1.

There are three Athletes (Alex, Brook and Chris) and their individual
Coaches (Murphy, Newlyn and Oakley) standing on the shore.
No Coach trusts their Athlete to be near any other Coach unless they are
also with them.
There is a boat that can hold a maximum of two persons.
How can the six people get across the river?

(Easy)

Ans :
Alex and Brook cross, Alex returns
Alex and Chris cross, Chris returns
Coaches Murphy and Newlyn cross to join their Athletes
Brook and Newlyn return
Newlyn and Oakley cross, Alex returns
* All three Coaches are across
Alex and Brook cross, Coach Oakley returns
Chris and Coach Oakley cross.
DONE!
2. One night three naughty boys stole a basket full of mangoes from a garden. They did a quick
counting and found that the fruits were less than 100 in number.
During the night, one of the boys woke up and found that the mangoes would be divided
into three equal parts if he took one for himself. So, he ate it up, then took 1/3 of the loot,
hid it separately and then slept.
Shortly after the first boy slept, the second one woke up and found that if he took one for
himself, the mangoes can be divided into three equal shares. So, he ate one, took 1/3 of the
loot, hid it separately and then slept.
Then, the third one woke up, found and did the same as the other two and slept.
The next morning, they all woke up, counted the number of mangoes and found that the
remaining mangoes again totalled one more than could be divided into three equal parts.
How many mangoes did the boys steal?
Ans: 79

3. A perfect square number from 1 to 500 is written on a plate. It appears as perfect square
number even when the plate is inverted. What is the number? (Rap fire question)
Ans : 196 / 961
4. The figure shows a square attached to another similar square cut diagonally. Can you divide the
figure into 4 equal parts.

Ans:

5. You are given 2 eggs. You have access to a 100-storey building. Eggs can be very hard or very
fragile means it may break if dropped from the first floor or may not even break if dropped
from 100th floor. Both eggs are identical. You need to figure out the highest floor of a 100storey building an egg can be dropped without breaking. Now the question is how many
drops you need to make. You are allowed to break 2 eggs in the process.

Ans : Let x be the answer we want, the number of drops required.

So if the first egg breaks maximum we can have x-1 drops and so we must always put the first egg
from height x. So we have determined that for a given x we must drop the first ball from x height.
And now if the first drop of the first egg doesnt breaks we can have x-2 drops for the second egg
if the first egg breaks in the second drop.
Taking an example, lets say 16 is my answer. That I need 16 drops to find out the answer. Lets see
whether we can find out the height in 16 drops. First we drop from height 16,and if it breaks we
try all floors from 1 to 15.If the egg dont break then we have left 15 drops, so we will drop it from
16+15+1 =32nd floor. The reason being if it breaks at 32nd floor we can try all the floors from 17
to 31 in 14 drops (total of 16 drops). Now if it did not break then we have left 13 drops. and we can
figure out whether we can find out whether we can figure out the floor in 16 drops.
Lets take the case with 16 as the answer

1 + 15 16 if breaks at 16 checks from 1 to 15 in 15 drops

1 + 14 31 if breaks at 31 checks from 17 to 30 in 14 drops
1 + 13 45 .....
1 + 12 58
1 + 11 70
1 + 10 81
1 + 9 91
1 + 8 100 We can easily do in the end as we have enough drops to accomplish the task

Now finding out the optimal one we can see that we could have done it in either 15 or 14 drops
only but how can we find the optimal one. From the above table we can see that the optimal one
will be needing 0 linear trials in the last step.
So we could write it as
(1+p) + (1+(p-1))+ (1+(p-2)) + .........+ (1+0) >= 100.
Let 1+p=q which is the answer we are looking for
q (q+1)/2 >=100
Solving for 100 you get q=14.
So the answer is: 14
Drop first egg from floors 14, 27, 39, 50, 60, 69, 77, 84, 90, 95, 99, 100... (i.e. move up 14 then 13,
then 12 floors, etc) until it breaks (or doesn't at 100)

6. You are given with six numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6. You can arrange them in any order and
you can use all the four mathematics expression i.e. add, subtract, multiply and divide and
also parenthesis. The result must be 278.
There are three other rules
1) You can only use a number once.
2) It is not compulsory to use all the six numbers.
3) You can't join numbers i.e. you can't use 1, 2 and 3 as 123.
Ans : (1 + (3 + 4*5)*6)*2 (or any other possibility)

A triangular area is divided into 25 areas, each an equilateral triangle the

same size and shape as the others. You need to set up a security system
with one beam of laser light that shines through every area. Set up a
projector, a receiver, and several mirrors to accomplish each of the five
challenges set out below.
Mirrors: The mirrors are small, just big enough to reflect the beam.
However, our diagrams show the mirrors being as long as one side of a
small triangular area. This was done to help you understand how the
mirrors are set. Consider the mirrors to be reflective on both sides if that
helps your solution.
Beam: The beam is allowed to cross itself and to cross the same area more
than once. To get credit for covering one of the areas you must have the
beam pass all the way through the area from the middle of one side to the
middle of another side. This means that the beam will travel through the
area in a direction parallel to one of the three sides of the large triangle.

