 10/15/2002 12:14AM: What happens if we change the

tourist's statement to each of the following?
1. "There are 10 Brown Eyed Monks"
2. "There are at lesat two Red Eyed Monks"
3. "There is an odd number of Red Eyed Monks"
4. "There is an even number of Red Eyed Monks"
5. "There is more than one Red Eyed Monk"
WHERE'S THE
FATHER?
The mother is 21 years older than the child. In 6 years from now,
the mother will be 5 times as old as the child. Question: Where's
the father?
Compare the numbers 0.99999... (infinitely many 9s) and 1. Which

of the following statements is true? Why?
.999 ...
0.99999 ... < 1
0.99999 ... = 1
0.99999 ... > 1
Forum thread: Click here. Check out Icarus's (our local

mathematician) insightful exposition on this problem.
Imagine a disk spinning like a record player turn table. Half of the
COLORED DISK
SPIN SENSORS
disk is black and the other is white. Assume you have an unlimited
number of color sensors. How many sensors would you have to
place around the disk to determine the direction the disk is
spinning? Where would they be placed?
a man has a gold chain with 7 links. he needs the service of a

laborer for 7 days at a fee of one gold link per day. however, each
day of work needs to be paid for separately. in other words, the
GOLD CHAIN
worker must be paid each day after working and if the laborer is
ever overpaid he will quit with the extra money. also he will never
allow himself to be owed a link. what is the fewest number of cuts
to the chain to facilitate this arrangement and how does that
guarantee payment?
DUMB CS JOKE
M
Why do computer programmers always get Christmas and

Halloween mixed up?
Using only a 5-gallon bucket and a 3-gallon bucket, put exactly
WATER BUCKETS
four gallons of water in the 5-gallon bucket. (Assume you have an

infinite supply of water. No measurement markings on the
buckets.)
This is the logic game of Mastermind. If you haven't played it

before, here's how it works. There is a board that is sectioned off
into many rows, each row having four slots in which pegs can be
inserted. There are six different colors of pegs: green, red, yellow,
brown, dark-blue, light-blue. There are two players, A and B. First,
A makes up some arrangement of four pegs along a row, the colors
and ordering of which are his or her choice. Then B spends the rest
of the game trying to guess what A's arrangement is. For every
guess that B makes, A will respond by putting some black and/or
white pegs right next to A's guess; the black and white pegs are
interpreted as follows:
Black keypeg = one of B's pegs is the correct color and in the
correct position
White keypeg = one of the B's pegs is the correct color but in
the wrong position
MASTERMIND I
So if B manages to guess all four colors and positions correctly, A

will respond with four black keypegs, and the game is over. The
goal is to determine A's secret arrangement in the minimum
number of guesses. Below, we see a completed game of

Mastermind. Apparently the player was able to determine A's
arrangement by using only four guesses. What's is A's
arrangement?
TWO-CHILD
FAMILY I
In a two-child family, one child is a boy. What is the probability
TWO-CHILD
FAMILY II
In a two-child family, the older child is a boy. What is the
that the other child is a girl?
probability that the other child is a girl?
"Proof" that 2 = 1:
a=b
a2 = ab
a2 - b2 = ab-b2
2=1
(a-b)(a+b) = b(a-b)
a+b = b
b+b = b
2b = b
2=1
Does this argument make sense?
Four people, A, B, C, and D, are on one side of a bridge, and they all
want to cross the bridge. However, it's late at night, so you can't
cross without a flashlight. They only have one flashlight. Also, the
bridge is only strong enough to support the weight of two people
BRIDGE
CROSSING
at once. The four people all walk at different speeds: A takes 1

minute to cross the bridge, B takes 2 minutes, C takes 5 minutes,
and D takes 10 minutes. When two people cross together, sharing
the flashlight, they walk at the slower person's rate. How quickly
can the four cross the bridge?
Note: Supposedly a classic Microsoft question.
If you drew a dot on the edge of a wheel and traced the path of the
dot as the wheel rolled one complete revolution along a line, then
the path formed would be called a cycloid (shown in red below),
combining both forward and circular motion. What is the length of
the path formed by one complete revolution? Assume the wheel
has a radius of 1.
CYCLOID
M
Ten people land on a deserted island. There they find lots of

coconuts and a monkey. During their first day they gather coconuts
and put them all in a community pile. After working all day they
decide to sleep and divide them into ten equal piles the next
morning. That night one castaway wakes up hungry and decides to
take his share early. After dividing up the coconuts he finds he is
one coconut short of ten equal piles. He also notices the monkey
holding one more coconut. So he tries to take the monkey's
coconut to have a total evenly divisible by 10. However when he
COCONUT
tries to take it the monkey conks him on the head with it and kills
MONKEY
him. Later another castaway wakes up hungry and decides to take

his share early. On the way to the coconuts he finds the body of the
first castaway, which pleases him because he will now be entitled
to 1/9 of the total pile. After dividing them up into nine piles he is
again one coconut short and tries to take the monkey's coconut.
Again, the monkey conks the man on the head and kills him. One
by one each of the remaining castaways goes through the same
process, until the 10th person to wake up gets the entire pile for
himself. What is the smallest number of possible coconuts in the
pile, not counting the monkeys?
You and your partner in crime are both arrested and questioned
separately. You are offered a chance to confess, in which you agree
to testify against you partner, in exchange for all charges being
dropped against you, unless he testifies against you also. Your
lawyer, whom you trust, says that the evidence against both of
you, if neither confesses, is scant and you could expect to take a
PRISONER
DILEMMA REDUX
plea and each serve 3 years. If one implicates the other, the other
can expect to serve 20 years. If both implicate each other you
could each expect to serve 10 years. You assume the probability of
your partner confessing is p. Your highest priority is to keep
yourself out of the pokey, and your secondary motive is to keep
you partner out. Specifically you are indifferent to you serving x
years and your partner serving 2x years. At what value of p are you
indifferent to confessing and not confessing?
Find the side length of the internal square and the radii of the
internal circles, in terms of a.
JAPANESE
TEMPLE
GEOMETRY I
Note: This geometry problem comes from the tradition of sangaku.

