Wednesday

Puzzle #1

Say you're at a well and you need to collect 4 gallons of water.  You have a five gallon bucket and a three gallon bucket.  How do you preceed?

Easy mode: you have two five gallon buckets and three gallon bucket.

Both solutions will be posted at Puzzle #2.



Solution to Puzzle #0

I just realized I made a mistake in Puzzle #0.  You would need to know if the counterfeit coin is heavier or lighter.  My bad.  In the first weighing you compare 3 coins to 3 other coins.  If the balance is the same, then the counterfeit can be found by weighing the remaining two.  Else you would compare two coins of the lighter group (say if they counterfeit was lighter).  If one of the coins is lighter then you've found it.  Else, the remaining coin is the counterfeit.

9 comments:

  1. fill the 5 gallon bucket 4/5 of the way?

    man I dunno, I shall follow you, think you could check my blog some time. :)

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  2. put 5 gallon bucket into well. Wait for it to fill. Remove. Dump what isn't needed.

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  3. fill the small bucket and pour the 3 gal into the large

    refill the small

    then fill the large to the top thus leaving 1 gal in the small

    empty the large, pour the 1 gal into the large

    refill small then pour its contents into the large = 4 gal

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  4. i proceed with having my woman do it after I let her out of the kitchen

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  5. i figured this one in less than 30 secs

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  6. i proceed with black magic and a pinch of telekinesis

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  7. I see the answer was posted already. That's really slick!

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  8. I'm glad somebody got a solution, and not the easy scenario with three buckets. There is yet another way to do this with just the five gallon and three gallon bucket.

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