Critical Thinking Puzzles: Solutions
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Pyramid Passage
Spare My Brain
Since the four wheels of the three-wheeled car share the journey equally, simply take three-fourths of the total distance (50,000 miles) and you'll get 37,500 miles for each tire.
Putting It Together
The list contains fifty pairs of numbers that add to 100 (100+0, 99+1, 98+2, 97+3, etc.) with the number 50 as an unpaired leftover:50 X 100 + 50 = 5,050
Fractured Farmland
Eighteen: one whole composite block (1,2,3,4,5,6); six separate blocks (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6); three horizontal pairs (1 & 4) (2 & 5) (3 & 6); four vertical pairs (1 & 2) (2 & 3) (4 & 5) (5 & 6); two vertical triplets (1,2,3) (4,5,6); two large blocks (1,4,2 & 5) (2,5,3 & 6)
Kitchen Cups
Fill the three-cup container with water. Pour it into the five-cup container. Fill the three-cup container again, and fill up the five-cup container. This will leave you with exactly one cup of water in the three-cup container.
Rope Ladder
Eight rungs. It's the ol' frame of reference problem. Although the water level dropped, the length of exposed ladder did not change. The boat, along with the tide, went down.
Seagull Shadow
It can't be done. It's the incredible distance to the sun which limits shadow size. By the time the rays get to Earth, we consider them parallel (remember Eratosthenes?). Any difference in altitude within our atmosphere is negligible. For all practical purposes, the shadow size of a flying object stays the same - independent of the object's altitude.
Moldy Bagel
June 29th. Go backwards: If the bagel was fully covered on the 30th, then on the 29th, half the area of the bread was covered. On the 28th, one quarter of the area was covered; and so on.
Pizza Pi
Seven sections; note that the pieces can be "envisioned" as three (3-slice) diameters.
Pizza Square
Puzzles and solutions copied, with permission, from Michael DiSpezio's book called Critical Thinking Puzzles.
More information is available about this book.
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