On this page you will find a
collection of puzzles. A new puzzle will be added to this collection on
the 1st day of each month. You will have until the last
day of the month to submit your solution to each puzzle.
If you find the correct solution, 10 bonus marks will be added to your mark
on your next homework/evaluation.
To submit your answer to the
puzzle you can either:
- send me an email with your name
and your solution; (pmessier@wqsb.qc.ca)
- hand it in to me at school in writing with your name.
NEWEST PUZZLE AT
THE BOTTOM OF THIS PAGE! (PLEASE SCROLL DOWN)
PUZZLE
NO.1
The St Ives Riddle
As I was
going to St Ives,
I met a man with seven wives.
Every wife had seven sacks.
Every sack had seven cats,
Every cat had seven kits;
Kits, cats, sacks and wives,
How many were going to St Ives?
Between Sing-Sing
and Tarry-Town
I met my worthy friend, John Brown,
And seven daughters, riding nags,
And every one had seven bags,
In every bag were thirty cats,
And every cat had forty rats,
Besides a brood of fifty kittens,
All but the nags and bags wore mittens!
Mittens, kittens - cats, rats - bags, nags - Browns,
How many were met between the towns?
A
man out hunting, spotted a bear due east. Taken by surprise, he ran
directly north, and turned to see that the bear had not moved. Steadying
himself, he took aim and shot it, by aiming due south. What colour was the
bear?
A
carpenter agrees to work on the condition that he is paid $200 for
everyday that he works, while he forfeits $300 everyday that he does not
work. At the end of 30 days he finds he has paid out exactly as much as he
received.
A water
lily doubles in size, that is, in the area of the leaf lying on the
surface of the pond, every 24 hours. If it takes 30 days to cover the pond
completely, after how many days did it cover exactly one half of the pond?
You have
a frying pan which will take only two slices of bread at a time, and you
wish to fry three slices, each on both sides. Since each slice takes 20
seconds for each side, you can certainly fry them all in 80 seconds, by
doing two pieces together and then the third.
When the
day after tomorrow is yesterday, today will be as far from Sunday as today
was from Sunday when the day before yesterday was tomorrow. What day is
it?
An
express train takes 3 seconds to enter a tunnel which is 1 km long. If it
is traveling at 120 km an hour, how long will it take to pass completely
through the tunnel?
Because
he is deemed to be a foolish man who has allowed himself to be led into
crime by his companions, the prisoner has been given a last chance. He is
shown two doors in the courtyard, one of which leads to freedom and the
other to a long sentence. Each is guarded by a warder, one of whom always
lies and one of whom is impeccably honest, but he does not know which is
which.
He is allowed one question, to be put to one of
the warders. How can he discover which is the door to freedom?
A
row of four figures in value will be
Above seven thousand nine hundred and three;
But when they are halved, you'll find very fair
The sum will be nothing, in truth I declare.
Required
of the numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 0, to compose two fractions,
whose sum shall be equal to unity. Each number to be used once, and once
only.
"What
is the age of that boy?" asked the bus driver. Flattered by this
interest shown in his family affairs, the suburban resident replied:
"My son is five times as old as my daughter,
and my wife is five times as old as my son, and I am twice as old as my
wife, whereas grandmother, who is as old as all of us put together, is
celebrating her eighty-first birthday today."
Nine
travelers, each possessing a jeep, meet on the eastern edge of a desert.
They wish to explore the interior, always going due west. Each jeep can
travel 40 km on the contents of the engine tank, which holds a gallon of
gas (about 4 liters), and each can carry nine extra gallon tins of gas and
no more. Unopened tins can alone be transferred from jeep to jeep.
What is the greatest distance to which they can enter the desert
without making any depots for gas for the return journey?
Tommy
was floating a boat in a tub of water. The boat was initially loaded with
a small metal canon, but then the cannon fell into the water sank to the
bottom, leaving the boat floating as before. No water got into the boat
while this happened.
Did the level of the water rise, fall, or stay
the same, as a result of the cannon falling overboard?
Two
schoolboys were playing on the tool shed roof. Something gave way, and
they were precipitated, through the roof, on to the floor below.
When they picked themselves up, the face of one
was covered with grime. The other's face was quite clean. Yet it was the
boy with the clean face who at once went off and washed.
"There
are only four pubs in this village", the visitor was informed,
"one in each street. The village's four streets meet at the
crossroads at right-angles. This street is the High Street".
"To reach the Blue Boar from the Griffin you
must turn left. To reach the Dragon from the Red Lion you have to turn
right".
The visitor entered three of the pubs; he arrived
at the crossroads three times during this pilgrimage, turning left the
first time, going straight across the second, and turning right the third
time. He spent the night at the Blue Boar.
Here
are ten numbered statements. How many of them are true?
1. Exactly 1 of these statements is false
2. Exactly 2 of these statements are false
3. Exactly 3 of these statements are false
4. Exactly 4 of these statements are false
5. Exactly 5 of these statements are false
6. Exactly 6 of these statements are false
7. Exactly 7 of these statements are false
8. Exactly 8 of these statements are false
9. Exactly 9 of these statements are false
10. Exactly 10 of these statements are false
Mr.
