You are shown two identical bowls in a room – one of them containing 25 white marbles and the other containing 25 black marbles. The marbles are identical to each other other than the aspect of color, of course.
A blindfold person will be brought in to the room and asked to choose any bowl randomly and pick any one marble randomly from that bowl. If it is turns out to be a white marble, you will get a million dollars. If it turns out to be black you get nothing.
However, before the blindfolded person is brought in, you are allowed to mix up all the marbles and place any number of white and any number of black marbles in each bowl. Needless to say, all marbles have to be in one or the other bowl.
How would you place the marbles (meaning how many of which color marbles in which bowl) to give you the maximum chance of winning the million dollars?

(Remember to send me FB message instead of posting it on the Comments section. I will acknowledge you in the comments section if you get it right)

While it is not exactly about mixing liquids, it involves pouring liquids alright.
You have three containers whose capacity are 12 gallons, 8 gallons and 5 gallons respectively. The 12 gallon container is filled with water and the other two are empty. You have nothing else. You have to divide the water into two parts of 6 gallons each. In other words, by a sequence of pouring from one container to the other, you have to eventually have 6 gallons in the 12 gallon container and another 6 gallons in the 8 gallon container.
How would you do it?

Flying back from DC. Puzzle time. I am switching back to logical/math puzzles since the word puzzles were not much popular last time.
As always, send me personal messages on FB. Do not write your answer on the comment section to give others a chance to try the problem.

In a basket, there are 8 pairs (16) of black socks, 7 pairs (14) of white socks, 6 pairs of red socks, 5 pairs of blue socks, 4 pairs of green socks, 3 pairs of yellow socks, 2 pairs of purple socks and 1 pair of pink socks.
Assume that there is no difference between a right sock and a left sock.
If you are blindfolded, how many MINIMUM number of socks do you have to pick to guarantee 3 pairs (six) of socks that are of the same color (any color will do)?

There is no travel for me this week after fourteen straight weeks on the road. So, far 🙂
So, instead of math and logic puzzles, this time it is about English words, as specifically requested by Sara.
Without Googling or looking up the internet try these…

1. As we all know “ballpark estimate” means a rough guess at the actual number. What is the origin of this phrase?

2. Many times you have seen (but I am sure not used 🙂 ) phrases like !@#$%^& to replace actual vulgar words. What is the English word for those string of characters? (I believe the same word also signifies the string of pictures that denote a comic strip character spouting profanities)

3. Finally, “education” is a word that has all the five vowels. (Friends from UK and India will also point to “favourite” and “dialogue”). Can you come up with a word that has all the five vowels – each only once and in exactly that sequence – a,e,i,o,u? (“education” does not qualify since the sequence is e,u,a,i,o)

Sara, next time you have to post some more puzzles or give them to me, I will publish in my blog with due credits to you.

Returning home from New York. Ergo puzzle time. Today’s is a simple yet challenging problem.

Think of the various pairs of two numbers you can make using the digits 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9 (each used only once) e.g. (2345, 16789) or (743, 821569) and so on.

Which is the pair (of two numbers) has the maximum product value (compared to other pairs)?

Send a personal message on FB- not comments if you are sending an answer. All smart Alec comments can come in the comments section though 🙂

Imagine a chessboard – with your usual 8 by 8 = 64 squares. Say the squares are one inch by one inch each. Now imagine rectangular blocks that are one inch by two inches each. So, any rectangular block can cover 2 adjacent squares on the chessboard.
You have to fill up the chessboard with the rectangular blocks without any rectangle spilling outside the board. They are allowed to overlap on each other though.

What is the minimum number of rectangular blocks required to fill up the whole chessboard? That is 32 of course.

Okay, now imagine that I tore off one of the corner squares on that chessboard. And I went ahead and tore off the corner square that is diagonally on the other end of the board. So, now I have a chessboard with two farthest corner squares missing.

Now, tell me how many minimum rectangular blocks are required to cover the whole board (that has only 62 squares now). You are allowed to overlap but cannot spill outside the board.

Even trickier – what is the minimum number of blocks required if you CANNOT overlap or spill outside either?

Headed to Raleigh. My flight back is tomorrow at a very early hour. So, I am going to send the puzzle today…
Remember the rules – message me on Facebook with your answer. Do not write on the comments section so as to give others a chance to solve it without peeking into possibly right answers.
This happened to me on Tuesday night. I was coming back from a customer dinner at night headed home. I never use the car GPS since I know I know my way around in Atlanta. However, midway thru my drive back, I noticed something interesting on the GPS.
The display on “Distance left to Destination” would count down as you would expect every mile but ever so often, it would jump up to a higher number. So it would read 16… then go down to 15 … then go down to 14 … and then jump to 20!!! It would again start counting down for a few miles and then jump up again!!!
Can you explain what was happening?
Here is a hint: Every time it would jump back up to a higher number, it would jump to a number higher than the previous high number.

One more week. One more flight back home on Thursday. One more puzzle.

Following is a rather poor attempt on my part to draw 12 matchsticks forming a tic-tac-toe shape. Here is what you have to do. Move only THREE of these sticks to new positions and form three identical squares.

My flight is very early morning tomorrow and a very short one. I intend to sleep in flight. So, here goes the puzzle for this week’s trip.

Somebody wrote

62 – 63 = 1

Obviously it was a silly mistake. Here is a question for you. Can you move (to a different place) only ONE of the digits above and make the equality hold true?

I was reading a book on cocktails and one thing led to the other – suddenly I was on Wikipedia reading about Christopher Columbus. Learnt three things that I had not the faintest clue of –

1. Who was the first European to come to America?
2. How many voyages did Columbus make to America?
3. Which part or parts of modern USA did Columbus visit?

Check out wikipedia for the answers. Let me know if the answer surprised you too…