So imagine this: You go for some dumb IQ or assessment or personality test or the other after having slaved your sleep off over weeks of waking hours that could have been spent so much more rewardingly by cross dressing or double crossing your partner. Anyway, you think you have the test paper licked. Like you know who built the Suez Canal; how did Mussolini die; when is Easter celebrated in the West Indies; why was Einstein; which of your toes came first; etc. You get the idea -- you’re prepared. Then suddenly you get your socks knocked off by this one particular loopy question.
That’s because on this multiple-choice test, one of the key questions turns out to be totally illegible. However the choice of answers is listed clearly below. Now you have to figure out which one is the right answer among the following: (a) All of the below; (b) None of the below; (c) All of the above; (d) One of the above; (e) None of the above; (f) None of the above.
THROUGHPUT
(The nonagenarian question was for you to figure out what was so unusual about a given paragraph. A vast majority came up with things like that it had only the vowels A and E in it and that a lot of consonants such as N, K, P, H, etc, were missing. But that’s like saying the name Mukul is unusual because it only two U’s in it and just M, K and L as consonants. Big deal. But some also got it right.) When I was typing the above paragraph on my keyboard, I did not need my right hand. So I may say that the given paragraph contains only southpaw alphabets! -- Shamik Banerjee banerjeeshamik123@yahoo.com
(The second problem was: “The digits 123456789 can be arranged to form 362,880 distinct 9-digit numbers. How many of these are prime?”)
The digits 123456789 arranged in any fashion will not have any prime numbers as the number will always be divisible by 9 and also by 3 using the basic idea that the total of all digits will be 9 if the number is divisible by 9. -- Major Rajesh Ramakrishnan, rajesh56rr@gmail.com. None of the 362,880 nine digit numbers is prime, since all these numbers are divisible by 9 and 3. -- Dr P Gnanaseharan, gnanam.chithrabanu@gmail.com
There is no prime number in the 362880 numbers, because all of them can be divided by 3. If the sum of individual numbers in a number is divisible by 3 then that number is also divisible with 3. Here the total of 1 to 9 is 45. -- Purushothaman Chandrathil, purushothamanchandrathil1969@gmail.com
(Among the first ten to also get it correct are: V K Bargah, vkbargah@gmail.com; Raghavendra Rao Hebbani, rao.raghavendrah@gmail.com; Rekha G, g.rekhapai@gmail.com; Aravind Suresh, aravind.suresh@hotmail.com; Dhruv Narayan, dhruv510@gmail.com; Ramesh Kumar, rameshkumarthayyil@gmail.com; J R K Rao, jrkrao@gmail.com; K Sathyadev, sathya2008k@gmail.com; J Vaseekhar Manuel, orcontactme@gmail.com; Hemalatha T, hemalatha1956@gmail.com.)
(The third one was: “Today’s weather is different from yesterday’s. If the weather is the same tomorrow as it was yesterday, the day after tomorrow will have the same weather as the day before yesterday. But if the weather is the same tomorrow as it is today, the day after tomorrow will have the same weather as yesterday. It is raining today, and it rained on the day before yesterday. What was the weather like yesterday?”)
The weather predictions being correct mean that it was raining day before yesterday and it is also raining today. Therefore, yesterday was fair weather which meant no rain and tomorrow will also be fair – no rain. The day after tomorrow will be raining again like today. Fortunately, for the weatherman, all these true predictions have brought some good luck for him. -- Shashi Shekher Thakur, shashishekher@yahoo.com
BUT GOOGLE THIS NOW
1. You and I drive from A to B in separate cars. We depart simultaneously, and you stay always ahead of me, dutifully driving the speed limit throughout the trip. Nonetheless I get caught by the cops for speeding. How?
2. There are two upright poles on the ground. One pole 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 -- just where it enters the ground. How high is the point where the two strings cross?
Sharma is a scriptwriter and former editor of Science Today magazine. (mukul.mindsport@gmail.com)