During the period between 1639 and 1854, many Japanese samurai
apparently adopted geometry as a serious mental discipline! They
would solve many difficult geometric problems, and carefully
inscribe the solutions into beautiful wooden tablets, often with
color. Then they would hang their solutions under roofs for public
viewing, either to show respect for the elegance of math, or
perhaps just to show off their intelligence and challenge other
practitioners of sangaku -- a Japanese word that literally means
mathematical tablet. Sangaku problems are usually just Euclidean
geometry, but others seem almost impossible to do without
cheating and using higher level math (e.g. calculus, affine
transformations). Also notable is a strong emphasis on ellipses and
circles, an emphasis not found in Western studies of geometry.
Note 2: For a hardcopy of the above image only, click here and
print. Hardcopies are useful for drawing lines and labeling vertices
and what not.
Problem source: Fukagawa, H. and D. Pedoe. Japanese Temple

Geometry problems. Charles Babbage Research Foundation:
Winnipeg, 1989.
Find the radii of the internal circles, in terms of a.
JAPANESE
TEMPLE
GEOMETRY II
Note: For a hardcopy of the above image only, click here and print.
Hardcopies are useful for drawing lines and labeling vertices and
what not.
Note 2: Thanks a lot to Jasvir Nagra for sending me such a clear
solution, even with diagrams drawn with Postscript!
Winnipeg, 1989.
Find the radii of the internal circles, in terms of a.
JAPANESE
TEMPLE
GEOMETRY III
Note: For a hardcopy of the above image only, click here and print.
Hardcopies are useful for drawing lines and labeling vertices and
what not.
Winnipeg, 1989.
This is the logic game of Mastermind. If you haven't played it

before, here's how it works. There is a board that is sectioned off
into many rows, each row having four slots in which pegs can be
inserted. There are six different colors of pegs: green, red, yellow,
brown, dark-blue, light-blue. There are two players, A and B. First,
A makes up some arrangement of four pegs along a row, the colors
and ordering of which are his or her choice. Then B spends the rest
of the game trying to guess what A's arrangement is. For every
guess that B makes, A will respond by putting some black and/or
white pegs right next to A's guess; the black and white pegs are
interpreted as follows:
Black keypeg = one of B's pegs is the correct color and in the
correct position
White keypeg = one of the B's pegs is the correct color but in
the wrong position
MASTERMIND II
So if B manages to guess all four colors and positions correctly, A

will respond with four black keypegs, and the game is over. The
goal is to determine A's secret arrangement in the minimum
number of guesses. Below, we see a completed game of
Mastermind. Apparently the player was able to determine A's
arrangement by using only four guesses. What's is A's
arrangement?
Add punctuation to the following phrase to make something

gramatically and logically coherent:
PUNCTUATION II
i had had had tom had had had had had had had had the praise of
the teacher
My fancy new digital alarm clock is broken! The time 'jumps'

around.
When I reset it, it reads 12:00:00. Then it runs as it should, but
BROKEN CLOCK
after 12:04:15 it resets back to 12:00:00. It counts up to 12:04:15

again and then it jumps to ... 12:08:32 ! Weird stuff. Do you know
what's wrong with my alarm clock?
Note: The contributor, Remco Hartog, actually constructed this
riddle himself!
There's a man lying dead in a telephone booth beside a river. The

phone is off the hook, and there is smashed glass on the floor of
the phone booth. What happened?
WHAT
HAPPENED I
Note: I've always felt uncomfortable with these "what happened"

riddles, because it seems like you could design a wide variety
fantastic explanations. Indeed, the official answer I've been emailed for this riddle is quite fantastic.
The UC Berkeley bus had a minimal number of passengers. When it
BUS
PASSENGERS
arrived at Telegraph Avenue, 3/4 of the passengers got out, and 7

people got on. At the next two stops, Shattuck and Hearst, the
same thing happened. How many got off at Hearst?
Take one of those spinning sprinklers everyone has seen before,

the kind that has two pipes sticking out with the ends slightly bent
to the side in opposite directions. Let's say the sprinkler normally
turns clockwise when shooting water. Hook a hose from the
sprinkler to a water pump. Submerge the sprinkler in water, so
that now when you turn on the pump, water is drawn through the
SPRINKLER AND
PUMP
sprinkler's pipes. What happens to the sprinkler?

