Did I make a fool of myself

[Uncle Gizmo]

finally he said I have 2 buckets one can hold 3 gallons another holds 5 gallons how do you get the larger one to contain 4 gallons.

Obviously a Bruce Willis fan, I recall one of Bruce Willis's characters had to answer a similar question to stop a bomb going off.

 

[Uncle Gizmo]

Took me awhile,
Fill the 5 gallon container, from the 5 gallon container fill the 3 gallon container, this leaves you with 2 gallons in the 5 gallon container. Empty the 3 gallon container. Tip the 2 gallons from the 5 gallon container into the 3 gallon container. Refill the 5 gallon container, and then tip 1 gallon from the 5 gallon container into the 3 gallon container.

In other words once the 3 gallon container is full (remember it initially contained 2 gallons) your 5 gallon container will be 1 gallon less, in other words will now contained 4 gallons.

 

[DCrake]

The answer to my lift question was that the little old fellow could not reach the button for the 30th floor. But when it was raining he had his umberella with him so he used it to reach the button.

Using thrid party resources I think you call it.

 

[Uncle Gizmo]

The answer to my lift question was that the little old fellow could not reach the button for the 30th floor. But when it was raining he had his umberella with him so he used it to reach the button.

Using thrid party resources I think you call it.

Ah... now I would have never have got the answer to that question, In my book men do not carry umbrellas!

 

[DCrake]

This one takes a bit of lateral thinking:

A man and his wife are fast asleep in bed, the man is having a vivid dream that he has been captured during the French revolution and is about to be beheaded. They march him up to the block and kneel him down and place his head under the blade. Just as they were about to release the blade his wife rolled over in bed and hit him on the back of his neck. The man had a massive heart attach and died instantly.

What is wrong here?

Another one:

BackGround:
Two identical twins, both boys, cannot be seperated in looks, the only difference between them was that one never told a lie whilst the other never told the truth.

Situation:
You bump into one of them at the bus stop and need to know if the bus has gone past lately. The problem is that you can only ask him one question only, then based on his answer you find out if you have missed the bus or not.

Problem:
What do you ask him?


BTW:He is not waiting for a bus.

 

[Brianwarnock]

You ask one what the other would answer, that answer is a lie.

brian

 

[DCrake]

Did you know the answer or did you work it out?

I have found very few people who can fathom that out.

This one is for the people not members of Mensa

A man follows a route identical to an equilateral triangle every day to work. From home to the first bend it takes him one hour and twenty minutes. From this point to the second bend in the road again it takes him one hour and twenty minutes. But from this point to his workplace takes him eighty minutes. Why?

 

[Brianwarnock]

I worked it out.

He works at home.


Brian

 

[DCrake]

It helps if you know what an equilateral triangle looks like

step 1 A - B
step 2 B - C
step 3 C - A

 

[Brianwarnock]

Way back when I was an A level school boy a master told us that
"There is the knowledge, and there is knowledge of the knowledge, and in life you will find that the latter is the more important".

What he was basically saying is that you can only know so much detail, but provided that you know of something you can research it, a bit like learning the index of a book as opposed to every page.

Maybe the interviewer was testing that you had knowledge of the concepts rather than the ability to write the code off the top of your head.

Brian

 

[gemma-the-husky]

Took me awhile,
Fill the 5 gallon container, from the 5 gallon container fill the 3 gallon container, this leaves you with 2 gallons in the 5 gallon container. Empty the 3 gallon container. Tip the 2 gallons from the 5 gallon container into the 3 gallon container. Refill the 5 gallon container, and then tip 1 gallon from the 5 gallon container into the 3 gallon container.

In other words once the 3 gallon container is full (remember it initially contained 2 gallons) your 5 gallon container will be 1 gallon less, in other words will now contained 4 gallons.

similar idea in my post #5 - although yours takes fewer moves - and i think
the original puzzle specified the number of pours you could make.

Not a riddle - but has anyone seen Very Hard Puzzle - a free iTouch app.

Basically you have to completely cover a large circle with 5 smaller discs. Very very hard - its discussed in Martin Gardner's Mathematical Puzzles books - a wonderful source of maths entertainment.

 

[DCrake]

I don't know what he had in mind or what he was hoping to see but I failed miserably.

I suppose its a bit like taking exams, there are techniques to answering the question right. My son once did a maths test at school and was marked down for not showing his workings out. Because he worked the answer out in his head then wrote it down the teacher thought he had been cheating.

Then you get the flip side of this was when I went to college as a mature student in the 80's we had to design a fire drill notice. Don't know why it just came up in the exam. Anyway as we were all seated in a large assembly room about 150 students, all around the room were these signs "In Case of Fire...." well as you can imagine everyone simply copied out the signs. Now the college could not take them down as it would break the fire risk assesment rules. And they could not mark us down for using our innitiative.

 

[DCrake]

Another faux pas that I remember, it ws at the ame college as above. It was my birthday and we had to take our final exam module Travel and Tourismn. The lecturer had gone to the trouble of bringing in an actual travel agent from the local Airtours agency.



The first part of the test was oral. A bit of role play, I was the travel agent he played the customer. I had to find him a holiday destination and do all the necessary paperwork.

I need to point out that I was first to do the oral part as I wanted to go for a pint after.


Now this was early June and he said he wanted to go away in July. Then remembering the booking arangements I askd him if he had the £2k on him there and then as it was less than 10 weeks of the departure date. He said not, So I said I will pu the holiday on hold and if he came back within 48 hours with the cash I would complete the big booking form and secure his holiday.

So that was the end of my oral and I went into another room to do the written part.

Well the next and subsequent students who went in for the oral exam were told "I know it's June but let's pretend it's January..." This meant they all had to fill in the booking form. Not me. Ha Ha.

And I still got an A* for it.

 

[Banana]

This one takes a bit of lateral thinking:

A man and his wife are fast asleep in bed, the man is having a vivid dream that he has been captured during the French revolution and is about to be beheaded. They march him up to the block and kneel him down and place his head under the blade. Just as they were about to release the blade his wife rolled over in bed and hit him on the back of his neck. The man had a massive heart attach and died instantly.

What is wrong here?

I've actually heard a similar form of this and the answer is how would we have known what he was dreaming if he had died immediately? This is a interesting twist because when we hear a story in 3rd person, we attribute omnipresence & omniscience to the narrator but we would react much differently if it was the wife telling the story instead of an unnamed narrator.

 

[DCrake]

Top marks.

What are the next 2 letters in this sequence

O, T, T, F, F, S, S, E, ?, ?

 

[Uncle Gizmo]

top marks.

What are the next 2 letters in this sequence

o, t, t, f, f, s, s, e, ?, ?

e, r, ....?

Please note I used upper case characters but they were automatically changed to lower case? I tried twice as well!

 

[DCrake]

Not right.

But I will tell you the answer and see if you can work out why

N & T

 

[vbaInet]

I was doing some silly calculations until it dawned on me... the first letter of each word, One to Ten? I could be wrong.

 

[Banana]

Gee whiz. Would have never thunk of that one.

Here's one:


Bill stared through the grimy and dreary window on 42th floor. Overcome with depression, he slid the windows open and went through it. It is a great height to the ground and there was nothing to slow down his descent or cushion his landing. Yet, Bill was miraculously unhurt at the ground.

How?

 

[Galaxiom]

Bill is a window cleaner and went into the room. He then walked to the ground.