Web Puzzles

Hundreds of years ago, a king of an Asian country who lived in a port city, received a visit from a king of adjacent country, his friend.

The visitor brought a present with him. It was an elephant.

The visitor gave it and said, "Can you measure the elephant's rough weight in a day?"

The king of the port city consulted with the retainers. "We just have beam scales weighing bags. Do you have any ideas?"

One vassal said, "I can make the relevant measuring equipment assembling large levers and pulleys, your majesty."

"Can you make it in a day?"

"......I can't."

Another vassal said, "How about weighing in pieces after killing the elephant?"

"I won't."

At last they found the method and measured the elephant's approximate weight without sophisticated devices.

What was the method?

Solution

"This," started the guide, "is the Buttons Room."

The Druggar of Bongo Ghango - the chief of a large country by the River Ghango - looked around. "It's a nice room, but where are the buttons? The only ones I see are, ahem, the ones on your shirt."
"Your Highness. The buttons, which could start a nuclear armageddon in a matter of seconds, are there, behind that panel," replied the guide, while pointing at a large panel at the end of the room.
"How can that be??? Why? Anybody - a madman, for example - could come here and press those terrible buttons?"

"Your Highness, it is very safe actually: for every button there is a slot, where a magnetic card must be inserted to activate the corresponding button. No card, no button. To launch the missiles, all buttons must be activated and pressed, and only a handful of people have the magnetic cards, and each card contains a different code from all the other ones."

"But it's the same thing! Any of these persons could go completely ballistic and start a nuclear war."
"In that case, the only dangerous man is the President of the United States, as he is the only person that holds all the codes, which would allow him to press all the buttons. The other people that hold some codes are the Vice-President of the United States, the President of the Senate, the Secretary of State, the Chief of the Armed Forces, and the Dean of Harvard University. Each of these gentlemen holds an incomplete set of magnetic cards, and the distribution of the codes is such that, if the President of the United States is not available, the entire set of buttons can be activated by the Vice-President, together with anyone of the other four men. If both the President and the Vice-President of the United States are unavailable, the buttons can still be activated by any three of the other four men. Therefore, to launch the missiles, it is needed either the President, or the Vice-President plus anyone of the other four men, or any three of the other four men."

"What if someone tried to press randomly many buttons, one after the other?" asked the Chief.
"Nothing would happen with the missiles, but the room would fill up with a narcotic gas, and an alarm would alert the guards and the CIA."

"So, how many buttons are there, and how are they distributed between the Vice-President and the other four personalities?"

And that's the question we'll ask the reader: what is the minimum number of buttons, and how are they distributed?

Solution

"This time," said the Treasury Minister, "I ditched those dodgy Europeans, and I have assigned the manufacture of our gold coins to five American companies. Look, they are all shining and beautiful, and they are all exactly the same!"

The secretary looked at the coins, weighed some of them, and cleared his throat. "Ahem, Sir. I would like to point out that here we have at least three different kinds of coin; they all look the same, but their weight is different. Would you please come close to the scale? This coin weights 10 grams, as it should, but this other one is 11 grams, while this one is only 9 grams. Obviously two of our manufacturing companies haven't done a good job."

Sad as he could have been, for having been tricked agin by other dodgy companies, the Minister managed to raise his head. "Well.. it's just a matter of finding the fauly ones using the trick that you've showed me, by using the scale only once..."

"Sir. Actually, this is a different problem altogether, we need to find two sources of errors, rather than just one. One batch is heavier, another is lighter. The method I used before will not be sufficient this time. But we can nevertheless find the two offending batches by using the scale once."

How did they manage to use the scale only once?

Solution

Notes:

• You may assume that each batch is made of a large amount of coins (thousands, millions, up to you! :)
• All coins of the same batch weight the same amount.
• The storyline in this puzzle follows from the story in Faulty Batch. It is however NOT necessary to have previously read/solved that puzzle in order to solve this one, even though it may be preferable.