Ankur, Author at PuzzlersWorld.com

A dysfunctional family has to cross the river. On one side of the river are a mom and 2 daughters, dad and 2 sons, the maid and the dog. There is a boat only big enough to hold 2 people (counting the dog as 1 person). Only the adults are capable of operating the boat. Everyone has to get to the other side, without anything bad happening.
Now the difficulties are : if the dog is left with anyone and the maid isn’t there to control him, he’ll bite. The dad can’t be left with any of the daughters when the mom isn’t there. Likewise, the mom can’t be trusted alone with either of the sons when the dad isn’t there.
Remember! only an adult can operate the boat, and the boat can’t drive itself.See Solution : River crossing - the harder one

Say
West shore is {W} and East shore is {E}
Lets give the nick names to each family member and dog 😉
Mother – {m}, Father – {F}, Daughters – {d1, d2}, Sons – {s1, s2}
House maid – {h}, Dog – {d}

Initially,
W = {m, d1, d2, f, s1, s2, h, d}
E = {…}

let’s move everyone, over…

housemaid and dog go east, and the housemaid comes back:

W = {m, d1, d2, f, s1, s2, h}
E = {d}

housemaid and s1 go east, h and d come back:

W = {m, d1, d2, f, s2, h, d}

E = {s1}

father and s2 go east, father comes back:

W = {m, d1, d2, f, h, d}

E = {s1, s2}

mother and father go east, mother comes back:

W = {m, d1, d2, h, d}

E = {f, s1, s2}

h and d go east, father comes back:

W = {m, d1, d2, f}

E = {s1, s2, h, d}

father and mother go east, mother comes back:

W = {m, d1, d2}

E = {f, s1, s2, h, d}

mother and d1 go east, housemaid and d come back:

W = {d2, h, d}

E = {m, d1, f, s1, s2}

h and d2 go east, h comes back

W = {h, d}

E = {m, d1, d2, f, s1, s2}

h and d go east

W = {}

E = {m, d1, d2, f, s1, s2, h, d}

And we are done.

Defective coins

December 7, 2007 by Ankur 1 Comment

We have 10 bags of 1 Rupee coins. One bag contains all the defective coins, the weight of each coin in that bag is 1 gram lesser than the weight of a normal 1 Rupee coin. You have a spring balance, which tells the exact weight. After how many minimum no. of weighs you can separate the bag with defective coins.

Other variant of the same problem:
There are 10 machines in a factory. Each produces coins weighing 10 grams each. One day the factory owner cones to know that one of the machine is not functioning properly and produces coins of weight 9 grams. You have to find out the faulted machine. You ONLY have a weighing machine and you can use it only ONCE.

See Solution : Defective coins

The minimum no. of weighs required is one.

Want to try now ?

solution :

Let the weight of a normal 1 Rupee coin is W.

Now number the bags from 1 to 10 and take out the no. of coins equal to bag’s number from each bag, for example from 1st bag, take one coin, from 5th bag take 5 coins and so on.
Let P is the no. of the bag which contains the defective coins.

Now put all the coins on spring balance and weigh them. Read the spring balance reading, say it is S grams.
Then S = (W grams)*(1+2+3….+10) – P*(1 gram)
P will come out to be a number between 1 to 10 and thats the required bag.

Social