This is an old one but let’s hope some of the old ones who answered it once are not there any longer. Given below are 24 definitions. It’s difficult but one hint is that the first letter of each word is different except for the X, Y and Z which have been lumped together as one (that’s why 24 and not 26). So if you have two words beginning with A or M or U then one of them has to be wrong. Also, in one case, an American spelling has been used.
(1) Bashful or shy; (2) going down or a military retreat; (3) having all four feet adapted for use as hands; (4) to make a nest; (5) the eating of dry food, especially as a form of fast; (6) of or like an angel; (7) to stride along exultantly; (8) slow in perceiving; (9) full of freckles; (10) loud and grossly abusive; (11) tightrope walker; (12 a teller of untruths; (13) without shoes; (14) of or pertaining to dreams; (15) small artistic object of beauty or rarity; (16) apparition, phantom or ghost; (17) having horns or horn-like projections; (18) to make or become thick or thicker; (19) having woolly or crisply curly hair; (20) to spend the summer; (21) to check or suppress by extreme measures; (22) flowering more than once in a season; (23) having large ears; (24) use of words superfluously or redundant.
THROUGHPUT
(The Rip Van Winkle problem was: “There are two upright poles on the ground. One is six and a half feet and the other seven feet seven inches. From the top of each pole you tie a string to the bottom of the other. How high is the point where the two strings cross?”)
Irrespective of the distance between poles the height at which the strings meet is 3 ft 6 inches. Taking pole heights in inches as 78 and 91, if the height at which strings meet is h and the horizontal distance of the meeting point from bases are a and b, there are two pairs of similar triangles formed. Proportionality of sides give (a + b)/78 = b/h from one set and (a + b)/91 = a/h from the other set. Adding these two equations gives (a + b)*(1/78 + 1/91) = (a + b)/h. Eliminating (a + b) gives h = 42 inches. -- Raghavendra Rao Hebbani, rao.raghavendrah@gmail.com
The height of the point where the strings cross is 42 inches minus half the thickness of the string. (Nitpicking you may say but there’s more. The assumption is that the ground is flat so you assume the terrain to be even. – A V Ramana Rao, raoavr@gmail.com(The second one was: “How many colours are necessary to paint the squares of a chessboard so that no bishop can move between two squares of the same colour?”)
Since there are eight ranks on the chessboard through which the bishop can move, painting each rank with a different colour will suffice. So eight colours are needed to prevent it from crossing the same colour. -- Saifuddin S F Khomosi, Dubai.Eight. Every bishop move involves a change of rank, so painting each rank a different colour will do the trick. Using fewer than eight colours won’t do, as each long diagonal covers eight ranks. -- Dhruv Narayan, dhruv510@gmail.com
(The third problem was: “What’s the next letter in this sequence: W T N L I T _?”)
After breaking my head on all possible series/sequence of seven items to try and fit the missing seventh letter, and failing, I realised it ought to be something more “lateral”. And realised that the missing letter is “S”! (What’s the next letter in this sequence?) -- Arun Gopinath, argo72@gmail.com
I’m back after a long time. My grey matter has slowed down with age but I cracked today’s puzzle question. The answer is “(S)equence” as the question itself is the answer! -- Hema Parthasarathy, hemapartha133@gmail.com
The answer S lies in the question itself. The series consists of the first letters of each word.. (W)hat’s (T)he (N)ext (L)etter (I)n (T)his (S)eries? -- Saishankar Swaminathan, saishankar482@gmail.com (Yes, Dr Vinayak Shukla, shukla58@hotmail.com, you also got it right. – MS)
BUT GOOGLE THIS NOW
1. How can a 3 × 3 × 3 cube be divided into 20 cubes (not necessarily the same size)?
2. Each point in an infinite plane is coloured either red or blue. Prove that there are two points of the same colour that are exactly one metre apart.