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Baffler
Baffler Questions
| Question | Answer |
|---|---|
| CHANGING THE BASE: An isoceles triangle has a 10-inch base and two 13-inch sides. What other value can the base have and still yield a triangle with the same area? | 24-24-10 |
| A SPHERE-PACKING PROBLEM: A man packing 1-inch spheres into a rectangular tray fills the tray in a single layer with no slack. Then fits in one more sphere with a different arrangement and another for the third arrangement. What is the size of the tray? | 8 inches x 6 inches |
| THE CLOCKWATCHERS: A clock hangs on the wall that is 71 ft 9 in long and 10 ft 4 in high. Then noticed that the hands of the clock were pointing in opposite directions and were parallel to one of the diagonals of the wall. What was the exact time? | Answer Key: 2:43 (7/11) When Solved: 2:43 (3/11) |
| A PLETHORA OF CIRCLES: A circle of radius 1 inch is inscribed in an equilateral triangle. A smaller circle is inscribed at each vertex, tangent to the circle and to two sides of the triangle. What is the sum of the circumference of all the circles? | 5π |
| PIE FIELD: A farmer has a field with 2261 yds on all sides. 1898 yds from one corner and 1009 yds from an adjacent corner. A neighbor wants to buy a triangular part of the field with fence. How much space did the neighbor get, and how long was the fence? | 2018 yards |
| A CURIOUS SPHERE: The arca and volume of a certain sphere are both four-digit integers times r. What is the radius of the sphere? | radius = 18 |
| A POLYHEDRON PROBLEM: The faces of a solid figure are all triangles. The figure has nine vertices. At each of six of these vertices, four faces meet, and at each of the other three vertices, six faces meet. How many faces does the figure have? | 14 faces |
| ATOM SMASHER: A new kind of atom smasher is to be composed of two tangents and a circular arc which is concave toward the point of intersection of the two tangents. Each tangent and the arc of the circle is 1 mile long. What is the radius of the circle? | 1437.45 feet |
| THE BRIDGES: A divided highway goes under a number of bridges, the arch over each lane being in the form of a semi-ellipse with the height equal to the width. A truck is 6 feet wide and 12 feet high. What is the lowest bridge under which it can pass? | 13 feet 5 inches |
| VERY SIMILAR TRIANGLES: Two similar triangles with integral sides have two of their sides the same. The third sides differ by 387. What are the lengths of the sides? | 512-320-200 320-200-125 |
| TWO MEN ON A HORSE: Luke and Slim have only one horse between them. Luke rides a certain time and then ties up the horse for Slim, who has been walking. If they walk 4 miles per hour and ride 12 miles per hour, what part of the time is the horse resting? | 12 miles per hour rests half the time |
| A DECREASING RATIO John was three times as old as his sister 2 years ago and five times as old 2 years before that. In how many years will the ratio be 2 to 1? | John = 16 Sister = 6 2 years ratio |
| AN INFINITE OF TWOS: Assuming that the expression √(2+√(2+√(2+….)) ) converges to infinite limit, evaluate it. | 2 |
| SENIOR PROM: Tickets for the senior prom were $1.00 for boys and 65 cents for girls. The percentage of boys who didn't go was twice the percentage of girls who didn't go. If this enrollment is between 60 and 100, what's the total attendance at the prom? | 26 boys 20 girls |
| A MATTER OF GREAT INTEREST: Obviously the smaller the compounding period, the greater the interest. How much does one dollar amount to after one year at 100 per cent per annum interest, compounded continuously, i.e., instantaneously? | $2.71 |
| LEGACY: Ram Singh left 3465 gold pcs to be evenly divided to his children. Each wife had 8 children less than the wives per harem, 4 more than the number of harems and 4 less than the gold pcs each child received. How many children did Ram Singh have? | 231 children |
| A STOCKMARKET: A year ago the price of United stock was 3/4 the price of its competitor which now sells at exactly 1/5 point below its price last year, but United has declined with only 2/3 the price of Jessurs now. What are the two currently selling at? | United = 70.25 Jessurs = 108.375 |
| BRICKS: One of the contractor's two bricklayers would take 9 hrs to build a wall and the other 10 hrs. But 10 fewer bricks got laid per hour. So he put both men on the job and found it took exactly 5 hrs to build the wall. How many bricks did it contain? | 900 bricks |
| THE OPTIMAL SALARY: Citizens of Franistan pay as much income tax (percentage-wise) as they make rupees per week. What is the optimal salary in Franistan? | 50 rupees |
| THE COMPETING AIRLINES: There are nine cities which are served by two competing airlines. One or the other airline has a flight between every pair of cities. What is the minimum number of possible triangular flights? | 12 triangles |
