Brainstorming Puzzles Set 3 – Find The Murderer | Half Empty Container | Red Eyed Monks
Hard work beats talent when talent doesn’t work hard.
– Kevin Durant
Algorithmic thinking is really important as it enhances your thinking skills and can be nurtured with practice. (Refer the previous tutorial to know more about Algorithmic Thinking and try the puzzles before moving on to the solutions.)
Solutions for the previous problems
Puzzle 2.1 Solution – Top 3 Typists
Correct Answer: Seven rounds.
Step 1: Split the typists into groups of 5 since a maximum 5 of them can compete at a time.
Step 2: All typists will compete amongst their group members(accounting for the first 5 rounds lets say A-E) and then will be placed according to their relative positions within those groups.
Step 3: We can eliminate all the people who got 4th and 5th rank in each group as we only need the top 3. Then, there’ll be another round(let’s say F) amongst the first rankers from rounds A-E.
So again we’ll sort them based on their ranks. Their descendants (initial group members from races A-E) will also be placed accordingly.
Step 4: We can eliminate the 4th and 5th typists in round F along with their descendants (initial group members from races A-E) since they are ranked lower than them as we found in races A-E. We are left with 9 members.
Note: The person who secured 1st place will definitely be the fastest typist because he got 1st rank amongst all the first rankers in race F; so we got the 1st position holder amongst all the participants, now we need to find the 2nd and 3rd fastest typist.
Step 5: The descendants of the 3rd in F round can also be eliminated since their minimum possible rank could be 4 and 5 respectively and same goes for the second descendant of the 2nd position holder in round F.
Step 6: Now we are left with only 5 people so we’ll have a competition among them to find the other two typists required.
Hence we found the top three typists among all the participants in 7 rounds.
Puzzle 2.2 Solution – Find The Best Arrangement
Correct Answer: Six rows. The arrangement is like this
Justification: The first three rows will be the sides of the equilateral triangle and the other three will be passing through the center of the triangle.
Puzzle 2.3 Solution – Win with Equal Heads
Correct Answer: Take any 10 coins from the set and flip them.
Explanation:
Scenario 1 – If one group of coins has all heads side up and the other group has all tails side up; after flipping the second group, all the coins will be heads side up.
Now for scenario 2, when there are 9 coins with heads side up in the first group, there’ll be only coin heads side up remaining in the second group. So, after flipping the coins in the second group, 9 coins will be heads side up in group 2.
The same goes for cases when we have 8,7…0 heads side up in the first group.
After flipping coins in the second group, the number of coins with heads side up in both the groups will be same.
Solving these puzzles is fun, isn’t it? So, wear your logic caps and get ready for your next brain workout:
Quiz 3.1 – Find The Murderer
You are the Special Investigation Agent(SIA) for a murder case. You have three suspects Ganpat, Shyam and Vasu. You have received information that only one of them speaks the truth and that the other two are liars but you don’t know who is who. The three suspects say the following statements.
Ganpat: I’m innocent.
Shyam: I’m innocent.
Vasu: Shyam is guilty.
Find out the murderer and post your solution in the comment’s section; after all, your reputation as an SIA is at stake.
Solution Added – Solution of Find the Murderer Puzzle
Quiz 3.2 – Half Empty Container
You are given a transparent cylindrical glass container with some water in it. You have to find out whether the container is half empty, more than or less than that without using any rulers, markers or other utensils.
Now just think about it and post your answer in the comments. I’ll explain this in the next tutorial.
Solution Added – Solution of Half Empty Container Puzzle
Quiz 3.3 – Red Eyed Monks
There are hundred silent monks in a monastery with no mirrors in it. They have either red or blue eyes. If a monk discovers that he has red eyes he must leave that night.
They all know that there is at least one monk with red eyes. What happens next?
Just think about the various scenarios about how the monks will get to know their eye color and on what day would they leave and post your answer in the comments.
Solution Added – Solution of Red Eyed Monks
So start thinking and comment answer to the questions asked above and wait for the next post for the solutions.
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Keep Learning. Happy Learning 🙂