A hard knight’s day...... amid some reshuffle!

King Arthur sat at the Round Table on three successive evenings with his knights—Beleobus, Caradoc, Driam, Eric, Floll and Galahad—but on no occasion.

King Arthur sat at the Round Table on three successive evenings with his knights—Beleobus, Caradoc, Driam, Eric, Floll and Galahad—but on no occasion did any person have as his neighbour one who had before sat next to him. On the first evening they sat in alphabetical order round the table. But afterwards Arthur arranged the two next sittings so that he might have Beleobus as near to him as possible and Galahad as far away from him as could be managed. How did he seat the knights to the best advantage, remembering that rule that no knight may have the same neighbour twice?
 
THROUGHPUT
(The older problem was already solved because a penny falling from the top of the Empire State building would not gain enough velocity to kill a person if it fell on their head. So, great. But, there was another reason too.)

Put a glass (upright) in a big bucket (also upright). Fill the bucket (and consequently the glass) with water. Hold a coin right below the surface of the water and drop it so it falls into the glass. Try all you like, it just won’t happen. It’s the same thing dropping a coin from the Empire State Building, only the medium is air. From that height, it’s nearly impossible to land it on an elephant, let alone a dude’s head. —Jimmy Evil. rubcjazz@gmail.com

The empire state building is 1,454 ft tall, 187 ft wide and 424 ft in length. Assuming the summit is somewhere in the middle, it would be impossible to throw a penny 93.5 ft away laterally from oneself so as to fall over the edge of the building. —Dr Shyam L, orthoshyam@gmail.com
(Meanwhile) The Latin sentence means “How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?” —Seshagiri Row Karry, srkarry@yahoo.com (Yes SRK you did good, but what did the title mean? -- MS)

(The second problem was about a 3x3 grid containing the letters Q R S, T U V and W X Y and five conditions from which you had to deduce the numbers represented by each.)
This can be solved by using the fact that U has to be 4 or 9 (U being a perfect square as it is in both diagonals and U is not equal to one). Also X and R have to be 2 or 3 as these divide two different numbers evenly and are not equal to one. The above combination satisfies all conditions like the numbers in diagonal SUW are perfect squares, one row QTW has three consecutive numbers in some orders and so forth. —Ravi Nidugondi, ravi.nidugondi@gmail.com

Starting with U which must be 1, 4 or 9 and Y and T multiples of X, and T and U multiples of R, we are left with only 5 and 7 and the condition of the consecutive numbers helps in assigning 5 to Q and 7 to V. An enjoyable exercise indeed. —J Vaseekhar Manuel, orcontactme@gmail.com
(The third one was about four definitions and the name of a painter which came out backwards without an S if you managed to solve it.)

Tricky one! The four words are: ALEATORY, GOOSE (or GAME?), EXOCANNIBALISM and DEIPNOSOPHIST. If you join the first letters of these words starting from the fourth, we get DEGA(S). Edgar Degas was a famous French  painter of 19th century associated with impressionism. Thanks to you, I got to know these very interesting words. —Saishankar Swaminathan, saishankar482@gmail.com

This clue being the easier one, solved it first. The painter in question is Degas. In fact, solving this helped solve the whole because this provided the first letters of the words; A, G, E and D. —Balagopalan Nair K, balagopalannair@gmail.com

(Among the first five are also: Narasimha Murthy Uppu, u_n_murthy@yahoo.com; Narayana Murty Karri, k_n_murty@yahoo.com; A V Ramana Rao, raoavr@gmail.com; Ajit Athle, ajitathle@gmail.com; Dr Ramakrishna Easwaran, drrke12@gmail.com)
 
BUT GOOGLE THIS NOW

Charles takes part in a 14-stage cycle race in which there are 100 competitors.
In all 14 stages Charles finishes in the 93rd position. Yet he’s declared the runner-up. His accumulated time was less than that of all other competitors except one, the champion. Bearing in mind the fact that none of the 100 competitors withdrew how was it possible for Charles to finish second if he never even made it into the top 90? (Submitted by Gopu Natarajan, natarajangopunatarajan3@gmail.com)

Sharma is a scriptwriter and former editor of Science Today magazine.(mukul.mindsport@gmail.com)

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