Puzzler of the week

[Scott MacLean]

This week's puzzler:

You have in your possession two pieces of string, each of which is a couple of feet long. The strings can both be different lengths. It doesn't matter. They�re burnable, like a fuse that�s used to light dynamite.

You could light either end of either string, and it would burn. In fact, if you lit one end of a string, it would burn in exactly an hour.

You light one of the strings with your Zippo lighter. It would burn right along and it would take one hour to be gone.

But here's the wrinkle: the strings do not burn at a constant rate. For example, the string might burn for two minutes and then go crazy and burn like mad, then slow down, etcetera. In other words, you don't know at what rate the string's burning, at any specific time. All you know is that in an hour's time, the whole string is burned. It's not linear, nor is it predictable.

The question is, with the Zippo lighter and these two strings, how would you measure 15 minutes of time?

Last week's puzzler:

Many years ago, I lived in Vermont. One Saturday morning, the phone rang. It was one of my fellow teachers, and he needed a hand moving a cast iron stove into his house.

He explained that he was going to pick it up at the factory, and he'd be back in a few hours. He asked if I could help. I said, "Sure. Go get the stove. I'll be waiting."

I immediately got dressed and engaged in every manner of household activity, hoping that I'd have some kind of an accident. Nothing worked, and as I waited, I noticed a wonderful thing began to happen: the snow that was falling down changed to freezing rain.

I said to myself, "This could be good. He's never going to be able to get up his steep driveway when he returns." I'd be off the hook. And maybe by tomorrow, when the ice has melted, his brother-in-law will be home to help.

So, sure enough, there I was, hiding behind the drapes when he pulls up. I'm peeking out, and I see that he's slipping and sliding and can't get up the driveway. Every time he lets the clutch out, the wheels spin like crazy, even with the additional weight of that cast iron stove.

He gets out and throws some sand under the wheels, but it doesn't help.

He gets out again. This time, he opens that little engine compartment door that the VW Microbus had in the back. He does something that takes a second or two, then he closes the engine compartment door. The next thing I know, he's climbed his driveway -- and he's on the phone, telling me to come over and help him move the stove!

What did he do?

Last week's puzzler answer:

Here's a Volkswagen bus that's transmitting too much torque -- it's hard to believe -- to the wheels, to enable him to negotiate this steep, icy grade.

So, what he did is, he opened the back and he pulled the coil wire off so the engine wouldn't start. He got back in, and with the thing in first gear, he turned the key -- and all that worked now was the electric motor that would ordinarily start the engine, but he was using the electric motor to take him up the driveway in first gear, albeit slowly, but not slowly enough. And he crept up the driveway with just enough torque to get him up without slipping at the top.

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Scott MacLean
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http://www.nerosoft.com