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Post by Dizzy D on Aug 25, 2017 6:35:16 GMT -5
A good old one to show how unintuitive percentages are for people.
Key is the solid part of the potato will not change.
So you have 100 pounds of potatoes of which 1% is solid "potato (so 1 pound).
At the you have 2% solid potato (still 1 pound). So 100% is 50*1 pound = 50 pounds.
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Post by Rob Allen on Aug 29, 2017 10:56:12 GMT -5
Dizzy D wins this week!
The official answer:
RAY: Now, unencumbered by the thought process as usual, my brother guessed 99 pounds.
TOM: Yeah.
RAY: Now, when I guessed, off the top of my head, I guessed about 90 pounds.
TOM: 'Cause it just feels right.
RAY: But if you do the math, 1 percent of 100 --which is what the potato is-- is one pound. As we told you, that's 1 percent. So 2 percent, when it’s 98 percent water, two percent of the new weight of the mass is still going to be equal to that one pound, and 2 percent of 50 pounds is a pound. So the potato weight is now 50 pounds, not 100.
And the new Puzzler:
RAY: What do the following men have in common?
TOM: Who are they?
RAY: Get your pencil and write this down: Ulysses S. Grant, Rudyard Kipling, Woodrow Wilson, Grover Cleveland, and Calvin Coolidge. Now, I know they're dead.
TOM: I got it! They were all Presidents of the United States.
RAY: Close. Except for that Wilson guy.
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Aug 29, 2017 11:17:29 GMT -5
All of them must use the same letter at least twice in one of their names.
They were all born in the XIX century.
They're all Anglo-saxons.
It's a vague puzzler!
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Post by berkley on Aug 29, 2017 12:29:45 GMT -5
Since Kipling is the odd one out in not having been American or the US president, I'll take a wild guess and say the others were also published authors or maybe even journalists at some time in their lives.
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Aug 29, 2017 12:50:08 GMT -5
Mmmmh... They all suffered from depression?
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Post by Rob Allen on Aug 29, 2017 14:43:41 GMT -5
All good guesses, but no right ones yet.
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Aug 29, 2017 14:53:29 GMT -5
Since this is a little more cryptic, I think it might be it: each of these men is called by their second given name (Hiram Ulysses Grant, John Calvin Coolidge, Joseph Rudyard Kipling, Stephen Grover Cleveland and Thomas Woodrow Wilson).
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Post by Rob Allen on Sept 4, 2017 19:43:14 GMT -5
RR's got it right! Here's the official answer:
RAY: They are best known by their middle names.
TOM: What? Ulysses S.? Sam?
RAY: No, no, no,
TOM: Ulysses is not his first name?
RAY: His real name was Hiram Ulysses Grant. He added the "S" for Simpson later on in life. Joseph Rudyard Kipling, Thomas Woodrow Wilson -- you knew that because that was a trivia question that you may have used on the web site at one point or another. Stephen Grover Cleveland and John Calvin Coolidge.
and for this week:
RAY: This is from my Wide World of Sports series. Last year, my two sons and I got together to watch the Super Bowl. Of course we had the usual array of sandwiches, chips, soda pop, candy and enough of everything so we wouldn't have to budge from our seats until half time.
We had just barely settled into our spots on the sofa when my wife popped in. “I know that you three know a lot about sports, maybe everything, right?” she said.
Well, we didn't want to brag but it's quite possible we would be able to answer just about any question you could ask about sports.
“Okay, then,” she said. “Try this one. Your team is losing 6 to nothing. The opposing team scored two field goals to account for its 6 points. Your team then scores three field goals while at the same time holding the other team scoreless. And now your team leads 7 to 6.”
We all shake our heads. “No, no, no, that's not possible, you got that wrong.”
'Oh, yes, it is,' she said and she's right. The question is, how could she be right?
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Post by Jeddak on Sept 4, 2017 20:51:22 GMT -5
At first I thought the answer might involve a safety, but the score would've been 9-8. Then I noticed that the problem doesn't specifically state they're playing football, despite the Super Bowl reference. So . . .
They're playing basketball. Technically, any basket scored that is not a free throw is called a field goal, and can be worth either 2 or 3 points. Two 2 pointers and a 3 equals 7.
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Post by Rob Allen on Sept 11, 2017 17:31:05 GMT -5
outsider hits a home run and wins the Stanley Cup!
The official word from Tom & Ray:
RAY: Now we all know that a field goal is three points.
TOM: Yes, we do.