Note: From Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! by Richard
Feynman. Originally a problem hotly debated among Princeton
physicists in the 1940s. Feynman resolved the problem by
conducting an experiment that resulted in the shattering of a glass
tank and ultimately getting banned from a lab.
Forum thread: click here
Say you have some bendable wires (any number, any length).
SOLDER CUBE
What is the minimum number of solder connections needed to

make a cube? Prove it. Also, what is the minimum number of wires
necessary? Prove it.
Consider an analog clock face on which the hour and minute hands
move smoothly. If we swap the position of the hour and minute
hands, we usually end up with an invalid clock face which never
occurs during the day (the hour hand pointing directly at 12 and
ANALOG CLOCK
III
the minute hand at 3, for instance). But there are some times when
these switched hands *do* tell a valid time: specifically, when the
two hands are pointing in the same direction. Are there any other
such times?
Note: From John Leen, one of my CS170 TAs from Spring 2002 at
UC Berkeley. An excellent teacher.
The master of a college and his wife has decided to throw a party
and invited N guest and their spouses. On the night of the party, all
guests turned up with their spouse, and they all had a great time.
When the party was concluding, the master requested all his
PARTY
HANDSHAKES
guests (including his wife, but not himself) to write down the
number of persons they shook hands with, and to put the numbers
in a box. When the box was opened, he was surprised to find all
integers from 0 to 2N inclusive.
Assuming that a person never shake hands with their own spouse
and that no one lied, how many hands did the master shake?
A vendor is handing out free ice cream cones in alphabetical order

of flavor, each cone being a different flavor. Kids are lined up at
the ice cream truck, and you're first in line! The vendor will hand
you ice cream cones one at a time, and you must decide whether to
keep the cone or pass it on to the next kid in line. The first cone is
guaranteed to be chocolate.
RANDOMIZED
ICE CREAM
You like all flavors equally, so you want to randomly select a cone
with each flavor having an equal chance of being chosen.
Unfortunately, you don't know the total number of flavors, but
being the little hipster that you are, you are carrying a pocket
calculator which can generate random numbers from 1 to X, where
X is a value you punch in. How can you decide which flavor to
keep?
Note: Problem made by Yosen Lin and William Wu! 2002. Special
thanks to the forum regulars for proofreading it.
Consider an answering machine with remote inquiry facility, where

you can call the answering machine and enter a 4 digit passcode
into your telephone keypad, so you can listen to the messages from
anywhere you like. Many of these machines will let you in if you
enter the correct consecutive sequence of digits, regardless of
what preceded that sequence.
ANSWER
MACHINE
HACKING
Example: Passcode is 1234.

if you feed the machine 1234, you're in
To brute-force hack the machine, you could try all numbers from
0000 to 9999, sending 40000 sounds across the wire. But since you
are a smart hacker, you see that there's room for optimization.
What is the shortest series of digits you have to send to the
answering machine in order to break the code in any case?
You are presented with a ladder. At each stage, you may choose to
advance either one rung or two rungs. How many different paths
are there to climb to any particular rung; i.e. how many unique
ways can you climb to rung "n"?
LADDER RUNGS
After you've solved that, generalize. At each stage, you can

advance any number of rungs from 1 to K. How many ways are
there to climb to rung "n"?
Note: the non-generalized question was asked at a M$ interview.
You are at a track day at your local racecourse in your new

Porsche. Because it's a crowded day at the track, you are only
allowed to do two laps. You haven't driven your car at the track
RACETRACK LAPS
yet, so you took the first lap easy, at 30 miles per hour. But you do
want to see what your ridiculous sports car can do. How fast do
you have to go on the second lap to end the day with an average
speed of 60 miles per hour?
All patients at the d'Oralian National Hospital require constant

care. At least one nurse must be beside a patient's bed at any time
and a nurse can only care for one patient simultaniously.
The nurses won't work more that eight hours within any 24 hour
IMPATIENT
PATIENTS
period, but don't care when their shift starts. Their shifts look like
this: work five hours, one hour break, work another three hours.
How many nurses do you need for one patient? How many nurses
do you need for n patients?
Note: Designed by the contributor, Remco Hartog!
E VS PI
Without computing their actual values, which is greater, e^(pi) or

(pi)^e?
Game: You continue flipping a coin until you get a tails. I then
COIN FLIP GAME

WORTH II
award you prize money equal to $2^(number of heads).

How much are you willing to pay me to play this game?
Game: You continue flipping a coin until the number of heads
COIN FLIP GAME

WORTH III
equals the number of tails. I then award you prize money equal to
the number of flips you conducted.
How much are you willing to pay me to play this game?
271
Write 271 as the sum of positive real numbers so as to maximize

their product.
Given a cylindrical tower with a diameter of D and a door of height

H from the ground, what is the longest ladder of length L that you
could move into the tower and completely enclose? Ignore the
LADDER INTO
TOWER
thickness of the ladder.

Note: While the contributor was serving in the German military, a
superior rank tried to outsmart him with this riddle. It didn't
work :)
6 PERSON
ACQUAINTANCE
XX
Prove that in any group of 6 people, at least 3 must be either

mutually acquainted with each other, or mutually unacquainted
with each other.
If x is a positive rational number, prove that x^x is irrational

unless x is an integer.
While willywutang was trying to be clever by using only two

condoms to satisfy three women, increased friction between
overlapped latex layers produces a tear and a dangerous accident!
He then becomes very worried about having contracted an STD,
especially since one of the women was really skanky looking.
Although a random person has only probability 0.001 of having an
STD, poor willywutang just can't sleep over those odds. Frantically
he hustles to the nearest drugstore, to purchase the ACME All-
WILLYWUTANG
HAS STDS?
Purpose STD Checker. The packaging boasts a 0.93 correctness

probability. That is, if the user has an STD, the ACME STD Checker
will return positive 93% of the time; if the user does not have an
STD, it will return negative 93% of the time. Willywutang returns
home and uses the checker in his bathroom.
To his dismay, the results are positive.
Assuming that willywutang's promiscuity on average is identical to
that of a randomly chosen person, what is the probability that
willywutang has STDs?
Kabouters: very small (up to 10 cm) people living in the forests, in

mushrooms and roots. Wearing old-fashioned clothes AND they all
wear a pointed hat. Those are kabouters...
In the forests of the Netherlands live a large number of kabouters
wearing two different colors of pointy hats. Kabouters consider it
KABOUTERS
very rude to talk about the color of the hat they are wearing, so
much so that they don't even know the color of their own hat. They
are able to look and distinguish the color of the hats on other
kabouters. (They just won't talk about it.) Now every year all
kabouters need to be counted and traditionally they present
themselves in two groups divided by the color of their hats. How do
they do this without talking or communicating the color of their
hats to any of the other kabouters?
Consider the circuit shown below. If all components along a path

from In to Out are working, then the whole system is considered to
be working.
Through appropriate experimentation and modelling, it has been
determined that at time T, component Ck fails with probability pk.
Also assume that component failure are independent.
CIRCUIT
FAILURE
ANALYSIS
a. What is the probability the system has failed at time T?

