快猫短视频

#208 Flower power

Set by Howard Williams

Ivor Plant is the head gardener of Lady Bird鈥檚 estate. Her large chrysanthemum garden needs to be weeded and pruned, so he assigns his two apprentices, Lupin and Heath, to the rather tedious task. The garden consists of a central 4-metre-sided square (pink) inscribed in a circle, and four outer areas (blue) enclosed in semicircles that are connected to the square鈥檚 corners.

鈥淚f you give me two of your chocolate biscuits, I will let you pick whichever area you want to weed: the outside or the inside,鈥� says Heath to Lupin. Always eager to get out of extra work whenever possible, Lupin agrees. If he is looking to weed the smaller of the two areas, should he choose the blue or the pink section?

Solution next week

#207 Total recall

Solution

The extraterrestrial beings are aged 3, 10, 11 and 40.

Call the four ages a, b, c and d. Each age has been added three times, so 24 + 53 + 54 + 61 is equal to 3(a + b + c + d), hence the ages add up to 64 all together.

We know that the smallest three add up to 24 and the largest three to 61, so the largest number must be 37 more than the smallest.

We can also see that, since the middle two combinations are 53 and 54, the middle two ages must differ by 1.

From here, the solution can be found quickly.