As many Earthlings faint with awe, you then put a decimal point in front of this monster number and convert it into a decimal fraction.

 

E4

Want to know how to encode the entirety of Wikipedia on a 6” bar of metal with just a tiny scratch? Not only that, that scratch wouldn’t even contain any information on it. While the whole world falls at your feet in delirious astonishment, explain to them gently — like one talking to a bunch of silent lambs — that fewer than 100 different letters and symbols are actually used in the Wiki world.

Assign a two-digit number to each of these letter and symbols. For instance, the letter ‘A’ might be 01, ‘B’ something like 02, a semicolon could be 34, a space between words, 99, and so on till you have them all covered. Now, just like the word ‘bat’ could be encoded as, say, 020120, with this cipher system, you can also, and obviously, encode the entire Pedia into one huge number.

As many Earthlings faint with awe, you then put a decimal point in front of this monster number and convert it into a decimal fraction. Then you place a scratch on the bar dividing it precisely into lengths ‘a’ and ‘b’ so that the fraction a/b equals the decimal fraction of the code. All you have to do now is, have a supercomputer measure the rod, compute the fraction a/b, and print out a copy of the entire encyclopaedia! Is there anything theoretically wrong with this premise or am I a complete lunatic?

If I’m not, try this: There’s this girl who doesn’t have a pair of compasses — you know, the stuff that lives in geometry boxes... To compound the problem, even her ruler is broken at both ends, so that the lengths of its parallel sides are only one and one half times its width. And if that was not enough, now her teacher asks her to find the centre of a circle whose diameter is less than the width of the ruler. How can she do this with a construction which is Euclidean except for the use of the parallel edges?

DEAR MS

(The problem was about a man who forgot to wind his clock. So he went to his sister’s house, spent the evening with her, went back home and set the clock. How could he do this without knowing beforehand the length of the trip? — MS)

Look-Who’s-Tocking-Dept:

He sets his clock at random, and steps out for his sister’s house. On arrival he notices the time on the clock there. While leaving that house also, he notices the time of departure. Now on his arrival back at his house, the time elapsed on his clock is equivalent to the duration of his stay in his sister’s house plus twice the trip time. For example, if he originally sets his clock to 3 PM and it finally shows 7 PM, assuming he stayed out for three hours, his trip time is 30 minutes. He adds this 30 minutes to his departure time and resets his clock.

• Sheikh Sintha Mathar, sheikhsm7@gmail.com

 

(The other problem was: “The twins Alan and Bob were born two hours apart, Alan being the older twin. However, Alan celebrated his 21^st birthday two days after Bob. How is this possible?” — MS)

Up-2-Date-Twins-Dept:

The twins were born on a flight, which was crossing the International Date Line (IDL), flying east to west. Alan was born just after midnight on 28 Feb, 1987, in the early hours of 1 Mar, 1987. Two hours later the flight had crossed the IDL, so it was 28 Feb, 1987, when Bob was born. Bob celebrated his 21^st birthday on 28 Feb, 2008. The next day being 29 Feb, 2008, Alan had to wait one more day to celebrate his birthday on 1 Mar, 2008 — i.e., two days after Bob celebrated his birthday.

• Easwaran Nampoothiri K, easwarank.tvnr@gmail.com

 ENDGAME(S)

1.   The problem is to find out what is one-half of two-thirds of three-fourths of four-fifths of five-sixths of six-sevenths of seven-eighths of eight-ninths of nine-tenths of one hundred in less than 10 seconds in your head. How?

2.   You’ve seen fly swatters, right? Why do they have lots of little holes in them? 

(To get in touch with Mukul, mail him at mukul.mindsport@gmail.com)

• Mindsport