No. The last two balls removed always must be a red and a blue ball together. A red is then returned leaving one in the bag. Always.
Why must the the last rwo always be a red and blue?
Read Your Great Darsh Face’s spoiler for a very simple and intuitive explaination.
Well, thank you, but I don’t see any reason so far why the last three balls can’t be all red, in which case you would pull two and put nothing back, leaving one red ball.
Pulling two and putting nothing back goes against the rules. If you had 3R left, you would pull 2R and put 1B back, leaving 1R/1B. Then you pull those two, putting 1R back, and that ends the game.
1R/1B must be the penultimate state, since (per your explanation), the 2R/0B and 0R/2B states are impossible.
OK this confuses me: you have 3 red balls and pull out 2. Why would you not then add a blue ball, (leaving a red and blue ball)?
Right,
And then you pull out the red and the blue and put back the red. It always has to end that way.
If you start with 18 red and 18 blue, you always end up with a blue one left in the bag.
And if you start with 1000 blue and 3 red, you still end up with a red ball remaining in the bag. I like this puzzle. I’d hire the person that got it right.
1) How many tennis balls are used during the course of Wimbledon?
One. Unless a random dog runs onto the court and steals the ball, but that’s rare.
2) Estimate the total number of cars in the UK.
Zero. I do not consider any vehicle with the steering wheel on the right to be a “car”.
3) How many calories in a grocery store?
Need more info. Are the employees considered food items?
4) How would you sell a fridge to an Eskimo?
The same as I would to anyone else: Take his family hostage and start cutting off fingers until he signs the contract.
5) What would you take with you to a lonely island and why?
A year’s supply of calamine lotion, a deck of cards and a thirteen star American flag. I itch, Klondike is my life, and I insist on celebrating the 4th of July in a very specific manner.
6**) Is Batman a superhero?**
Yes, and I will personally garrot anyone who claims otherwise.
7) You have 17 red and 17 blue balls, and you remove two at a time. If the two are the same colour, add in one extra blue ball. If they are different colours, add in one extra red ball. What colour is the final ball removed?
My father died of blue balls. How dare you ask me such a question!
8) What cartoon character would you be and why?
Archie. You just know he’s having threesomes with Betty and Veronica.
9) What is the wildest thing that you have ever done?
I once snuck through the express line with 11 items. Totally got away with it!
10) What was your opinion of the film Blair Witch Project?
Not bad. I only ever saw it on a bootleg VHS, which actually enhanced the whole “found footage” aspect of it.
- Depends on your definition of “tennis ball”
- 80 million
- Please elaborate: do you mean how many calories in the food in a grocery store, how many calories in the physical grocery store building, or both?
- By giving it to them in exchange for money
- Some other people so it isn’t so lonely
- No, he’s a piece of right-wing propaganda
- Either red or blue
- “Would I be”? In what circumstance? Or do you mean “would I like to be”?
- I don’t have time to do wild things. I’m too busy answering stupid and irrelevant job interview questions.
- I’ve only ever seen the ending. From what I hear the ending is the only part that isn’t boring as fuck, so I have no interest in watching the rest.
How many tennis balls are used during the course of Wimbledon?
Who cares? Cliff Richards is now one of the many antiquities, along with the ancient Egyptians, who were either cat or kiddie fiddlers.
2) Estimate the total number of cars in the UK.
More than are recorded on the DVLC records, that’s for sure.
3) How many calories in a grocery store?
Which store?
4) How would you sell a fridge to an Eskimo?
Eskimos still exist? I thought they preferred the term ‘Inuit’.
5) What would you take with you to a lonely island and why?
A sea plane, I don’t think I need to give a reason why.
6**) Is Batman a superhero?**
If you like, whatever yanks your chain.
7) You have 17 red and 17 blue balls, and you remove two at a time. If the two are the same colour, add in one extra blue ball. If they are different colours, add in one extra red ball. What colour is the final ball removed?
Blue or red, definitely.
8) What cartoon character would you be and why?
I’d rather be a character in a real-life movie. Why can’t I be that?
9) What is the wildest thing that you have ever done?
The answer to this question is to build a straw man fallacy or false clause; any answer I give isn’t helpful in our discussion.
10) What was your opinion of the film Blair Witch Project?
I found the hype unwarranted.
- None. Wimbledon can afford new balls for its annual tournament
- There are 40 million cars in the UK. In Wimbledon they are all new
- According to modern food labeling trends, almost none.
- By giving him too much lettuce, forcing her to need a crisper. Unless Al Gore is free and owes me a favor
- Nothing Atoll
- Yes. Specified or not, he does things real people can’t. Besides, given enough of it, money is a superpower
- Blue. Blue is boring and the sight of it will prompt me to quit
- The straight man in Hatlo comics: I’ve always wanted to be able to make my hat fly straight up when confronted with some mundane outrage
- None of your business.
- Didn’t see it: snot-based advertising doesn’t appeal to me.
True story: was once required to take a personality test and interviewer told me I scored well on almost all parts but was borderline on “impulsiveness” so they would have to consider my application further. I said “If you need more time to decide whether I can make decisions quickly enough, you should just give me your job now.” That made up his mind for him.
Wow, recruitment sucks. I can see #7 has some use but what kind of idiot would think any of the others are useful?
