Hint: Don't think of 12 as "twelve" but as a "dozen".
Published: Thu 17 Dec 2015, 11:00 PM
Last updated: Fri 18 Dec 2015, 1:00 AM
E4
Consider the equation shown below. However, before the arts brigade falls to their collective knees, wailing and gnashing their molars, saying, "Oh woe is surely upon us, for alack! - another accursed mathematical puzzle looms to steal our sleep and peace of mind," let me, at the outset, set out that what follows has virtually nothing to do with that hellish legerdemain of numbers and suchlike. In fact it is, if you will, a conundrum concerning one of the seven arts - literature - and more to the point, poetry of a sort.
Suddenly, I can hear baying packs of Virginia wolves returning to solve it, for although the equation balances just fine with both sides equalling 81, the whole numerical exposition is actually a limerick. That's right, for example something like: A canner who was exceedingly canny,/ One morning remarked to his granny:/ "A canner can can/ Anything that he can/ But a canner can't can a can, can he?"
So let's see now if you can guess what limerick lurks hidden in those digits. (Hint: don't think of 12 as "twelve" but as a "dozen".)
DEAR MS
(Last fortnight's question was: "Why is the temperature on the planet Venus generally hotter than the planet Mercury, even though Mercury is much closer to the sun?" - MS)
Mercury-Falling-Dept:
Mercury has no atmosphere, so it cannot trap heat from the sun. The side facing the sun is extremely hot, and vice-versa for the other side. On the other hand, Venus has the thickest atmosphere in the solar system, which has led to the strongest greenhouse effect as well, so it can certainly trap more heat. This is the reason Venus is hotter than Mercury.
Vivan Mishra, vivanmishra13@gmail.com
(Yes, Joel John, joeljo2104@gmail.com, Salman Faariz, faarizsalman003@gmail.com and Siddharth Patkar, siddhpatkar@gmail.com, you also got it right. - MS)
(The other puzzle was an almost impossible card trick where you declared that on being told how many face up cards were there in a pack, you could sort them into two groups, with each group having the same number of face up cards. And the impossible part was, you had to do it blindfolded. - MS)
On-The-Flip-Side Dept:
Let the number of face up cards be N. I will take out exactly N cards from the deck to form a second pile and flip all the cards in the second pile. Lo and behold. the second pile will then contain as many face up cards as the first pile.
(The third one was: "A man is looking at a portrait when a passerby asks him, 'Whose picture are you looking at?' The man replies: 'Brothers and sisters have I none, but this man's father is my father's son.' So whose picture was he looking at?" - MS)
Son-Of-A-GunDept:
The answer to this question is pretty simple. He is looking at his son's portrait. #1 He is an only child. #2 The man's father is his father's son. #3 Since he is an only child, his father's son is himself. #4 If he is his father's son, then he is the man's father.
The portrait is of his son. Take a look at what he said: "This man's father is my father's son." That statement can be replaced by "me" as it means that he is his father's son. Now it can be said as: "This man's father is me" which means that the picture is of his own son.
(Among the first five who also got it correct are: Nevedetha Swami, wwefan1068@gmail.com; Aleena Lifiya, wearenoless@gmail.com; Harmeet Kohli, harmeet09@gmail.com; Thabassum Sakeer, thappu.easa@gmail.com; Amal Anwar Yousuf, ay786amal@gmail.com - MS)
ENDGAME(S)
- What's the smallest number which has to be added to 69241811 to make it a palindrome (read the same backwards)?
- What goes front to back on one side of a ship and back to front on the other?
(To get in touch with Mukul, mail him at mukul.mindsport@gmail.com)
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