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(Puzzles) Challenging Mathematical Puzzles (2)

Puzzles : Challenging Mathematical Puzzles

3. If you take a marker & start from a corner on a cube, what is the maximum number of edges you can trace across if you never trace across the same edge twice, never remove the marker from the cube, & never trace anywhere on the cube, except for the corners & edges?

Answer 9

To verify this, you can make a drawing of a cube, & number each of its 12 edges. Then, always starting from 1 corner & 1 edge, you can determine all of the possible combinations for tracing along the edges of a cube.

There is no need to start from other corners or edges of the cube, as you will only be repeating the same combinations. The process is a little more involved than this, but is useful for solving many types of spatial puzzles.

 

4. One of Mr. Bajaj, his wife, their son and Mr. Bajaj's mother is an Engineer and another is a Doctor.

  • If the Doctor is a male, then the Engineer is a male.
  • If the Engineer is younger than the Doctor, then the Engineer and the Doctor are not blood relatives.
  • If the Engineer is a female, then she and the Doctor are blood relatives.

Can you tell who is the Doctor and the Engineer?

Answer : Mr. Bajaj is the Engineer and either his wife or his son is the Doctor.

Mr. Bajaj's wife and mother are not blood relatives. So from 3, if the Engineer is a female, the Doctor is a male. But from 1, if the Doctor is a male, then the Engineer is a male. Thus, there is a contradiction, if the Engineer is a female. Hence, either Mr. Bajaj or his son is the Engineer.

Mr. Bajaj's son is the youngest of all four and is blood relative of each of them. So from 2, Mr. Bajaj's son is not the Engineer. Hence, Mr. Bajaj is the Engineer.

Now from 2, Mr. Bajaj's mother can not be the Doctor. So the Doctor is either his wife or his son . It is not possible to determine anything further.

 

5. Three men - Sam, Cam and Laurie - are married to Carrie, Billy and Tina, but not necessarily in the same order.
Sam's wife and Billy's Husband play Carrie and Tina's husband at bridge. No wife partners her husband and Cam does not play bridge.
Who is married to Cam?

Answer : Carrie is married to Cam.
"Sam's wife and Billy's Husband play Carrie and Tina's husband at bridge."
It means that Sam is not married to either Billy or Carrie. Thus, Sam is married to Tina.
As Cam does not play bridge, Billy's husband must be Laurie.
Hence, Carrie is married to Cam.

 

6. There are 3 persons X, Y and Z. On some day, X lent tractors to Y and Z as many as they had. After a month Y gave as many tractors to X and Z as many as they have. After a month Z did the same thing. At the end of this transaction each one of them had 24.
Find the tractors each originally had?

Answer : One way to solve it is by making 3 equations and solve them simultaneously. But there is rather easier way to solve it using Back tracing.

It's given that at the end, each had 24 tractors (24, 24, 24) i.e. after Z gave tractors to X & Y as many as they had. It means that after getting tractors from Z their tractors got doubled. So before Z gave them tractors, they had 12 tractors each and Z had 48 tractors. (12, 12, 48)

Similarly, before Y gave tractors to X & Z, they had 6 & 24 tractors respectively and Y had 42 tractors i.e. (6, 42, 24)

Again, before X gave tractors to Y & Z, they had 21 & 12 tractors respectively and X had 39 tractors i.e. (39, 21, 12)

Hence, initially X had 39 tractors, Y had 21 tractors and Z had 12 tractors.

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