The guestimating questions are stupid. One minor incorrect assumption can make an order of magnitude difference. If you wanted to test estimation and logic, surely you should give the candidate some invented data about an obscure subject and then ask them some questions.
The “if you were a…” type questions deserve a punch.
And to sell refrigerators to inuits you should do market research.
Generally the test of a personal question is: could the candidate turn it round and ask it of the company?
Interviews are notoriously unreliable, but people are notoriously bad at realising how unreliable they are. The last three questions look like typical “interview questions”, aimed at determining how imaginative, creative, analytical etc you are.
In theory, the interviewer can count the number and type of your response to these questions, to get a meaningless number which he/she falsely believes has some relevance to the selection process. In practice though, it is far more common for these questions to be used to give an interviewer an excuse for either liking or not liking you.
So the 'correct" answer to those questions is to give the “correct” number of different ideas in your response, and the “correct” volume of variations on those ideas. The (false) criteria is that jobs that are creative should value more different kinds of ideas, and mindless jobs should value people who don’t think too much.
But in practice, since they also just use that kind of interview question as an excuse to justify their own pre-formed opinions, you try to be entertaining without revealing anything they can use as a reason to reject you.
If I do not know the answer to a question, I simply say “I don’t know”!
Personally I would prefer to hire someone who said, “I don’t know, but can research that if you would like”. I would NOT hire someone who gave me a made-up or wrong answer.
- As many as they need.
- No.
- Including the staff?
(Curses! **Harvey **beat me to it.) - Via Craig’s List. Buggered if I’m going all the way up to Alaska to sell one lousy fridge.
- Company, because duh!
- Yes. He can breathe in space.
- That’s 15 more red balls and 15 more blue balls than I have ever had in my life, so I wouldn’t feel comfortable juggling this problem.
- Batman, because he can breathe in space.
- Rescue two people from a knife-wielding maniac.
- My opinion is that I need to see it someday.
I answered these as I would during an interview, with no googling involved.
-
How many tennis balls are used during the course of Wimbledon?
The exact amount that is needed. -
Estimate the total number of cars in the UK.
I know that about 75% of the population of the UK owns a vehicle. I’m guessing the population is about 60-70 million. So I’d put the number of cars somewhere around 50 million to 55 million. -
How many calories in a grocery store?
That is impossible to predict, seeing as the size of the grocery store was not specified. But, if you tell me which grocery store, I could research it and find out! -
How would you sell a fridge to an Eskimo?
Well, obviously the cold isn’t the selling point. It’s the storage. I would focus on that, and that the temperature is regulated. -
What would you take with you to a lonely island and why?
A lonely island with no population? If so,
A boat with GPS, enough food and water for the voyage, and long range wifi on solar energy(and a laptop). -
Is Batman a superhero?
Everyone is a superhero to someone. -
You have 17 red and 17 blue balls, and you remove two at a time. If the two are the same colour, add in one extra blue ball. If they are different colours, add in one extra red ball. What colour is the final ball removed?
Red. -
What cartoon character would you be and why?
I know this is a question that is really about self-awareness. My strengths are my intelligence, organization, and dependability. I’d be a cartoon character of myself. -
What is the wildest thing that you have ever done?
I would take this opportunity to talk about a fun adventure I went on with a happy ending - this question isn’t about the trip itself, but how I explain the trip and how friendly I am while doing it. Lots of smiles and throw in some laughs. -
What was your opinion of the film Blair Witch Project?
It was amazing. The actors were chosen because of their amazing improv skills. All of the extras they spoke to and filmed were either planted actors, or actual townspeople - they weren’t told which. They were given clues to where they would be filmed next, everything was kept as confusing as possible which contributed significantly to their terror. Despite being filmed with a handheld camera (that shakiness that has been recreated a hundred times in films since), they made over 250 million dollars on the film. It was given soaring reviews. It was truly a piece of art and has sparked remakes and copycats to this day!
Bingo. It’s important to remember that an interview is you interviewing the employer as well as the employer interviewing you. Employers actually expect you to ask questions about the company. If employers ask questions that you feel are red flags, let them know. Although I think turning the tables is a better way then just walking out.
The first time I got a question like that I just laughed and said, “What kind of a dumb question is that?” The interviewer laughed and just said it was on her list and she thought it was dumb too. I got the job. Although she said she had to fight for me. Guess the guy who wrote the question didn’t like my answer, but the one actually doing the interview liked my style enough to insist on my hiring.
I’ve done a lot of interviewing and although I have never used questions like that I think they make perfect sense as a discrimination tool. At Christmas dinner a conversation began about numbers of driving offences and it was interesting to listen to the people who were capable of working towards a solution versus the ones who just threw up their hands in befuddlement and guessed.
So I guess if I asked a question on a panel hoping to hear you work out something all by yourself, not quote from a book you have read, and your response was that it was “a dumb question,” I guess, in your way, you have answered it. Because one of those questions is no different to a question about an imaginary project, with fanciful constraints and fixed deadlines and what are you going to do?
Where I work several of us would end up discussing some of these during the day if one of us had seen the list of questions. They are the kinds of things we act like nerds about out of curiosity. So obviously that is the kind of attitude I would want to see if I asked someone one of them in an interview.