Saturday, November 15, 2008

Pill Puzzle solution

See the original puzzle

This was solved by Yoo of Stochastic Scribbles:
...cut each of the indistinguishable pills in half, being very careful not to mix them up, cut the last remaining pill A into half, too, and take a half from each pill each day.
If that wasn't clear enough, you basically add an extra pill A to your pile, and then eat half of each pill. Save the left over half-pills for tomorrow.

This is one of my favorite puzzles. It's simple and elegant, and requires a bit of lateral, but logical thought. I don't know about anyone else, but when I see a puzzle I like, I try to think up a small variation that would produce another cool puzzle. I can't think of one for the Pill Puzzle yet, but maybe one day.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

A simpler way of doing the same thing...
Take the pills left in the bottles day by day until there is one left in bottle A. Add it to the three. crush and mix them. Halve the pile of powder into two equal doses for the last two days.