January 2011
9 posts
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Tuesday Teaser #26
This is perhaps my favourite brainteaser of all time. Whilst the solution is readily available on Wikipedia, it’s worth spending some time thinking about as the solution is both beautifully simple and counter-intuitive. Here goes:
There are five rational pirates, A, B, C, D and E. They find 100 gold coins in a treasure chest and must decide how to distribute them.
The pirates have a strict...
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Answer: Tuesday Teaser #25
Apologies for how tough this teaser was. It relies on an extremely cunning trick.
Bourbaki’s strategy relies on looking at all the possible ways in which the names can be arranged in the boxes (the permutations).
He starts by giving each person a number from 1-6 and labelling each of the boxes 1-6, such that each person has a corresponding box. The exact order does not matter here, so...
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Tuesday Teaser #25
This week’s (very tough) teaser is taken from the New York Times’ excellent Numberplay series:
Many years ago, six people — Alfred Dreyfus, Jean Calas, Emile Outreau, Jeanne d’Arc, François Outreau and Nicolas Bourbaki — were sentenced to solitary confinement in a French prison — unfairly, many thought. Fortunately, they had a sympathetic warden, who gathered them together in the...
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Answer: Tuesday Teaser #24
The strategy that Player A needs to use is to try to find a way in which he can always hold a higher straight flush than Player B. This immediately requires that Player A’s first draw prevents Player B from choosing an A-K-Q-J-10 straight flush (or Royal flush), because such a hand would guarantee Player B at least a tie. This means that Player A needs to choose at least one of the Ace-to-10...
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Tuesday Teaser #24
A classic Martin Gardner puzzle for my first teaser of 2011.
Two men play a game of draw poker in the following curious manner. They spread a deck of 52 cards face up on the table so that they can see all the cards. The first player draws a hand by picking any five card he chooses. The second player does the same. The first player now may keep his original hand or draw up to five cards. His...