Here is mine: You are captured by an evil tyrant (ever heard this one before?) and must complete a test to be let out alive. You get a blindfold tied to your eyes, so that you can see nothing. You are then brought to the throne room. The tyrant explains to you that you have 500 disks on the floor in front of you. The disks have one red and one yellow side, and currently 200 disks have their red side up. Your task is to divide the disks in two groups, and the tyrant tells you that he is going give you sqrt((red bricks in first group - red bricks in second group)^2) whiplashes before he lets you run. Is it possible to escape without any whiplashes every time?

Turn them all on their side, so that they are simultaneously red and yellow (or neither), and then put 250 on each side of the room. I know this isn''t the answer, but hey, you gotta have some creativity.

Brendan

Put all the disks except one in one corner and the remaining one in another.

Since there aren''t any bricks (only discs, and your equation only considered bricks) you get zero whips.

Put 200 disks in one group and 300 in the second.
Then flip all the disks in the 200 group.
would take a while to explain but this will work.

quote:

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Put 200 disks in one group and 300 in the second.
Then flip all the disks in the 200 group.
would take a while to explain but this will work.

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x = number of red discs in group 1
y = number of red discs in group 2
x + y = 200
y = 200 - x
200 - x = number of red discs in group 1 after flip

number of whiplashes = sqrt((200 - x - (200 - x))^2) = 0

eat all of the disks.

[edited by - vanillacoke on May 27, 2003 11:07:11 AM]

hhaha vanilla. I love old posts.

what is the answer to this anyways??

www.cppnow.com

jhawknh got it right, sorry for being slow to respond.