b. Your maintenance technician reports that at time T,
component Ck has failed, but she hasn't been able to check
any other components yet. What is the probability the system
is working? Repeat for k = 1, 2, 3, 4.
You are part of a group of 10 people. All 10 people are in their

respective and SEPERATE houses, waiting by the phone. You have a
rumor. You pick up the phone to start spreading it and you call
someone, beginning a chain such that the nth person to be called
will then call and tell it to one other person, except that he will not
call himself nor would he (naturally) call the person who just told
him (assume, for simplicity, that he WOULD call someone who has
told him the rumor before, as long as it was not the person who
RUMOR
SPREADING
just called him).

So you make the first call. What is the probability that the 5th call
is to you?
Now, can you rework the problem such that a person will NEVER
call anyone who has ever told him the rumor before (more
realistic, figuring they already know the rumor so why call)?
Finally, can you generalize the formula to calculate the probability
that the n-th call is to you?
So, Willywutang has (somehow) managed to get himself a nice big

mansion. The mansion has a nice huge yard in front. However, the
yard is completely flat and boring, so Willy decides it'd look nice
TREES FOR
WILLYWUTANG
with a few trees in front. So, he has a landscaper come in to put in

some trees. Being the puzzlemeister that he is, Willy decides to
give the landscaper a riddle: Plant 9 trees in the yard, so that there
are 10 rows of three trees each. Help the poor landscaper decide
how to place the trees.
A group of prisoners are trapped in a forcefield. These prisoners

are perfectly brave, meaning that they would attempt an escape on
any positive probability of success. The prisoners are monitored by
FORCEFIELD
DETAINMENT
a guard who has only one bullet in his gun, but who also has
perfect marksmanship skills (he never misses). A maintenance
technician needs to tune up the forcefield generator, and so for one
second, the forcefield is released. How can the guard still keep all
the prisoners detained?
A black man, dressed in black, is crossing a road. He's blind and

deaf. A truck is speeding towards him, with its lights turned off.
WHAT
HAPPENED II
The street lamps are also off and there's no moonlight. When the
truck is about to hit the man, the driver hits the brakes and
manages to stop just a few centimetres from him. How did the
driver see the man?
A man walks into a bar and says "I want a coffee and a glass of
WHAT
HAPPENED III
water. But make sure the coffee is boiling hot and the water is icecold." The barman says "Sure thing, mr. fireman." The barman had
never met him before. How did he know the man was a fireman?
Mathematics departments at some south-western universities

received Mr. H.N.s sly letters asking for the one real solution x of
the following two equations:
18 = ((1 + x)18/x)
ONE REAL
SOLUTION
17 = ((1 + x)17/x)
Professor A.S. at one of those departments sent Mr. H.N. the
following brief solution:
18/17 = ((1 + x)18/x) / ((1 + x)17/x) = 1 + x , so x = 1/17
Are there any other real solutions x? Why?
Here is a "proof" that y = 0:

Define f(x,y) := (x+y)^2. Now substitute x = u-v, and y=u+v.
Taking partial derivatives, we see that
f/ x =
f/ y = 2(x
+y)
PROOF THAT Y=0
x/ v = -1
y/ v = +1
Now the Chain Rule implies

f/ v = ( f/ x)( x/ v) + ( f/ y)( y/ v) = 2(x+y)(-1) + 2(x+y)
(1) = 0
But the definition of f(u, v) = (u + v)^2 implies also that f/ v = 2
(u+v) = 2y. Therefore y = 0. Thus we should never divide by
variables named "y" while manipulating equations, because y = 0.
Suppose an odd number (at least three) of coins have the property
COINS SAME
WEIGHT
M
that, if any one coin is removed, the rest can be partitioned into
two groups each with the same number of coins and also the same
total weight. Show that all the coins must have the same weight.
Note: Linear algebra can be useful here, but I don't know if it's
absolutely necessary.
A rectangular sheet of paper is folded so that two diagonally
PAPER FOLD
RATIO
opposite corners come together. The crease thus formed is as long

as the longer side of the rectangle. What is the ratio of the longer
side of the rectangle to the shorter?
FARMER'S
ENCLOSURE
A farmer has four straight pieces of fencing: 1, 2, 3, and 4 yards in

length. What is the maximum area he can enclose by connecting
the pieces?
You have N computers on a space station. An accident happens,

and some of the computers are damaged, but you know the
number of good (undamaged) computers is greater than the
number of bad (damaged) ones. Your goal is to find *one*
computer that's still good.
Your only method of testing is the following: Use one computer
(say, X) to test another (Y). If X is a good computer, it tells you
GOOD AND BAD