Consider this example to help understand how the system can be set up.
The arrow represents the projector. The circle represents the receiver. The
heavy black lines are mirrors. The beam passes through the middle of each
area. Eight mirrors are used.
Challenge 1: Cover all 25 areas using only seven mirrors.
Challenge 2: Cover all 25 areas such that the beam enters each area only
once and never crosses itself.
Challenge 3: With two mirrors already placed as shown in the diagram,
cover all 25 areas by adding only 6 mirrors.

Challenge 4: The shaded areas in the diagram represent solid columns that
the beam cant pass through or bounce off of. Use only 6 mirrors to cover
all 22 remaining areas.

Challenge 5: Accomplish Challenge 4 without having the beam travel

outside of the large triangular area.

Ans :

Challenge 1: Stopping the first line one area short of a full row saves one
mirror and changes direction the same way as the two-mirror V
arrangement. Putting the mirrors outside of the large triangle provides a
way to move from one row to a parallel row. Other solutions are possible.

Challenge 2: My solution is a terribly boring zigzag search pattern. If you

came up with a more imaginative approach, give yourself some bonus
points.

Challenge 3: This solution combines some of the techniques seen in the

solution to Challenge 1. It uses both of the pre-positioned mirrors.

Challenge 4: I found it easy to solve this one, but I often developed more
complicated solutions. This solution is pretty straightforward.

Challenge 5: This solution introduces a new mirror angle. The beam travels
through the middle of all 22 areas without leaving the large triangle. The
two straight sections near the projector and the receiver must be at the
start and end of the beam. Too many mirrors are needed to get back out of
these sections.

Fill in the missing numbers for the following long division

problem:

Ans :

INTERACTIVE PUZZLE :

Arrange the 28 dominoes (illustrated at the bottom of the

page) to form the pattern pictured here.

The six lines in a Star of David intersect at 12 points.

Can you put the numbers 1 through 12 at these points
so that each row of four numbers adds up to 26?

Ans :

Other solutions are also possible

Rearrange the letters of each four-letter word and add another

letter of your choice to form a new five-letter word. The letter
you add must be the same letter for each of the five new
words and it must appear at the position indicated by the box.

Ans :

We added the letter "B" and got these words: BLAME, ABYSS,
ZEBRA, GLOBE, and SHRUB.

We added the letter "W" and got these words: WRATH,

SWORD, VOWEL, CROWD, and ARROW
Ans :

Put the point of your pencil at the "0" in the upper left corner
of the checkerboard. From this starting point draw through the
center of all 64 squares using one continuous line of 21
straight strokes. You can draw horizontally or vertically but
never diagonally or obliquely. You must never touch any
square twice and never exit the checkerboard.
Furthermore, you must end your tenth stroke at the square
marked "10" and end your last stroke at the square marked
"21."

Ans :
http://www.williamarmstrong.com/brain/puzzle.html

Place the same two-letter word in front of each of these words

to make a new word in each case.
1. nor, cent, main, sage, used, wager, geared, minion, nation
Then, for each of the other four groups of words, place a
different two-letter word in front of each word to make a new
word in each case.
2. end, per, set, pity, root, shot, holster
3. ally, bits, deal, chard
4. law, way, gone, lines, passed
5. firm, fancy, habit, former, undated

Ans : The

two-letter prefix words are do, up, or, by, and in. The
resulting new words are shown below.
1. donor, docent, domain, dosage, doused, dowager, dogeared,
dominion, donation

2. upend, upper, upset, uppity, uproot, upshot, upholster

3. orally, orbits, ordeal, orchard
4. bylaw, byway, bygone, bylines, bypassed
5. infirm, infancy, inhabit, informer, inundated
When can you add 2 to 11 and get 1 as the correct
answer?
Finals :

On a clock

Decode these:
GTYORJOTEOUIABGT
Ans : Great Job You Got It. Write it as 4x4 matrix

Distances from you to certain cities are written below.

BERLIN 200 miles
PARIS 300 miles
ROME 400 milesAMSTERDAM 300 miles
CARDIFF ??? miles
How far should it be to Cardiff ?
Ans : 100 miles. Each vowel is worth 300 and each consonant is worth -100. These are totalled in
each city name to give the distance

Decipher
yyyy u r, yyyyy u b, i c u r y+y 4 ?
Ans : Wise you are, Wise you be, I see you are too wise for me

What does this rebus picture means ?

Ans : Arctic circle

What are the next three numbers in this series?

4, 6, 12, 18, 30, 42, 60, 72, 102, 108, ?, ?, ?

Ans : The series lists numbers that are flanked by two prime numbers.

4 (3 and 5 are prime)

6 (5 and 7 are prime)
12 (11 and 13 are prime)
18 (17 and 19 are prime)
30 (29 and 31 are prime)
42 (41 and 43 are prime)
60 (59 and 61 are prime)
72 (71 and 73 are prime)
102 (101 and 103 are prime)
108 (107 and 109 are prime)
thus
138 (137 and 139 are prime), 150 (149 and 151 are prime), 180 (179 and 181 are prime)