ANSWERS TO CORRESPONDENTS.

Evening Post, Volume CXV, Issue 35, 11 February 1933, Page 7

ANSWERS TO CORRESPONDENTS.

"Taken Down" (K.irorl).—P.B., £1 2s first Btnrt, £20 second start; S.G., 13s; and L.8., £2. "Desert Gold."—Desert Gold, up till the February of her three-year-old career, had slartcd 21 times, and had been beaten seven times, all her defeats having been as a two-year-old, ,

they may be readily answered correctly : from the armchair without, of course, i tho aid of either pen or pencil. ] DOUBLING THE STAKES. J.O.L. sends tho following problem ! concerning a series of games played be- ' tween two persons in competition. They ' played six "rounds" altogether,, and ' after tho fourth game the record was ' two wing each, so for tho two final games they agreed to double the stakes, making the points sixpence each in- ] stead of threepence, as was tho case in the first four games. As a result , of the fifth contest "X" won from "V" ] a sum equivalent to forty points, but in the next game, the last of tho series, " the latter won from his rival two-thirds of the money that "X" then had which, . of course, included the pound that he won from "V" in the fifth round. They both commenced with similar sums of ; money and played for level stakes, and the question is that if at the end of tho sixth game when a complete settlement was made between the players under the terms stated, "V" had exactly four times more money than his opponent, how much did they start with? The reader will note that this little question is purely one to be correctly answered from the armchair, though the sender of the problem has not expressly made it a condition. EVERY FIGURE DELETED. Some little time ago a "restoration" problem was published in this column from which every figure of the sum (long division) was deleted, and a correspondent, "Bex," has sent one of the same kind by Mr. A. O. Corrigan which the sender discovered in an old magazine, but not the solution. It is an excellent example which should provide the reader with an opportunity of exercising his reasoning faculties, for the complete sum can be reconstructed by logical deduction. The. would-be solver of this interesting puzzle will not fail to take advantage of what seems to be the kernel of the problem—namely, the four places of decimals in the answer, though unlike the quotient in the previous problem of the kind it is not a repeating decimal. Without this decimal in the_ answer of the present puzzle, a solution by deductive reasoning would bo very difficult to arrive at. Tho divisor contains three figures, the dividend six, and the quotient is a whole number of four figures with a similar number in the decimal part, tho sum having no remainder. Further clues that should not ■ makg the restoration too obvious are that there are fivo lines of multiplication necessary, two figures must be brought down in the first subtraction line, and that two of the ten digits and cipher are ■"conspicuous by their absence" from both the sums and working. I hope that Mr. Corrigan, the author of this excellent puzzle, will not consider that theso clues give an' undue advantage to the solver. Without them the puzzle would be extremely difficult. LAST WEEK'S SOLUTIONS. The Chairman's Casting Vote. 72 people present^ the first count beins 40 and 32. Off the Beaten Track.—The respective equivalents of "X". and "V" are eleven and four, so that he was born in 1892 and died in 1932. Four Candidates. —The numbers of votes for the four candidates respectively, were 2100, 1750, 1400, ana 1050, a total of 6300, excluding informal votes. ' A Simple Poser. —The balance at credit of the five accounts•concernedi were: No. 1, £1500; No. 2, £2250;

No. 3, £3000; No. 4, £3750; and No. 5, £4500, the respective fractional parts being £750 in each instance.

An Alphabetical Sum.—The only two letters used besides those stated in the sum are "H." and "Z,"-, whose numerical equivalents are 2 and 0 respectively, the other letters "A," "T," "F," "1,," "E," and "O" being, in the order written, 3, 5, 1, 9, 7, 6. .;■ ANSWERS TO CORRESPONDENTS. "A.B.C."—See issue of 24th! December last.

"Zeno."—lt.is-on record that observers at military sham-actions have heard the report of a gun before the order to .fire, though the latter was issued first.

R-D. —Problem is by the Rev. E.F.O. and has already appeared.