COMPUTERS
correctly the status of Y. If X is bad, it may or may not give the

correct status of Y; assume it will give whatever answer is least
useful to your testing strategy.
In worst-case, how many tests must you use to find one computer
that's still good? (in terms of N)
You're permitted any combination of tests, though keep in mind
the bad machines may not be consistent in the results they give
you.
White to move. What is optimal play for White?
CHESS STUDY I
C
Note: A very famous study by Richard Reti, dating all the way back
to 1921. Reti was a professional in both mathematics and chess; he
found the latter more interesting because he could force people to
believe the truth of his ideas. He became quite famous in 1924 for
being the first to defeat Capablanca in a decade.
White to move. What is optimal play for White?
CHESS STUDY II
C
Note: Another Richard Reti classic study involving the endgame

and the surprising power of Kings.
Many of us have had experience with slide puzzles, in which there

are tiles numbered from 1 through 15, and you have to slide the
tiles such that the numbers are in increasing sequence when read
from left to right, top row to bottom. Other variants have
fragments of a picture printed on the tiles.
Can you solve the following slide puzzles? If so, list a sequence of
moves that produce a solution; if not, explain rigorously. We want
15-14 SLIDE
PUZZLES
the first puzzle to read "1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15", and

we want the second puzzle to read "Rate Your Mind Pal."
There are N people in one room. How big does N have to be until
the probability that at least two people in the room have the same
BIRTHDAY
PARADOX
birthday is greater than 50 percent? (Same birthday means same

month and day, but not necessarily same year.)
Note: This problem is not really a paradox, but it is given this label
because the answer is hard to believe.
You dare not offend nor disappoint Great Uncle Willy lest he
disown you. He has placed $2000 in your hands to bet on the
outcome of the world series, which is a baseball contest won by
whichever of two teams first wins 4 games. Willys $2000 was
given to you in advance of the series. At the end of the series he
expects you to return to him either $4000 if the team he chose
wins, or nothing if it loses.
WORLD SERIES
BETTING
But you can find nobody who will accept bets on the entire world
series. However, there are wagerers who will take on even-odds
bets, in any amount(s), on each game individually. What strategy
for placing bets on individual games will achieve the cumulative
result Willy expects?
Note: This task was reputedly set before job-seekers at a Wall

Street brokerage in 1994.
You're playing a game with your friend on an infinitely large piece

of graph paper. You and a friend each have a different color pen.
You take turns marking intersections of the grid. The winner is the
SQUARES ON A
GRID
first person to color 4 intersections that form a square. The square

may be of any size, but it must be oriented in the direction of the
grid; that is, something like the midpoints of each side of a 2x2
square won't qualify.
What is the optimal strategy for each player?
An obtuse triangle has one of its angles greater than 90 degrees.

An acute triangle has all of its angles less than 90 degrees. (A right
triangle is neither acute nor obtuse.)
Either find a way to cut up any obtuse triangle into pieces, each of
OBTUSE
TRIANGLES
which is an acute triangle, or prove that it can't be done.
Note: "This one is from an old Martin Gardner book. Gardner claims
professional mathematicians have been known to get it wrong.
Then again, professional mathematicians get the Monty Hall
problem wrong sometimes too." - Tim Mann
Craps is a 1-player dice game that is played as follows: Roll two 6sided dice; their sum becomes your "initial" roll. If this initial roll is
2, 3, or 12, you lose. If the initial roll is 7 or 11, you win.
Otherwise, keep rolling the dice until you reroll you initial number
(and win) or until you roll a 7 (and lose).
You're betting that your adversary is going to lose his game of
craps, which should be a favorable bet for you. But you receive an
anonymous tip that he's secretly loaded one of the dice, so that it
LOADED CRAPS
DICE
will always come up 5. This increases his chances of winning to

2/3.
Having learned of his evil deed, you're going to secretly load his
other die so as to minimize his chance of winning. With what
probability should you load each of the six faces? And how does
that change his probability of winning?
Note: Writing credits to Matt Lahut.
There are three one-dimensional tracks, of length 12, 7, and 5

spaces respectively. You start with pennies in the first space of
each track; your opponent starts with pennies in the last space of
each track. On your turn, you may move any one of your pennies
any number of spaces in either direction along a track (as a chess
rook), however you are not permitted to bypass the other player's
penny or occupy its space. If a player has no legal move, he loses.
PENNY TRACK
GAME
What should your first move be?
Note: Hardcore puzzlers will probably solve this immediately, but

newer people might take quite some time. For the newer people,
the solution to this is a useful trick to have in your random-puzzlesolving arsenal. As a sub-problem, you may want to try solving it
without the 5-length track.
You have an m x n grid with some real numbers in each cell. You
POSITIVE
MATRIX SUMS
can multiply any row by -1, or any column by -1. Show that by
making multiplications of this kind, the sum of the numbers in
every row, and the sum of the numbers in every column, can all be
made non-negative simultaneously.
Shown to the below-left is a checkerboard mutilated by the

removal of two squares from each of two opposite corners. Shown
to the below-right are two T-shaped tiles, each of which can cover
four squares of the checkerboard exactly.
TETRAMINOES
ON A
CHECKERBOARD
If tiles of both kinds are abundant, and if tiles may be rotated, can
the mutilated checkerboard be covered exactly with
nonoverlapping tiles that match the colors of covered squares?
Why?
In an presidential election between Willywutang and Billybutane,

the winning candidate Willywutang has received n+k votes,
whereas Billybutane has received n votes. (n and k are positive
ALWAYS AHEAD
integers.) If ballots are counted in a random order, what is the

probability that Willywutang's accumulating count will always lead
his opponent's, and why?
Note: Cute eh? Also a practical calculation ... well, maybe.
A deck of 26 red and 26 black cards is shuffled into random order