| TIES: A railroad buys ties for $11 apiece lasting for 10 yrs and have a scrap value of $1 apiece. Preservative treatment costs $3 a tie that will last 15 yrs without scrap value. If the railroad makes 5 per cent on its capital, should it treat the ties? | $26.90 without treating the ties |
| THREE GENERATIONS: When I am as old as my father is now, I shall be five times as old as my son is now. By then my son will be eight years older than I am now. Then combined ages of my father and myself are 100 years. How old is my son? | Father = 65 Myself = 35 My son is 13 years old |
| RIDDLE: Between 2 towns. I met a friend, John Brown, 7 daughters, riding nags, everyone had seven bags, In every bag were 30 cats, every cat had 40 rats, Besides a brood of 50 kittens, All but the nags & bags wore mittens! How many met between the towns? | 764, 488 |
| A LIFETIME TASK: One of the largest known primes is 2^3217 - 1. Assume that it requires a human being a year to calculate each digit of this number. Who, if anyone, would have been capable of completing the job? | 3217log2 = 969 |
| A CLOSE RACE: Two hot rodders compete in a drag race. Each accelerates at a uniform rate from a standing start. Al covers the last quarter of the distance in 3 seconds; Bob covers the last third in 4 seconds. Who won? | Bob wins |
| AN AGE PROBLEM: Lottie and Lucy Hill are both 90 years old. Mary Jones, on the other hand, is half again as old as she was when she was half again as old as she was when she lacked 5 years of being half as old as she is now. How old is Mary? | Mary was 90 years old |
| VARIATIONS ON THE COLOR: Using the French Tricolor as a model, how many flags are possible with five available colors if two adjacent stripes must not be colored the same? | 50 flags |
| ANOTHER AGE PROBLEM: A's age equals B's age plus the cube root of C's age. B's age equals C's age plus the cube root of A's age, plus 14 years. C's age equals the cube root of A's age plus the square root of B's age. What is the age of each? | A = 27 years B = 25 years C = 8 years |
| AN INFINITE PRODUCT: For |x|<1 evaluate the infinite product: (1+x+x^2+...+x^9) (1+x^10+x^20+...+x^90) (1+x^100+x^200+...+x^900) (...) | ∑_0^∞▒x^r = 1/(1-x) |
| THE AGES OF MAN: A man passed 1/6 of his life in childhood, 1/12 in youth, and 1/7 more as a bachelor. Five years after his marriage, a son was born who died four years before his father at half his father's final age. What was the man's final age? | 84 years old |
| ENGINEER: We saw an engineer digging a hole and asked how deep is it. He said his height is exactly 5 ft 10 in. So we inquired how deeper is he going? "I'm 1/3 done but when its finished it'll be 2x far below ground". How deep is the hole when finished? | 10 feet 6 inches |
| WATCH: Dr. Reed, arriving late at lab one morning, pulled out his watch and said, "I must have it seen to. I've noticed that the minute and the hour hand are exactly together every 65 minutes." Does Dr. Reed's watch gain or lose, and how much per hour? | 25 seconds |
| THE TRAIN: Two men are walking toward each other near a railway. A train overtakes one of them in 20 secs and after 10 mins it meets the other man coming. The train passes the man in 18 secs. How long will the two men meet after it passed the second man? | 1 hour 32 minutes 42 seconds |
| ESCALATOR: A physicist who always hurry, walks up an upgoing escalator with one step per second. Twenty steps bring him to the top. Next day he goes up at two steps per second, reaching the top in 32 steps. How many steps are there in the escalator? | 80 steps |
| THE MOTORISTS: Two motorists drive the same route but travelled different going from A to B for 100 miles. After driving for 2 hrs, the distance of the slower car from A was 5x faster than a faster car from B. How fast did the two motorists drive? | 42 miles per hour 40 miles per hour |
| BEAUTY: A contest winner had a 36, 23, 34 figure. 2 runners-up differed by less than an inch from the winner, each waist was 2/3 the hips of the other. If the measurement's sum was the same for all 3 girls, what is the vital stats of the 2 runners-up? | 36-22, 5-35, 5 36, 25-23-33, 75 |
| A LADDER PROBLEM: A cubic box with 1-foot edges is placed flat against a wall. A ladder √15 feet long is placed in such a way that it touches the wall as well as the free horizontal edge of the box. Find at what height the ladder touches the wall. | 3.62 feet 1.38 feet |
| A EQUATION: The algebra teacher wrote on the blackboard a quadratic equation of the form x^2-Ax+B=0. Upon copying a careless student transposed the two digits of B including the + and - signs. However, one of the roots was the same. What was the root? | 3 |
Created by:
johneilfeca
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