Wow, that was quick, Dr. Strangelove. Had you noticed that one before, yourself?
I hadn’t. But I might have perused a list of common verbs :). Actually, I’d hoped you’d have a different one! Good puzzle, though.
I was amused at certain near-misses. Like, “to flower” is a verb, but it’s not the verb form of “a flow”. Or “to flicker” is not the verb of “a flick” (though a [movie] flick might indeed flicker).
A quick one for the programmers out there.
As you may know, leap years occur when the year is evenly divisible by 4. That is, unless it’s divisible by 100, in which case there’s no leap year. Except in the case where the year is divisible by 400, where you’ve got a leap year again.
Given Y as the year, write a C/C++ expression that computes if you have a leap year in as few characters as possible.I can do it in 24. I’m curious if anyone can beat that.
Here’s a straightforward way …
[SPOILER]… to do it with 18 keystrokes
0==Y%(Y%100?4:400)
NOT a leap-year, if good enough, would be just 15 keystrokes.
[/SPOILER]
If all numbers were to be written out in full in American English and all spaces were removed, what would be the first odd number alphabetically?
8,018,018,885: Eight billion, eighteen million, eighteen thousand, eight hundred, eighty-five.
It’s either dry, yellow, wooden, or strange. What is it?
Those are the only four possibilities, right?
Hmm: I came up with “eight billion and one”. That is the correct full version of that number: no one would ever say “zero million”, and the “and” is required.
I believe so, yes.
In the US, at least, the word “and” is not only not required, it is often considered incorrect. “And” is usually reserved for indicating the decimal point. Thus,
seven and three tenths
but
four thousand eight hundred sixty-six.
You may or may not agree with this, and of course people don’t typically say it this way in informal speech, but “eight billion one” rather than “eight billion and one” is pretty much standard in American K-12 math textbooks.
–Ulf, math textbook writer
Well, I defer to your expertise, but “eight billion one” sounds incredibly awkward to my ears. The thousands seem to be a kind of threshold: “eight thousand one” is fine, but not “eight million one”.
This is going to keep me up tonight. Grr…
Stephen Colbert’s journalism.
Does a slob slobber?
In the neighbouring Pacific islands known as “North Island” and “South Island”, all the natives of North Island tell the truth all the time, and all the natives of South Island tell lies all the time. As usual, they freely intermingle (on the fishing grounds) and cannot be told apart visually.
A visitor on a passing boat meets three natives fishing in their canoes and he says to one of them “What islands are you from?”. The native says “The other two are both from the same island”.
He then poses the same question to one of the other two and receives the answer “The other two are both from the same island”.
He then poses the same question to the third native, who either replies “The other two are both from the same island” or “The other two are from different islands”.
- What did the third native actually say?
- Is it possible to tell where any of the natives are from?
[spoiler]1) He said they’re from the same island.
2) Nope!
There are 8 possibilities starting out:
NNN, NNS, NSN, NSS, SNN, SNS, SSN, SSS
After the first answer, we can remove 4 inconsistent answers, leaving these:
NNN, NSS (these two are where the first guy tells the truth), SNS, SSN (these are where the first guy lies)
Interestingly, we get no additional information from the second question. All remaining answers are still consistent.
Finally, we still get no information if the guy answers “they’re from the same island.” Still 4 possibilities remaining. But conversely, this means that “they’re from different islands” is totally impossible; there’s no way to make it consistent.
Given the consistent answer, each guy could have been from either island. Each guy has a 50/50 shot at being from a given island.[/spoiler]
If it helps, it’s an exclusive or. It’s exactly one of those four.
In other words, if it is dry it is not yellow…?
Right.
I agree with Little Nemo. First, because each and every villager can see at least two other villagers with blue eyes, every villager knows for a fact that every villager can see at least one villager with blue eyes.
We know they’re all aware of this because the actual solution (which involves a Guru who adds nothing to the equation) requires them to have knowledge of what the other villagers are aware of.