Daily puzzles/problems.

It was the second of August. It was showing you the date, and it was upside down.

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Originally Posted by prendrelemick

I apologise for the long pre-amble to this one. It concerns something that happened while I was on holiday in Noth Devon this summer.

The Guest House we stayed in was very nice, with solicitious hosts and comfortable rooms. Our room had a big double bed, two large sash windows with views of the 2 acre garden. It also had a en-suite bathroom, fitted wardrobes, bedside tables, a digital alarm clock, tiffany style lamps, colour TV etc... Everything you could want. Then there were the personal touches, like a chocolate on the pillow, a carafe of water by the bed, scented soaps and matching towels.

The first morning , Mrs P was in the shower and I was laid on the bed reading my book, waiting to go down for breakfast which we had ordered for 8:30. I glanced across to the clock on the opposite bedside table and saw it was 8:50 already. I shouted for the wife to hurry up and ran downstairs, hoping the porridge would still be warm. The landlady looked surprised to see me and said breakfast would not be ready for another 20 minutes!

Why not?

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nope.

Works though.

She took the 8:30 time as the time to start cooking?

Mark: It would work, and you are thinking on the right lines, but still nope.



Nickoli: Nope. I was the one who had made a mistake.





.

Did you pull out the plug for the alarm clock the night before to plug in the other bedside lamp, and then your wife plugged it in again in the morning when she went to go in the shower?

Nope.

It was a combination of items and circumstances that fooled me.

Does England cover more than one time zone? Here in the U.S., it's not uncommon to forget to reset one's watch when traveling. Was it actually 7:50?

No, we are all on British Summer Time over here.

The discription of the room is significant.

Since you were laying on your back to read, when you looked at the clock, it was upside down and you saw 8:05 as 8:50. If you'd looked longer you might have seen the 8 was on the wrong side of the 50, but being so early, and perhaps not being completely used to digital clocks, you reacted before you could see your mistake.

Is a mirror involved? Or a reflection on windows?

NickolI:
I did just glance at the clock, where as a longer look would have stopped me making a mistake. But still not right yet.

Scher:
Yours is the closest guess yet. Think refraction, not reflection.

You were seeing it through the glass of the lamp. Or the carafe of water. But either way, something that inverted the image.

Let's imagine that the next smiley represents the clock :out:

It is sitting next to the right side/wife's side of the bed and (this would be important) it is facing the foot of the bed.

Since Mick is in bed still, lying or sitting on the left side, somewhat near the headboard, he has a poor angle at the face of the clock.

:seeya: ................... :out:

Mick _ <--bed--> _ clock

Well, if the clock (on the right) has a plastic domed cover for the clock face, then the curvature of the plastic dome would cause the clock-hands to bulge/swell up because of refraction. Of course, Mick is positioned higher than the clock, and so the swelling is more pronounced in regards to the second hand which is pointing upwards at the "2" on the clock dial than it is in regards to the hour hand which is near the "8". The refraction causes the minute hand to (seemingly) swell and pull over towards Mick, in the direction of the "10" on the clock-face. But Mick can't see the numbers, he just sees that the hand is (apparently) pointing where the "10" would be. (in the crazy green smiley, the second-hand should be aimed at the little eye, but it will be pulled into the bulging left side of the clock face cover.)

NOTE: This is a wild guess, and quite possibly inconsistent with real physics/optics.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by billl

Well, if the clock (on the right) has a plastic domed cover for the clock face, then the curvature of the plastic dome would cause the clock-hands to bulge/swell up because of refraction. Of course, Mick is positioned higher than the clock, and so the swelling is more pronounced in regards to the second hand which is pointing upwards at the "2" on the clock dial than it is in regards to the hour hand which is near the "8". The refraction causes the minute hand to (seemingly) swell and pull over towards Mick, in the direction of the "10" on the clock-face. But Mick can't see the numbers, he just sees that the hand is (apparently) pointing where the "10" would be. (in the crazy green smiley, the second-hand should be aimed at the little eye, but it will be pulled into the bulging left side of the clock face cover.)

NOTE: This is a wild guess, and quite possibly inconsistent with real physics/optics.

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Er....

Quote:

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It also had a en-suite bathroom, fitted wardrobes, bedside tables, a digital alarm clock...

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Oops, thanks.

Still, time well-spent.

Mark has it.

I saw the clock partially through the carafe of water. I saw the 8 normally, but the 05 through the water bottle and it appeared as 50.

I was wearing my reading glasses and it was just a glance, I don't know if the 5 was the wrong way round, but it fooled me.

Maybe the "1" in "8:10" got warped by the bulge in the center of the carafe, and therefore looked like a "5"? The "8" might go unaffected, but I'm thinking the "0" might end up looking like an "8" if it went through the same process of refraction, though...



EDIT: OK, Mark's solution makes sense -- but how come it didn't look like "508" ? Only half was covered/affected by the carafe, I guess...

Yes thats what happened (Only half was affected) but I reckoned mark had broken the back of the problem. I shall be recreating the scenario in our kitchen in a mimute.

And just how did you explain to (the longsuffering) Mrs Mick why you were lying on the kitchen floor looking at the clock through a glass of water? Hmmm?? On a Sunday morning???

