Classic & Logic Puzzles
By William F. Bultas
The first 3 puzzles were recently sent to me by e-mail, although I have edited & changed them slightly. I have seen puzzles similar to these before, & believe they have been in circulation in various forms for some time. The rest of the puzzles were written by me, but they are similar in style to other classic puzzles that I have found in various books & magazines, & elsewhere on the web. If you want to use the ranking scale below, you may use anything to work the puzzles out (calculator, books, etc.), except for puzzle #5, for which a writing instrument & paper are the only things that should be used. The answers can be found on this page. Have fun!
Number Correct Puzzler Rank
0-2 Puzzled
3-4 Dilettante
5-6 Puzzler
7-8 Puzzle Master
9-10 Puzzler Par Excellence
1. You have 8 marbles that weigh 1 ounce each, & 1 marble that weighs 1.5 ounces. You are unable to determine which is the heavier marble by looking at them. You have a weighing scale that consists of 2 pans, but the scale is only good for 2 total weighings. How can you determine which marble is the heaviest 1 using the scale, & in 2 weighings?
2. A group of 4 people, Andy, Brenda, Carl, & Dana, arrive in a car near a friend's house, who is having a large party. It is raining heavily, & the group was forced to park around the block from the house because of the lack of available parking spaces due to the large number of people at the party. The group has only 1 umbrella, & agrees to share it by having Andy, the fastest, walk with each person into the house, & then return each time. It takes Andy 1 minute to walk each way, 2 minutes for Brenda, 5 minutes for Carl, & 10 minutes for Dana. It thus appears that it will take a total of 19 minutes to get everyone into the house. However, Dana indicates that everyone can get into the house in 17 minutes by a different method. How? The individuals must use the umbrella to get to & from the house, & only 2 people can go at a time (& no funny stuff like riding on someone's back, throwing the umbrella, etc.).
3. You are in a room with 2 doors leading out. Behind 1 door is a coffer overflowing with jewels & gold, along with an exit. Behind the other door is an enormous, hungry lion that will pounce on anyone opening the door. You do not know which door leads to the treasure & exit, & which door leads to the lion. In the room you are in are 2 individuals. The first is a knight, who always tells the truth, & a knave, who always lies (I got these names from a book by Puzzler Par Excellence Raymond Smullyan). Both of these individuals know what is behind each door. You do not know which individual is the knight, or which one is the knave. You may ask 1 of the individuals exactly 1 question. What should you ask in order to be certain that you will open the door with the coffer behind it, instead of the hungry lion?
4. You & I come across 3 people, & each 1 is a knight, knave, or normal (normals sometimes tell the truth, & sometimes lie). Exactly 1 of them is a knight, 1 of them is a knave, & the other 1 is a normal. They make the following statements:
A. I love cats.
B. C always tells the truth.
C. A hates cats.
If I bet you $20 that you could not correctly identify which 1 of these people is a knight, which 'horse' would you be wisest to bet on?
5. Four individuals made the following statements, & each 1 is a knight or a knave. Which ones are knaves, if any?
A. Hydroponics is a science that deals with fisheries.
B. D always tells the truth.
C. The primary colors in the spectrum are red, yellow, & blue.
D. C always tells the truth.
6. If you added together the number of 2's in each of the following sets of numbers, which set would contain the most 2's: 1-333, 334-666, or 667-999?
7. You have 3 baskets, & each 1 contains exactly 4 balls, each of which is of the same size. Each ball is either red, black, white, or purple, & there is 1 of each color in each basket. If you were blindfolded, & lightly shook each basket so that the balls would be randomly distributed, & then took 1 ball from each basket, what chance is there that you would have exactly 2 red balls, and 1 non-red ball?
8. 8 kips & 14 ligs can build 510 tors in 10 hours, & 13 kips & 6 ligs can build 492 tors in 12 hours. At what rates do kips & ligs build tors? Express your answers in tors per hour.
9. If a juggler juggles 4 objects, how many total throws must he or she make before the objects are returned to their original positions (i.e. the original 2 objects in each hand)? The juggler starts out with 2 objects in each hand, & throws 1 object from 1 hand, then another object from the second hand, then the remaining object from the first hand, & so on. Except for the first throw for each hand, there is a moment where the throwing hand no longer holds anything after each throw. You may wish to draw a diagram for this one.
10. I am a 12 letter word.
A. My 2, 9, 10, 11, 12, 8 is a word that means the same as the word that is the name of a very well known search engine.
B. My 7, 5, 6, 4 is a famous philosopher.
C. My 10, 11, 3, 1, 8 is the snow leopard of Asia.
What am I?
ANSWERS
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