and placed face down. Then the cards are turned up one by one
and observed by a guesser. He gets one guess: At a moment of his
CALLING A
CARD'S COLOR
choice he may assert that the next card will turn up red. After this
card is turned up the game ends and he wins if his assertion was
correct, loses otherwise. And if he doesn't guess at all by the time
all cards have been dealt, he loses by default. What guessing policy
chosen in advance maximizes his chance of winning?
Consider computing the product of two complex numbers (a + bi)

and (c + di). By foiling the polynomials as we learned in grade
school, we get
+ bi
+ di
---------adi - bd
ca + cbi
----------------
COMPLEX
MULTIPLICATION
(ca - bd) + (ad + cb)i
Note that this standard method uses 4 multiplications and 2

additions to compute the product. (The plus sign in between (ca -
bd) and (ad + cb)i does not count as an addition. Think of a

complex number as simply a 2-tuple.)
It is actually possible to compute this complex product using only 3
multiplications and 3 additions. From a logic design perspective,
this is preferable since multiplications are more expensive to
implement than additions. Can you figure out how to do this?
A little while ago, Willy Wutang was thinking about the Sprinkler
and Pump puzzle. Willy, having a creative mind (or at least a welldeveloped sense of mischief) had a flash of inspiration, and came
up with a very novel sprinkler design. However, before he can
patent his new sprinkler, Willy must figure out what it does--his
lawyer says it's a necessary part of the patent process.
CRAZY
SPRINKLER
1. First of all, does the sprinkler turn? If so, in which direction
does it turn?
2. Second, what do the jets of water do? In the picture above,
the sprinkler is shown at the instant just before the jets of
water collide. However, in the picture the sprinkler is being
held still, so that even if it wants to turn, it cannot.
3. Third, does the behaviour of the jets of water depend on
whether or not the sprinkler is allowed to rotate? Does it
maybe depend on how fast the sprinkler rotates?
Note: Writing credits to James Fingas!
What row of numbers comes next?

1
11
21
1211
CONWAY
SEQUENCE
111221
312211
13112221
Note: Mathematician John Conway spent considerable time

studying this sequence.
Willy Wutang is writing to his overseas sweetheart. He writes a

steamy love letter, seals the envelope, and then inscribes the
following cryptic address on the front:
Wood, S
April
CRYPTIC
ADDRESS
England
Strangely enough, the letter reaches its intended recipient. What is

Willy's sweetheart's address?
Note: Writing credits to James Fingas :)
Willy Wutang is making a robot, and he has bought himself a set of

24 finger gauges. For those of you who have never seen a set of
these, each gauge is a strip of metal about 1/2" wide and about
one foot long. Each is a different thickness (0.001" up to 0.024").
Each has a hole in one end, and they are fastened together with a
nut and bolt, in order of thickness.
Willy's calculations indicate that, with the flame thrower
attachment extended, he must adjust the spark plug to be 0.086"
from the jellied gasoline nozzle. He pulls out his trusty finger
FINGER GAUGES
gauge set, and realizes they only go up to 0.024". How can he

accurately set the spark plug distance?
If you've figured out how Willy measured 0.086", what is the
smallest measurement (in thousandths of an inch) that Willy can't
make using his set of feeler gauges? What is the smallest
measurement (in thousandths of an inch) that Willy can't
approximate to +/-0.001"?
Note: Writing credits to the prolific James Fingas.
An acrobat thief enters an ancient temple, and finds the following

scenario:
1. The roof of the temple is 100 meters high.
2. In the roof there are two holes, separated by 1 meter.
3. Through each hole passes a single gold rope, each going all
ACROBAT THIEF
AND GOLD
ROPES
the way to the floor.

4. There is nothing else in the room.
The thief would like to cut and steal as much of the ropes as he
can. However, he knows that if he falls from height that is greater
than 10 meters, he will die. The only thing in his possession is a
knife.
How much length of rope can the acrobat thief get? And how?
SUM OF
RECIPROCALS
Show that the sum of the reciprocals of the first n positive

numbers is not an integer for n > 1.
Willywutang is holding a birthday party. Either p or q people are

going to show up, where p and q are relatively prime numbers.
Willy wants to cut the cake beforehand, so his guests will not
waste time waiting for slices to be carved out. What is the smallest
number of slices Willy must cut out such that every guest can be
given the same amount of cake, regardless of whether p or q
people show up? The slices do not have to be equally sized, and
each guest could receive more than one slice. Also, Willy is not
allowed to eat the whole cake and give nothing to all the guests.
CAKE DIVISION
Also, the entire cake must be distributed amongst the guests -there can be no leftovers.
Note 1: Two numbers are relatively prime if they share no common

factors. So for example, the numbers 4 and 9 are relatively prime,
but the numbers 10 and 15 are not because they share the number
5 as a common factor.
Note 2: (5/27/2003 2:17PM) Edited to specify that the entire cake
must be given away.
1/27/2003 8:30PM
Somewhere in Northern Eurasia, a group of 20 lemmings is
planning a special group suicide this year. Each of the lemmings
will be placed in a random position along a thin, 100 meter long
plank of wood which is floating in the sea. Each lemming is equally
likely to be facing either end of the plank. At time t=0, all the
lemmings walk forward at a slow speed of 1 meter per minute. If a
lemming bumps into another lemming, the two both reverse
LEMMING
DROWNINGS
directions. If a lemming falls off the plank, he drowns. What is the

longest time that must elapse till all the lemmings have drowned?
Author: William Wu
Note 1: If you make a certain observation, the calculations
required become very trivial!
Note 2: Yes, I know Lemmings don't really commit group suicides.

Problem and storyline was inspired by the Lemmings video game.
1/27/2003 8:30PM
Imagine a cube where each edge is a 1 ohm resistor. Find the
RESISTOR CUBE
resistance between opposite corners of the cube.

