Wednesday, August 13, 2008

Riddle Me This: Back-To-School Logic Puzzles

Puzzle #1.

  • A school bus is carrying a load of children home from school. School is dismissed at 12:35 p.m., and the bus travels at an average speed of 35mph for a distance of 5 miles. The bus is required to drive through lunch-hour traffic across town, and it must cross one set of train tracks, a minimum of 3 intersections, and a smattering of stop signs along the way. In addition, there is no information provided about the possibility of x number of additional stops that may or may not be scheduled along the route.

  • At what time will the bus reach its appointed destination?
(Answer, 12:51 p.m.)
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Puzzle #2.
  • A child comes home from school wearing actual cotton underwear instead of disposable pull-ups. Within 5 minutes of arrival, the child's underwear are...ahem, dirtied. Clean-up requires removal of one pair of double-knotted shoes and 2 socks, the use of one dozen wet wipes, the loss of said pair of brand new underwear, and running an emergency load of laundry. The mother then needs to decide whether to immediately re-dress the child in another pair of underwear or in a pull-up.

  • What are the odds of this situation occurring again within the next 8 hours that the mother should consider when making her decision?

(Answer, ??)

For the record, I really have no idea, but I went with the pull-up...and 5 minutes later it happened again. Personally, I suspect one should always favor the odds that come with leak-proof fabrics, particularly when paired with the sanitary benefits of rip-away Velcro sides and disposability.)

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Puzzle #3

  • A blogger types 2 logic puzzles while her son watches The Lion King.

  • How many minutes will she have in which to finish the post, run spellcheck, add labels, and hit "publish" before he abandons the movie and sneakily pours an entire bottle of his sister's bath gel into the sink?

(Answer, 5 minutes previous to typing Problem #3.)

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Yep, been there, cleaned that. My computer time is officially over for today.

But guess what? -- SCHOOL AGAIN TOMORROW!

I'll be back. (cue maniacal laughter)

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Lol. I found your post through a search for first grade logic/word problems and I will try to check your blog again soon. :) I love funny surprise finds like this. Oh, I have 4 children ages 8 and under.