Smith's little boy sits in the back seat of a car, holding a balloon on a
string. All the windows of the car are closed tight. The balloon is full
of helium and is tethered by a string, which prevents it from touching the
roof of the car.
The car turns left at a crossroad. Does the
balloon swing left, swing right, stay upright, or do something else? And
why?
In
assembling a jigsaw puzzle, let us call the fitting together of two pieces
a "move", independently of whether the pieces consist of single
pieces or of blocks of pieces already assembled.
What procedures will minimize the number of moves required to solve an
"n" piece puzzle? What is the minimum number of
moves needed?
A
neat computer programmer wears a clean shirt every day, If he drops off
his laundry and picks up the previous week's load every Monday night, how
many shirts must he own to keep him going?
Buying
from your favorite store you are offered a discount of 5 per cent for
payment in cash, 10 per cent as a long-standing customer, and 20 per cent
because it is sale time.
In what order should you take these discounts in
order to pay as little as possible for your purchase?
Take any
four-digit number, arrange the numbers in ascending and descending order
to form two numbers, and subtract the smaller from the larger. Repeat the
same process with the answer. What is the result - eventually?
The
good ship Algebra lay at anchor in Montreal Harbour. An interested
spectator observed that a ladder was dangling form her deck; that the
bottom four rungs of the ladder were submerged; that each rung was 4 cm
wide and that the rungs were 22 cm apart. The tide was rising at the rate
of 36 cm per hour.
At the end of two hours, how many rungs would be
submerged?
By
suitably placing a 6 cm square over a triangle, I can cover up to
three-quarters of the triangle. By suitably placing the triangle over the
square, I can cover up to one-half of the square.
A
grocer has 6 barrels of different sizes, containing 15, 16, 18, 19, 20 and
31 litres. Five barrels are filled with wine, and only one is filled with
beer.
The first customer bought 2 barrels of wine, and
a second customer also bought wine, but twice as much as the first.
A
man passed one-sixth of his life in childhood, one-twelfth in youth, and
one-seventh more as a bachelor. Five years after his marriage, a son was
born who died four years before his father at half his father's final age.
A
certain delivery man, who is always in a hurry, walks up an up-going
escalator at the rate of one step per second. Twenty steps bring him to
the top.
Next day, he goes up at two steps per second, reaching the top in 32
steps.
Julia
and Lucy Montgomery are both 90 years old. Mary Williams, on the other
hand, is half again as old as she was when she was half again as old as
she was when she lacked 5 years being half as old as she is now.
Two
hot rodders compete in a drag race. Each accelerates at a uniform rate
from a standing start. John covers the last quarter of the distance in 3
seconds; Alex covers the last third in 4 seconds.
A
contractor estimated that one of his two bricklayers would take 9 hours to
build a certain wall and the other 10 hours. However, he knew from
experience that when they worked together, 10 fewer bricks got laid per
hour.
Since he was in a hurry, he put both men on the
job and found it took exactly 5 hours to build the wall.
Robert
and Sam have only one horse between them. Robert rides a certain time and
then ties up the horse for Sam, who has been walking. Meanwhile Robert
walks on ahead. They proceed in this way, alternating walking and riding.
If they walk 4 km per hour and ride 12 km per
hour, what part of the time is the horse resting?
The
faces of a solid figure are all triangles. The figure has 9 vertices. At
each of 6 of these vertices, 4 faces meet, and at each of the other 3
vertices, 6 faces meet.
A
farmer owned a square field measuring exactly 2261 meters on each side.
1898 meters from one corner and 1009 meters from an adjacent corner stood
a beech tree.
A neighbor offered to purchase a triangular
portion of the field, stipulating that a fence should be erected in a
straight line from one side of the field to an adjacent side so that the
beech tree was part of the fence.
The farmer accepted the offer but made sure that
the triangular portion was of minimum area. What was the area of the field
the neighbor received, and how long was the fence?
Robert
bought a bag of oranges on Monday, and ate a third of them.
On Tuesday he ate half of the remaining oranges.
On Wednesday he looked in the bag to find he only had two oranges left.
A group of four people has to cross a bridge. It's
dark, and they have to light the path with a flashlight. No more than
two people can cross the bridge at at time, and the group has only one
flashlight. It takes different time for the people in the group to cross
the bridge:
Angie crosses the bridge in 1 minute,
Bill crosses the bridge in 2 minutes,
Carl crosses the bridge in 5 minutes,
Debbie crosses the bridge in 10 minutes.
A man
decides to divide his coin collection between his children. The oldest
gets 1/2 of the collection, the next gets 1/4, the next gets 1/5, and the
youngest gets the remaining 49 coins.
Rachel
is now two-thirds of Sally's age. In six years, Rachel will be
four-fifths of Sally's age. In 15 years, Rachel will be
seven-eighths as old as sister Sally. If they are both under the age
of ten, how old are they now?