There are many ways to solve this problem, but some ways are
more clever than others.
1/27/2003 8:30PM
Two astronauts are standing on a spinning space station shaped
like a disk. They are the same radial distance away from the disk's
center, and standing opposite to each other across from the center
(e.g., if you draw a line connecting the two astronauts, the line
ASTROWRENCH
P
crosses the disk's center.) One astronaut wants to toss a wrench to

the other. Among the infinitude of trajectories which will
accomplish this goal, characterize one of the trajectories without
writing a single equation.
Note: Be wary grasshopper. There are several common wrong

answers to this problem!
2/2/2003 3:31AM
What are the next few terms in the sequence?
/-\
/-\//-\\
/-\-/-\/-\
SLASH AND
DASH SEQUENCE
/-\--///-\\\
//-\\/-\-/-\
Hint 1: Maybe it'll go easier if you replace - with 0, and the / and \
with ( and ). Or not.
Hint 2: These are just the numbers 1 through 10, expressed
differently. And despite the presence of zero, you can't express
zero this way.
Hint 3: All your base are belong to prime numbers.
2/2/2003 3:31AM
Two thieves conspire to steal a valuable necklace made of
diamonds and rubies (evenly spaced, but not necessarily
alternating or symmetric). After they take it home, they decide that
JEWEL THIEVES
the only way to divide the booty fairly is to physically cut the
necklace in half.
Prove that, if there is an even number of diamonds and an even
number of rubies, it's possible to cut the necklace into two pieces,
each of which contains half the diamonds and half the rubies.
3/9/2003 4:11AM
In a cliche effort to illustrate the importance of teamwork-oriented
problem solving, the Boss has chained Dilbert to Carol The
Secretary via wire wrapped around their wrists, as shown in the
following snapshot:
WIRECUFFS
The goal is for Dilbert and Carol to unlink themselves from each
other; considering what a horrible woman Carol is, Dilbert wouldn't

have it any other way. The wire is unbreakable, and as much as
Dilbert would like to saw off Carol's limbs, that's against company
policy. How can Dilbert and Carol get away from each other?
4/7/2003 12:47AM
While recovering from wounds in the American Civil War, a Captain
Fox threw needles at a surface ruled with parallel lines, and was
thus able to experimentally infer the value of pi. True story! To find
out exactly how pi plays into this scenario, solve the following
problem: A surface is ruled with parallel lines. The lines are at
distance D apart from each other. Suppose we throw a needle of
length L on the surface at random. What is the probability that the
needle will intersect one of the lines?
BUFFON'S
NEEDLE
M
Note 1: A famous problem posed and solved in 1777 by French

naturalist Buffon. It has long since fascinated scientists, and marks
the origin of geometrical probability -- the analysis of geometrical
configurations of randomly placed objects.
Note 2: These 19th century experiments began development of the
Monte Carlo method, which uses repeated simulation to
approximate true statistics.
Note 3: This isn't much of a riddle ... more like just an interesting
mathematical exercise. The most challenging part is setting up the
problem.
4/7/2003 12:47AM
Samwise Gamgee has a square plot of land, each side being 1 unit.
One day, Sam finds out that the dark Lord Sauron has a telephone
line that he uses to speak with a traitor amongst the hobbits.
Gandalf informs him that the telephone line runs in a straight line
parallel to the ground and passes beneath the square plot of land,
but he does not know its location. Sam decides to dig up around
SAMWISE AND
GANDALF
the perimeter of his land to discover the telephone line, but

Gandalf says it is not necessary to dig around the entire length of 4
units.
Sam brightens up, and says "I know what you mean. I can just dig
3 sides and still discover it. For even if the phone line runs along
the fourth side, I will still detect it at the end points ! "
Gandalf shakes his head. "No, Sam. You are on the right track, but
you can do better than that."
What solution does Gandalf have in mind for the optimum length of
the "digging curve" ?
4/7/2003 12:47AM
RETROGRADE
CHESS I
C
What was the last move made?
Note: From Karl Fabel's 1955 book Rund um das Schachbrett.
5/11/2003 10:44PM
Consider an N x N grid. Denote one corner as point A, and the
PATH COLLISION
opposite corner as point B. George is walking from A to B, and

Lennie is walking from B to A. All paths are equally likely, as long
as they follow the grid and never move away from the destination.
(Hence George's path can never move down or left, and Lennie's
path can never move up or right.)
What is the probability that George and Lennie collide?
If George runs and thus moves three times faster than

Lennie, what is the probability of collision?
5/11/2003 10:44PM
ROPE AROUND
THE EARTH
Assume the Earth is a perfect sphere of radius r and suppose a

rope of zero elasticity is tied tightly around it. One metre is now
added to the rope's length. If the rope is now pulled at one point as
high as possible above the Earth's surface, what height will be
reached?
5/11/2003 10:44PM
Two urns contain the same total numbers of balls, some blacks and
some whites in each. From each urn are drawn n balls with
replacement, where n >= 3. Find the number of drawings and the
MOLINA'S URNS
composition of the two urns so that the probability that all white
balls are drawn from the first urn is equal to the probability that
the drawing from the second is either all whites or all blacks.
Author: E.C. Molina.
5/27/2003 2:24PM
Consider a gambling machine A. When you put in $X and pull the
handle, it will spit out (equally likely) either $0.7*X, $0.8*X,
$0.9*X, $1.1*X, $1.2*X, or $1.5*X.
TWO GAMBLING
MACHINES
Now consider the following two ways of playing this machine:

