CORRESPONDENCE

New Zealand Listener, Volume 2, Issue 47, 17 May 1940, Page 16

CORRESPONDENCE

L.S.D.: Married them off very neatly. Johnno (Auckland): Earned his pint, L.C.T.: Crosswords get the vote. Many thanks for your interest. L. Hayston (New Brighton): Still in doubt about knowledge tests. The voting is even. Thanks for your help. G. Tisbury (Invercargill): Says the Ohms and the marriages had him mixed between currents and cakes. L.H.M. (Hastings): Correctly answered several. P.J.Q. (Motueka): As usual, this staunch puzzler tries them all. He has another answer to Pond. One plank he puts into the water with one end resting on the edge, and the other on-the bottom. From this he stretches the other to the island. J. Ensor (Hastings): Thanks, but you are wrong about London. Evacuation has reduced its population below that of rival capitals. It may now be recovering. F.D.B. (Riccarton); Crossword correct. Hope to send that working shortly. Tane: Suggests working out the donkey problems by cutting cardboard to scale and weighing the sections to establish ratios by weight. H. G. Lambert (Taupo): Admits that he made an error in his solution of the second part of his own space ship problem. He now agrees with Tane that the answer should be 11.9136 miles. He asks if J. B. Hogg was serious in proposing his variant of the donkey grazing problem. Since several correspondents have sent answers, we can only assume in our ignorance of Mr. Hogg’s sense of humour that he was serious and, further, that it is a very serious matter that Mr. Lambert should think for a moment he was not. However, a prompt oonty to 8.G.E.’s request about prime numbers ( 1 26), may redeem this fall from grace. H.G. says: "Obviously, every number is not prime, so whenever an odd number is not prime it forms, together with two even numbers, consecutively proceeding and following, a series of three not-prime numbers. So the rule is-Multiply any two odd numbers; the product is the second number of the three consecutive not-prime numbers. Every product gives a different series." S.G.E. shall be left to judge if that is satisfactory. All correspondents who tried to work out the ferry boat oblem please collapse and roll on the floor. .G.L. says no answer is possible, because of an error in his statement of the conditions, By his calculus working on those conditions, the boat could not take longer than 0.3145926536 hours to cross. He repeats his claim that the answer to The Fiy Again is 3.6 inches, and challenges other correspondents who answered five inches. We are asked to adjudicate, and can only point out that the fly started on the OUTside to get to the honey on. the INside,