Christmas Quiz 2015 - Answers

How did you get on with yesterday’s quiz? As promised, here are the answers for you :-)

Have a wonderful Christmas everyone. We're going to take a well deserved break over Christmas and we'll back in early January 2016.

All the best,

James

Good Luck!  

Q1: A horse is tied to a 15-metre rope. There’s a pile of hay 25 metres away. Yet the horse can eat the hay. How?

A1: The other end of the rope isn’t tied to anything. So the horse simply walks to the hay, dragging the rope behind him


Q2: What has four (or sometimes five) hands, is perfectly normal, and is nothing to do with horses? 

A2: A man wearing a watch. The hands are his left, his right, and the watch’s two hands (plus – if there is one – the watch’s seconds hand)


Q3: You have twelve marbles and three bags. There are three ways you can place all the marbles into the three bags, such that each bag contains the same number of marbles. One way is to put four marbles in each bag. What are the other two ways?

A3.1: Put twelve marbles in Bag #1, then put this full #1 into Bag #2, which you then put into #3. That way, each bag contains twelve marbles.

A3.2: Put six marbles in #1 and six in #2. Then put #2 into #3. So, each bag contains six marbles.


Q4: A man suddenly decides to quit his job. So he turns off the lights and goes to bed. As a direct result of this, 200 people die. Why?

A4: He owns a lighthouse. Turning off the light meant a passing ship crashed onto the rocks, killing its passengers


Q5: Two friends – Mr Tall and Mr Short – live together. They want to put a spare key near their house, in case they get locked out. They decide to hide one on top of the back doorframe. 

Unfortunately, neither man is tall enough to reach the top of the doorframe on his own, so neither can reach the key! Their only option is for Mr Tall to stand on Mr Short’s shoulders so he can reach it.

But why’s that their only option? Why doesn’t Short stand on Tall, since their combined heights are the same either way? 

A5: Because Mr Tall has longer arms. Mr Short’s short arms aren’t long enough to reach the top of the door


Q6: How can you cut a round cake into eight equal pieces, using only three cuts? In fact, can you find two ways to do it?

A6.1: Use two cuts to divide the cake into quarters. For the third cut, cut the cake in half horizontally.

A6.2: Use two cuts to divide the cake into quarters. Then, stack these four quarters on top of each other and use the third cut to halve all four.


Q7: A man orders a coffee in a restaurant. But he sees it has a fly in it. He asks the waitress to change his coffee for a fresh one. She takes it back to the kitchen. 

She reappears, bringing him a new, hot coffee in a different cup, saying ‘Here you are, sir. I’ve made you a fresh cup’. But, after taking one sip, he says ‘this is my old drink. You’ve just poured it into a new cup’

And he’s right. How did he know?

A7: Because he’d put sugar in his first cup. The new coffee tasted sweet, which it wouldn’t do if it was freshly poured from the pot.

Q8: Ten teenagers are discussing their part-time jobs. They want to know the average hourly wage, but they don’t feel comfortable disclosing how much money they each make. Using only a calculator, how can they calculate the average pay whilst keeping their individual wages secret?

A8: The first teenager enters a fictitious wage in the calculator, hiding the number from everyone else. He uses a number that’s memorable to him since he’ll need to know it later.  

He passes the calculator to the second teenager, who adds his true rate to the fictitious one, and then passes the calculator – showing only the total of the two wages - to the third. The third adds on his rate, and passes it to the fourth. This continues, with each adding his rate but not letting anyone else see what they input. When the calculator gets back to the first teenager, he deducts the fictitious rate and adds his real one. He then divides this total by ten to work out the average.

Happy Christmas!

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