This word starts with the same letter it ends with and there are two of the same along the way. There is another pair and one each of two more, just to make you smile. What is the word?
Giggling. It starts and ends with ‘g’ and there are two more ‘g’s in the middle. It also has a pair of ‘i’s and one ‘l’ and ‘n’. Plus, giggling makes you smile ;)
The most impressive boundary’s not a wall.
It’s not a manufactured thing at all.
Moving towards it won’t reduce the gap
and nothing marks its presence on a map.
Joe and Andrea want to copy three 60-minute cassette tapes. They have a 2-cassette recorder to copy the tapes, allowing them to copy two tapes at a time. Each side takes 30 minutes to be copied, so two tapes can be copied in an hour and the third will take another hour. Andrea bets Joe she can copy all three tapes in 90 minutes. Does she win the bet?
In the first 30 minutes Andrea copies the A sides of tape 1 and 2.
In the second 30 minutes, she copies tape 1 side B and tape 3 side A (finishing Tape 1).
In the last 30 minutes, she copies tape 2 side B and tape 3 side B.
I was visiting a friend one evening and remembered that he had three daughters. I asked him how old they were. “The product of their ages is 72,” he answered. Quizzically, I asked, “Is there anything else you can tell me?” “Yes,” he replied, “the sum of their ages is equal to the number of my house.” I stepped outside to see what the house number was. Upon returning inside, I said to my host, “I’m sorry, but I still can’t figure out their ages.” He responded apologetically, “I’m sorry, I forgot to mention that my oldest daughter likes strawberry shortcake.” With this information, I was able to determine all three of their ages. How old is each daughter?
The house number alone would have identified any of these groups. Since more information was required, we know the sum left the answer unknown. The presence of a single oldest child eliminates “2 6 6”, leaving “3 3 8” as the only possible answer.
You’re waiting to board your flight at the airport with 99 other passengers, each with an assigned seat. All but one of the passengers will gladly sit in their designated seat. The only exception is Randall, a scoundrel who refuses to follow the rules. When he boards, he will choose a random, unoccupied seat.
If a rule-following passenger finds someone in their spot, they will choose another one at a random from the remaining unoccupied seats.
What is the probability that the last person to board the plane will sit in their proper seat?
The randomness stops as soon as someone else sits in Randall’s assigned seat. The chances of this happening range from 1 out of 99 to 1 out of 1 (when only one seat remains).
Thus, the probability of the last person sitting in their own seat can be calculated as 1/99 plus the sum of 2 to 98 of the formula 1 / n × (n + 1), which works out to 0.5, or 50%.
So there’s a 50% chance the last passenger will sit in their own seat thanks to Randall for screwing up order and procedure when boarding an aircraft.
