QUICK WITS REQUIRED

New Zealand Listener, Volume 3, Issue 53, 28 June 1940, Page 16

QUICK WITS REQUIRED

i [ Ps of the material on The Page this week is intended for the quick-witted. Ponderous mathematics have been’ rélegated to their proper place, and puzzlers are given an opportunity to lighten! the dark days by counting the pages of books, entering into friendly comipetition with matches, shifting a knight around a chess board, chopping up’ chains, and numbering the houses in a street. These small things, it is hoped: will assist to displace the gloom-bug,, with the cheergerm, : ea: Talking of germs,,your PP. has lately been doing battle with) a different kind of problem, and herewith apologises for letting puzzlers déwh last week. Instead of the usual meritalfever he caught one in the throat. ANSWERS (Refer to issue of June 7) In the Taxi: No punctuation was really mecessary, except that a comma might have been inserted after the first use of the word "walk." The comma in the sentenceas printed, after the first use of the word)" taxi," was inserted by our printers, and is hereby disowned, together with the stray headlines " variations on 142857." Palindrome: Only one response has been received to Four Feather’s suggestion that readers make up palindromes after the style of Napoleon’s "Able was I ere I saw Elba." E.MS. (Wellington) gives us this one for Hitler: "EVIL I WON-NOW I LIVE." Condensed crossword (Answer to problem in issue of June 14): WISP IDEA SEAL 3 PALE _ Cipher: The clue to the cipher was the word MAFEKING. To work out the cipher you simply wrote the letters in the word "mafeking" in alphabetical order under the letters of the cipher. Thus: ETNEAROG aefgikmn Then you wrote (we hope) the letters f the cipher in the order which would ting the letters of the clue into the Proper sequences for " mafeking." Thus: OENTRAGE ; mafeking : * Obviously. OENTRAGE did not make very much sense, but then, having passed from "one good deed every day" to Boy Scouts, and thus to Baden-Powell, and thus to Mafeking, you remembered the words of the old motto "try, try again," and went through the same performance with OENTRAGE. Thus: ‘ OENTRAGE: aefgikmn _ Transposition to make " mafeking" out of "aefgikmn" gave the letters GONEARET, which was the beginning of the answer, which was: , GONEARETHEDAYSWHENMY HEARTWAS YOUNGANDGAY The dash, of course, simply filled in the gap created by the fact that there was one letter short of a multiple of the eight in the clue 3 |

PROBLEMS House Numbers In Victoria Street the houses were numbered 1, 2, 3 consecutively down one side and up the other. The Borough Council decided to re-number the houses, putting even numbers on one side and odd numbers on the other, in the modern style. Number one now became number 2. House number 155 was the only one which retained the same number as before. How many houses were there in the street?-(Problem from R.G., Waihi, who asks us to tell readers that no laborious calculations are required for this). The Book Mr. Jones was reading a book with between 200 and 300 pages when he was interrupted by a visitor, When he was able to settle down again with his book his mathematical mind noticed that the sum of all the numbers on the pages up to and including the page he had just read, equalled the sum of all the remaining unread pages. How many pages were there in the book and at what page did he stop?-(Problem from R.G.). Cipher Our cipher this week comes from P.J.Q. (Motueka). He tells the story of a young lady who wanted her sweetheart to write to her in code. He wrote this to her: UAOBUTIOUNEOUOINNVIVU IFURCRESYTHNINOULMITOOIOUSO It should be stated that this "cipher" does not require a key but can be solved visually. With the Chess Board Although this problem required a chess board, F. D. Blackburn who sends it from Riccarton, points out that anyone with the necessary material can work it out, with profit and amusement. The knight, he says, has a queer move in chess, It moves one square diagonally plus one vertically or horizontally. Thus it always changes from black to white or from white to black with every move. F.D.B. places a knight in the top lefthand corner square and asks puzzlers to move it over the 64 squares. touching each square once only. Although puzzlers in general are absolved from this extra task, F.D.B. suggests that the upper hundred and ten could probably occupy themselves finding out how many different methods there are of moving the knight in this manner. Puzzlers who do not possess a chess board can easily try their hands at the puzzle by drawing a facsimile. Chess boards have 64 squares, eight along each side. The top left-hand square is white and from it each alternate square is black. Toss-up What are the chances that a coin will land heads exactly five times in ten tosses? (Problem from H.G.L.) The Chain A farmer went to a blacksmith with five pieces of chain, each of three links. He asked the smith to join them to form one chain. The smith agreed. He

charged, he said, 1d for cutting and 2d for welding. There would need to be four cuts and four weldings, so the cost of the job would be 6d. The farmer demurred, and explained how the job could be done for 442d. How was this?-(Problem from Jack May, Taupo).