1. Put in $1, pull the handle, and keep whatever you get.
Repeat.
2. Initially, put in $1. Pull the handle, then put in whatever you
get. Repeat.
Can you win money with this machine? Which is the better way to
play? How can this be?
5/11/2003 10:44PM
HEXAGON IN
CIRCLE
A hexagon with sides of length 2, 7, 2, 11, 7, 11 is inscribed in a

circle. Find the radius of the circle.
Contributor: Mark Newheiser
5:15 PM 8/3/2004
You have 1000 pirates, who are all extremely greedy, heartless,
and perfectly rational. They're also aware that all the other pirates
share these characteristics. They're all ranked by the order in
which they joined the group, from pirate one down to a thousand.
They've stumbled across a huge horde of treasure, and they have
to decide how to split it up. Every day they will vote to either kill
ELEGANTLY
GREEDY PIRATES
the lowest ranking pirate, or split the treasure up among the

surviving pirates. If 50% or more of them vote to split it, the
treasure gets split. Otherwise, they kill the lowest ranking pirate
and repeat the process until half or more of the pirates decide to
split the treasure.
The question, of course, is at what point will the treasure be split,
and what will the precise vote be?
After that, consider solving the problem when a two-thirds or

three-fourths majority is required. Try to generalize the result.
Contributor: William Wu
9:00 PM 8/19/2004
Starting with 0 dollars, you repeatedly flip a fair coin, earning $1

each time heads appears, and losing $1 each time tails appears.
When your net cash reaches either A or -B, you stop gambling.
1. As a function of A and B, compute the expected number of
flips until the game stops.
FAIR COIN
GAMBLING
2. Now consider the unstopped version of this process, in which

you gamble indefinitely regardless of your current profit or
debt. Prove that the expected time till your net cash is +$1 is
infinite. Likewise, the expected time till your net cash is -$1
is also infinite. And yet one of these two events must occur
upon the first coin flip!
Forum threads: More Heads Than Tails and Lazy hunter catch the
rabbit.
Contributor: William Wu
9:00 PM 8/19/2004
Imagine a upright ladder with n rungs. At each time step, a frog

jumps to one of the n rungs uniformly at random. (The frog could
jump in place.) Assume time starts counting from 1, and the initial
JUMPING FROG
ON LADDER
rung position is also chosen uniformly at random.

As the number of rungs tends to infinity, what is the expected time
till the frog first jumps downwards? Prove it.
Author: William Wu
Contributor: Eigenray
9:00 PM 8/19/2004
Let Q denote the set of rationals. How many colors are required to
color every point of Q^k in such a way that no two points a unit
COLORING THE
RATIONAL PLANE
distance apart are the same color?

1. Easy: k = 1
2. Medium: k=2,3
3. Hard: k>3
Contributor: Joc Koelman
RANDOM
POINTS ON
SPHERE
9:00 PM 8/19/2004
Two points on the surface of a sphere are drawn uniformly at

random. What is the maximum likelihood estimate of the distance
between these two points? The answer may be shocking at first.
After getting the answer, try to explain it intuitively.
Contributor: Aryabhatta
9:00 PM 8/19/2004
You are given n>=2 points in the 2-D plane. For each pair of points
(P,Q) from the n points, mark the midpoint of PQ red. Show that
NUMBER OF
MIDPOINTS
there are at least 2n-3 distinct red points. For each n, show an
arrangement of n points for which there are exactly 2n-3 distinct
red points.
Source: Iranian Mathematical Olympiad

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problem less complicated to you.

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You want to send a valuable object to a friend securely. You have a

pendant to Grant, but spies are trying to assassinate Andy and

Three coworkers would like to know their average salary. However,

arrange the numbers 1 to 8 in the grid below such that adjacent

and 5, 6 and 7, and 7 and 8 are adjacent.

using 31 dominoes, where one domino covers exactly two squares,

Why are manholes round?

Note: This is a famous Microsoft question. Yet amusingly, the

draw a square. divide it into four identical squares. remove the

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draw an equilateral triangle (all sides same length). divide it into

Add punctuation to the following phrase to make something

gramatically and logically coherent:

You have a 5x5 piece of paper. Two diagonally opposite corners of

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In the city of Funkytown, the following facts are true:

No two inhabitants have exactly the same number of hairs.

No inhabitant has exactly 483,207 hairs.

What is the largest possible number of inhabitants of Funkytown?

There is an island of monks where everyone has either brown eyes

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Update 10/15/2002 12:14AM: What happens if we change the

Compare the numbers 0.99999... (infinitely many 9s) and 1. Which

0.99999 ... < 1

0.99999 ... > 1

Forum thread: Click here. Check out Icarus's (our local

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a man has a gold chain with 7 links. he needs the service of a

Why do computer programmers always get Christmas and

Using only a 5-gallon bucket and a 3-gallon bucket, put exactly

four gallons of water in the 5-gallon bucket. (Assume you have an

This is the logic game of Mastermind. If you haven't played it

So if B manages to guess all four colors and positions correctly, A

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number of guesses. Below, we see a completed game of

In a two-child family, one child is a boy. What is the probability

In a two-child family, the older child is a boy. What is the

that the other child is a girl?

probability that the other child is a girl?

Does this argument make sense?

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at once. The four people all walk at different speeds: A takes 1

Ten people land on a deserted island. There they find lots of

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him. Later another castaway wakes up hungry and decides to take

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Note: This geometry problem comes from the tradition of sangaku.

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Problem source: Fukagawa, H. and D. Pedoe. Japanese Temple

Find the radii of the internal circles, in terms of a.

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Find the radii of the internal circles, in terms of a.