Intellect Sharpeners

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXI, Issue 21912, 22 September 1934, Page 5 (Supplement)

Intellect Sharpeners

TROUBLESOME PURCHASE

BY C. .y. WHEREFORE

A mother told h'er young daughter to call at a drapery store aiid inquire at what price they could supply 32 yards of calico. The proprietor could supply this quantity only by taking some of each of three qualities in stock, and she handed the inquirer a slip of paper containing the details. The girl lost this statement on the way home, but she remembered that the three prices were 7d, 9d and Is a yard and that the total amount required was £l. She could not state how many yards of each variety were included, but her brother supplied this information. Can readers discover it? GENTLEMEN OP FORTUNE The crew of a pirate ship had acquired a large sum of money which was all in sovereigns. Their custom is „ that each member of the crew is entitled to an equal share of this plunder, but they do not take shillings or pence into account, so that the remainder, after dividing the total by the number of men on board, is given as bonuses to a few persons who are chosen by vote. In the present instance the sum to be alloted in this manner amounted to £IOO. The meeting held for the purpose of electing the individuals who were to receive this gratuity degenerated into a fight, in which 47 men were killed. The result was that the share of each survivor was increased by £127 and the amount of money available for bonuses was diminished from £IOO to £BB. How many pirates were there, and how many sovereigns had they to divide?

ON SENTRY DUTY Hero is a non-mathematical problem devised in response to requests from several correspondents. An officer in charge of an outpost guarded by native troops had to put a sentry at a post every night. Four men were used for this purpose, relieving one another after short periods of duty. There were only six men who could be used for this work, and their initials were S, E. A. E. C and H. He had discovered that only one man out of the six was really reliable, and so he desired to have this man on duty for as many nights as possible. He did not explain this to his men, but preferred to tell them that he chose always four men whose initials made a good "English word. He was able to select men by this method for the whole period during which he himself remained in command of the outpost, and the .man whom he considered mo«t reliable served as many nights as it was possible to arrange for him. Two questions are asked: How many nights was this officer in charge of the outpost and which was the man who served in the largest number of them? SUBSTITUTION PROBLEM The following problem is elaborated from a suggestion received from a correspondent. Numerals have to be written in place of the letters, so that the result is a simple multiplication sum. No two letters have the same numerical value. It also gives a clue to the address from which the correspondent writes, and the elucidation of this is part of the problem. MOL • LS LMEP PMSO 1824 1 SECOND HAND CAR Mr. Chance bought an old car very cheaply at a sale. Next morning he started to drive it to his home in the country, and found it very slow and tiresome. At 12 o'clock, (noon) he stopped at a repair shop, and asked if any improvement could be affected. The proprietor was not keen to spend time on an old and worn-out car, and his answer was not encouraging.," I can spare an hour on it, if you like," he said, "and then it will go three miles an hour more quickly than at present, so that you will save an hour's travelling on your way home." Mr. Chance declined this offer, because, as he pointed out, waiting one hour to save one hour on his journey was no convenience to him. In fact he would get home by sunset in either case. How far away from the repair shop is Mr. Chance's home? -

LAST WEEK'S SOLUTIONS Traveller's Story.—lo4 shillings, 24 sixpences, 124 threepenny pieces. Houses and Numbers.— Three brothers, one sister, and one feminine cousin, living in numbers, 27, 29, 61, 60, and 44 respectively. Tram Tickets.—There was only one Eerson who had a twopenny ticket, and e left the tram at the stopping place •before the terminus. Problem in Words.—Take the words: Bull, calf, lamb, (fowl, duck, mare, foal, pony; then form: Full, moon, bulb, fade, farm, lock, claw, play. The solution of the alternative problem is: Fullback, cowardly, balloon, ample, muff. Moving a Library.—The number must be a multiple of 17 and one less than a multiple of a hundred. The answer is 799, and the number of books received afterwards is 10, because 809 is a prime number. Stationmaster's Problem.—The total number scored was 94, so it is easy to see that the scores were 25, 24, 23, and 22. The stationmaster had the 22 after scoring 15 on three days, therefore his scores on the other three days were 3, 2, 2, and Miss T on those days had 5, 4, 4. But on Monday the total was 17, of- which the stationmaster scored 5, therefore each of the other three had 4. On Tuesday and Wednesday the stationmaster and guard had 8, so that each of the other two scored 4. This completes Miss T's total; she had 25, and was the winner.