RAY: Yeah, except that it's not! If you thought about another sport other than football - like basketball - a basket in basketball can be either a three-point field goal or a two-point field goal. You could certainly score one three-pointer and two two-pointers, giving you seven points. And the other team had scored two three-point field goals and they had six points and you're ahead seven to six.
The new Puzzler:
There's a famous fast-food restaurant you can go to, where you can order chicken nuggets. They come in boxes of various sizes. You can only buy them in a box of 6, a box of 9, or a box of 20. So if you're really hungry you can buy 20, if you're moderately hungry you can buy 9, and if there's more than one of you, maybe you buy 20 and you divide them up.
Using these order sizes, you can order, for example, 32 pieces of chicken if you wanted. You'd order a box of 20 and two boxes of 6.
Here's the question:
What is the largest number of chicken pieces that you cannot order? For example, if you wanted, say 37 of them, could you get 37? No. Is there a larger number of chicken nuggets that you cannot get? And if there is, what number is it?
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Post by Jeddak on Sept 12, 2017 21:56:45 GMT -5
Stanley Cup. That's hockeyball, right?
Yeah, I know all about sports n stuff.
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Post by Farrar on Sept 13, 2017 16:30:06 GMT -5
The new Puzzler: There's a famous fast-food restaurant you can go to, where you can order chicken nuggets. They come in boxes of various sizes. You can only buy them in a box of 6, a box of 9, or a box of 20. So if you're really hungry you can buy 20, if you're moderately hungry you can buy 9, and if there's more than one of you, maybe you buy 20 and you divide them up. Using these order sizes, you can order, for example, 32 pieces of chicken if you wanted. You'd order a box of 20 and two boxes of 6. Here's the question: What is the largest number of chicken pieces that you cannot order? For example, if you wanted, say 37 of them, could you get 37? No. Is there a larger number of chicken nuggets that you cannot get? And if there is, what number is it?Using a tried-and-true method--trial and error--I get 43. |
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Sept 14, 2017 12:09:53 GMT -5
Stanley Cup. That's hockeyball, right? Yeah, I know all about sports n stuff. Sir, over here it's not sports; it's religion!  |
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Sept 14, 2017 12:15:54 GMT -5
The new Puzzler: There's a famous fast-food restaurant you can go to, where you can order chicken nuggets. They come in boxes of various sizes. You can only buy them in a box of 6, a box of 9, or a box of 20. So if you're really hungry you can buy 20, if you're moderately hungry you can buy 9, and if there's more than one of you, maybe you buy 20 and you divide them up. Using these order sizes, you can order, for example, 32 pieces of chicken if you wanted. You'd order a box of 20 and two boxes of 6. Here's the question: What is the largest number of chicken pieces that you cannot order? For example, if you wanted, say 37 of them, could you get 37? No. Is there a larger number of chicken nuggets that you cannot get? And if there is, what number is it?Using a tried-and-true method--trial and error--I get 43. Hah!!! Deep Thought was wrong!!! |
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Post by Rob Allen on Sept 26, 2017 15:57:40 GMT -5
Farrar takes the prize! Here's the official answer from Ray:
You can clearly buy six, you can clearly buy nine, you can obviously buy 12, 15 we've established, 18, 20, 21 you can keep going. Now, if you can buy 15, of course you can buy 30, 45, and you can buy 90. And if you can buy 18 you can buy 36 and 72. And if you can buy 20, you can buy all the multiples of 100: 1,000, 10,000, 100,000, a million, etcetera.
I kept working upwards, and there were some holes. I couldn't buy 31 for example. I couldn't buy 37, I couldn't buy 43, but then a strange thing happened.
I found out that I could buy 44, 45, 46, 47.
Now if I could buy 46, I could buy 92. Once I got to 43, I realized that was the largest number that I couldn't buy.
And this week's challenge:
RAY: This was submitted by a fellow named Bob Stewart and I had to change a few things but not much. I liked it just the way it was.
"My friend Jane gets off work at 1:30 every day, well every day that she works, that is. And it takes her one hour to drive home. Since she's not driving at rush hour, she arrives home at almost exactly 2:30 every day - a one hour commute. However, it doesn't always work out that way. For example, one day she left work at the usual time, 1:30 , but got home at 3:30 instead of 2:30 . There was nothing different about her route and she drove the same speed and she didn't break down and she wasn't abducted by aliens or anything like that. So the question is what happened?"
Now I don't want you to infer anything. Just use the information I've given you.
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