Riddles

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

I still want to stack the grunts to reach the top to tie the flag on.

[Firemeboy]

LOL.

Classic.

Ok, here is another.

You work at a restaurant as a dish washer.  One night, after closing, your dishwashing buddy puts forward a challenge.  He proposes that each of you will take turns placing clean plates on a table. All of the plates are the same size, they must lie flat on the table, and no plate may overlap another. The first one who is unable to place another plate on the table without it falling off or moving another place must wash the dishes for the next week.

The table is a perfect circle, with a six foot diameter. Each plate is also a perfect circle with a 12 inch diameter.

Your friend says you can choose to go first or second.  What do you choose, and what is your strategy?

[Legion]

you would go first becuase in the challenge it states that "the first one to..." so who ever goes first should win.

[Firemeboy]

What do you mean?  The first one who is unable to place another plate 'loses'.  

[Eric James Stone]

I would go first and place a plate in the center of the table.  From then on, I would place my plates exactly opposite his (i.e., 180 degrees around the table and at the same distance from the center.)

That would mean any place he picked to put a plate would have to have an equivalent spot still open across the table.  If he successfully places a plate, then I will be able to do so.  So he must run out of spots to put a plate before I do.  Therefore, I will win.

That's a pretty neat puzzle, Firemeboy.  I haven't seen it before, and I had to play around with drawing circles withing circles for a while before the flash of insight came.

[Legion]

OK I did not understand what you were talking about I thought that one person would go see how many plates they could put down and then the next person would have to see if they could place more plates then that.  And if they do it that way with you wording it makes it sound like the person who goes first would finish first and therefore be the winner.  Didn't know you ment the do it like you play othello

[Firemeboy]

That is what I've got, EJS.  You can mess with the size of the table, the size of the dishes, and it's all a red herring.  Your flag pole measurements and rope reminded me of it.  

[Eric James Stone]

Hmm.  I've used up all my good brain teasers.

OK, for this one you have to imagine that the lines below are seven toothpicks.

By moving only one toothpick, change the following into a true equation.


\/| = ||


You may not break any of the toothpicks, nor may you use one toothpick to move another.  The final equation should have equal values on both sides of the equals sign, so putting one toothpick diagonally across the two that form the equals sign in order to change it into a "not equals" is not allowed.  

[Legion]

ok, not sure if you have to keep them in roman numerals but if you do this

X I = 11

[Eric James Stone]

A good try.  I forgot to specify that both sides of the equation must be in the same numeric system.

[Legion]

SURRRREEEE making up rules as we go along I see....lol. Ok I will have to give it another shot.

EDIT ok does it have to be roman numerals or can

the absolute vale of 11 (that is 11 with a line over it) be equal to 11?

[Eric James Stone]

It doesn't have to be Roman numerals, but you can't have crooked numbers.

[Legion]

well then I am do not know.  The only other idea I have is to make it

V = 111  but that I think might be using different number systems....where are the smart people to guess on this one?

[Eric James Stone]

You actually got pretty close with that "absolute value of 11" guess.

Not numerically close, but close in terms of the type of thinking that you need to do to solve it.

[Firemeboy]

What about:

V is greater than or equal to 11?

Or are variables not allowed?