Remember the “is to and as to” problems as in Blue is to Sky as Green is to Grass or Man is to Woman as Andro is to Gyno? Try these 12 for size now: (1) Strip is to Mobiüs as Bottle is to ? (2) Thought is to Action as Obsessive is to ? (3) Mice is to Men as Cabbages is to ? (4) Sword is to Damocles as Bed is to ? (5) Jekyll is to Hyde as Eloi is to ? (6) 4 is to Hand as 9 is to ? (7) Hollow Victory is to Pyrrhic as Hollow Village is to?
(8) Easy Job is to Sinecure as Guiding Light is to ? (9) Leg is to Ambulate as Arm is to ? (10) Astronomy and Physics is to Astrophysics as History and Statistics is to ? (11) Language Games is to Ludwig as Piano Concerto for the Left Hand is to ? (12) Set of Sets Not Member of Themselves is to Russell as Darkness of the Night Sky in an Infinite Universe is to ?
If you get only two correct, run yourself down yourself. If you get eight to ten correct you’ll be run. If you get all 12 correct, I’ll run to the editor and tell him/her to let you run this column for the rest of your life or an eternity, whichever comes earlier.
THROUGHPUT
(The lone and last lingering problem was the one where you were given 10 statements beginning with “Exactly one statement on this list is false” to “Exactly ten statements on this list is false” and told to choose the only one of them which was true.)
This is pretty straightforward. Given that only one of the 10 statements is true, nine of those statements have to be false. Thus, statement number 9 that says “Exactly nine statements on this list are false” is the only true statement amongst the 10 given statements. -- Balagopalan Nair, balagopalannair@gmail.com
The ninth statement must be the only one that is true. Statements numbered 1 to 8 and 10 must be false. -- Saishankar Swaminathan, saishankar482@gmail.com
(The other one was about a ten all-digit number exactly divisible by 10. On removing the units digit, the remaining number is exactly divisible by 9. Again, on removing the units digit, the remaining number is exactly divisible by 8. And so on till all the numbers have been knocked off one by one. What’s the number?)
The 10-digit number is 3816547290. Some of the clues were: (a) The last number should be 0, divisible by 10; (b) The fifth number should be 5, divisible by 5; (c) The second, fourth, sixth and eighth number are even numbers, divisible by 2 (4, 6, 8). -- Wing Commander Raju Srinivasan, rajusrinivasan@gmail.com
The number is 3816547290. The units digit needs to be 0, the five digit number needs to end with 5. The two digit, four digit, six digit and eight digit numbers need to end with even digits consuming 2, 4, 6, and 8 as zero is already used. Using these and the divisibility rules for 3 and 4 reduces the possibilities and we can arrive at the answer. -- Ravi Nidugondi, ravi.nidugondi@gmail.com
(Among the first five people to get it also correct are: Hari Shankar, harrisonkrish.hs@gmail.com; Narayana Murty Karri, k_n_murty@yahoo.com; Seshagiri Row Karry, srkarry@yahoo.com; Ramesh Kumar, rameshkumarthayyil@gmail.com; P S Guruchandran, psguru@bheltry.co.in; Manuel Jeyamoney, orcontactme@gmail.com.)
(The third problem was: “Although the Celsius and centigrade scales are the same today, originally there were two differences between them. One easy to Google; one not so easy”)
The differences originally between Celsius and centigrade scales were (a) Centigrade is an old fashioned name for Celsius and was derived from Latin meaning a hundred degrees, and (b) Centigrade was created by Swedish scientist Anders Celsius in 1742 where 00 was the boiling point and 1000 was the freezing point. In 1743, French scientist Jean Pierre Cristin proposed inversion of the scale to freezing point 00 and boiling point 1000 calling it centigrade. In 1948, this scale became Celsius to honour the Swedish scientist for his unique and innovative creation. -- Shashi Shekher Thakur, shashishekher@yahoo.com
BUT GOOGLE THIS NOW
1. If I were to tell you that I’d bet you a buck that if you gave me two bucks I’d give you three bucks in return, would it be a good bet for you to accept?
2. If a year consists of 365 days then how many times the Earth rotate during this year? The answer is 366. But the question is why?
Sharma is a scriptwriter and former editor of Science Today magazine.(mukul.mindsport@gmail.com)