I’m guessing that the bear in question is Ursa Major the constellation AKA The Big Dipper. In this case, the color of the bear would be white, as that’s the closest “color” I know of to describe starlight.
I don’t know if this one qualifies as a “logic” puzzle or a “lateral thinking” puzzle, but here goes:
Two women apply for the same job at the same company. They look exactly alike. The HR manager looks at their applications, and sees that they have the same birthdate, the same address, the same parents, and they went to the same high school. The HR manager remarks, “Wow! You must be twins.” The women respond, “No, we’re not twins.” How can this be?
The women are two of a set of triplets; the third sister is at home.
If you want to get all geological about it, the easiest way to move Mt. Fuji from its present location to the US is to simply wait; eventually, what with plate tectonics and all, what is more or less Mt. Fuji will make to the general vicinity of what is more or less the continental U.S. It may take a few hundred million years.
I was thinking along the lines of a shitload of excavators, dump trucks, and cargo vessels. But you’re right, that’s quicker but not as easy as your solution.
No… I’m sorry, I’m having trouble explaining this. Where’s a vocabulary word when I need one?
Maybe more examples would help?
There’s this classic psych textbook study where they gave people a box of matches, some thumbtacks, and a candle and asked them to mount the candle on the wall and light it. It never occured to most people that they could use the matchbox as part of their solution.
(There was another one with an alphabet cube, but I can’t find it).
The bear is white, because it’s a polar bear. With the three turns presented in the puzzle, it’s impossible for the camper to be back at his campsite – he would be a mile east of it. Unless he’s at the North Pole. In the scenario presented in the question, he would wind up back at his camp if he was at the North Pole, where (presumably) there are polar bears.
There are an infinite number of places on earth where a man could make those same three turns and end up back at his starting point - but there are probably no bears at any of those places but possibly one.
[spoiler]Find the centroid of the uncut cake. (The centroid of a geometric object is the point at which any straight line will divide the shape into two parts of equal area. In this case, the center of the rectangle.) Next, find the centroid of the shape that has been cut out of the rectangle. On the line connecting those two points, make a straight cut all the way across the cake.
Any cut through the centroid of the cake will divide it into equal pieces. If the cut also passes through the centroid of the missing piece, each half will be missing exactly half of the empty void.
Can anyone spot the flaw with this answer?[/spoiler]
[spoiler]I remember three.
Use a really wide pen; wide enough to cover all nine dots with a single line.
Cheat the angle a little bit. Connect the top three dots with a line with a slight negative slope (just catch the top edge of the left dot, and the bottom edge of the right dot) and extend the line to the right as far as necessary. For the middle row of dots, cheat the other way; connect them with a positive slope. Connect the bottom row with a negative slope again. You wind up with an elongated Z, all nine dots connected with only three lines.
Lay the paper flat. Connect the top row at a very slight angle, and continue that line around the earth until it crosses the paper again and connects the middle row. Continue the line around the planet again and connect the bottom row; all nine dots with a single line.
(Number 3 is bogus, in my opinion. Can a line that circles the earth be said to be straight, for one thing. But even accepting that, a straight line around the earth would define a great circle, and return to it’s starting point. The offset to cross the second and third row means the line is not straight. It’s a very lateral answer, though.)[/spoiler]
picture a circle one mile in circumference around the south pole.
Start at any one of an infinite number of points one mile north of that circle.
Walk one mile south.
Walk one mile east around the circle, walk one mile north, end up at the same place.
But there are probably no bears there.
Geologically you’ll need to wait more than a couple of 100 million years. It’s not going to happen in this round of the supercontinent cycle, not to forget that Mt Fuji won’t be a mountain anymore.
[spoiler]Umm… No, you’d end up more than a mile from your point of origin.
Let’s do this in degrees instead of miles. Let’s say your coordinates are 80w, 88s. You walk a degree south to 80w, 89s. A degree east puts you at 79w, 89s. A degree north and you’re at 79w, 88s. That’s a full degree from where you started.[/spoiler]
[spoiler]The original problem didn’t say anything about degrees. It was “one mile south, one mile east, one mile north” and you’re back where you started.
So if you start about a mile-and-a-third away from the South Pole, you walk one mile south, then one mile east takes you in a full circle around the pole, and one mile north gets you back where you started.
It can also work if you’re slightly closer to the pole. If your “one mile east” walk takes you twice around the pole (or three times, or any integer) you’ll end at the same point you started.
But you still won’t see any bears at the South Pole.[/spoiler]
No, you’d end up exactly where you started. You walk a mile south. Then your mile east circumnavigates the south pole, leaving you exactly where you stopped at the end of the your first leg. Then you walk north again back to your camp.