Okay - I'll come up with something shortly.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by kasie

And just how did you explain to (the longsuffering) Mrs Mick why you were lying on the kitchen floor looking at the clock through a glass of water? Hmmm?? On a Sunday morning???

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That's quite normal behavior isn'it? :smilewinkgrin:

From my research I think the 5 was the wrong way round, and the lining up of clock, glass and eye has to be exact.



Apologies to billl, I may have conceded the puzzle to mark a bit too soon, before all details were in.

Major Edit at 15:30 BST - Apologies

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I went to a Direct Grant Grammar School which - for the non-Brits here - was a little backwater of the state education system in which bright and able working-class kids could be offered a classical academic education without having to cough up for it. It is because of this education that I have read enough Tolstoy to know that I can live without him.

Due to some political positioning that was beyond me even at the time, the right-wing party in the UK was in favour of grammar schools and the left-wing was against them. You'd think it'd've been the other way round. But this sympathy from the right meant that on two separate occasions the Tory education minister acted as patronising handshaker at our annual Prizegiving Day. Her name was Margaret Thatcher. So, as a teenager, I had plenty of opportunity to assassinate her, had I known what she was going to do to the country a few years later.

Towards the end of my school career, there was talk of raising money to buy some piece of equipment for the science lab. I dunno what - I was a Modern Languages specialist. But I know we had to raise five hundred pounds, and I also know that it was my mate Fizz - a physicist, chemist and entrepreneurial purveyor of hallucinogens synthesized in the lab during lunch - who came up with the idea of auctioning Mrs Thatcher's 'thank you for having me' letter. Our English teacher took the letter to be valued by auctioneers in Mayfair and, disappointingly, they reckoned it'd raise about £150, of which they'd be very happy to take ten per cent commission.

Stick with me. This is all going somewhere.

My brilliant idea was to organise a school sweepstake on how much the letter would sell for at auction. There were eight hundred boys in the school (yes, boys only. I didn't talk to an actual girl till I was about thirty.) so if we could get each of them to part with 25p (this was when 25p was 25p. And it was not long after it was five bob.) we'd add another two hundred quid to the total. We needed to offer a prize, and we didn't want to part with the takings, so we persuaded the headmaster that one Friday the winning boy could choose the music that was played over the PA as we walked into assembly. (Which, it turned out, was the first time that most people in my school - including the headmaster - ever heard Star***ker, by the Rolling Stones.)

On the day of the auction, our English teacher attended the saleroom in town. The idea was that he would call us after the auction and tell us what the letter went for. As there was so much interest around the school, we were going to put the realised sale price up on the digital display in the window of the main hall, that was usually used to show how many days the school had gone without any injury occuring. (Or a drug-bust happening. Something like that.)

However, that very morning some idiot first-former swinging from the stage curtains in imitation of Tarzan knocked over a scenery flat that toppled off the stage and took out the digital display completely.

"Great," I said, kicking the diminutive culprit up the steps to the lighting gantry. "Now what?"

"Coincidentally," Fizz said, nodding at the shattered bits of the digital display, "I made one of those last term. It's still in the physics lab."

"Well, go and get it!" I told him, punting the first-former over the railing and into Row B.

Fizz's contraption was a board about two feet by one, with wires all over the back of it. But it would work, and having punched in the right number on the keypad Fizz had cannibalised from a broken calculator, we could hang the board in the window where the 'official' one used to be.

Fizz was sitting with it on his lap as we waited for the English teacher to call in the auction sale price. He was fiddling. Suddenly, the phone rang. I leapt up.

"Uh-oh," Fizz said, looking at the board. "We have a problem."

"What?"

"Not all the lights work. Look."

As I picked up the phone, I glanced across at the board, into which Fizz had punched 888 - but it didn't say that.

As Fizz feared, some of the components were kaput. What I saw was this.

http://i447.photobucket.com/albums/q...ctionBet-1.jpg

"It could take days to mend it," Fizz said.

"Hi, Sir," I said into the phone. "How did the sale go? I hope you had better luck than we're having. What did it sell for?"

It turned out that I was wrong about our luck - Fizz and I were very lucky indeed. The sale price of Margaret Thatcher's letter just happened to be the largest three-figure number we could display on Fizz's faulty read-out machine...

792..

Same guess.

The write-up was really fantastic, I guess you just couldn't wait for our highly-attuned digital clock puzzle instincts to dull a bit over time...

Yeah. I knew it was too easy. I just felt like writing it during lunch.

What number does Fizz punch in?

And given that his real name was Paul Henry Isley, why did we call him Fizz?

Hm I may be missing something but I don't see how you can get that number, even by turning it upside down. My bid is 261 - oh, to say it correctly, 261 is the number Fizz punched in..

[edit] because the first letter in each of his first name, followed by the first 2 of his last name, spell Phis, and you spelled it Fizz.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by NikolaiI

Hm I may be missing something but I don't see how you can get that number, even by turning it upside down. My bid is 261 - oh, to say it correctly, 261 is the number Fizz punched in..

[edit] because the first letter in each of his first name, followed by the first 2 of his last name, spell Phis, and you spelled it Fizz.

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Nope, on the number punched in.

Yes - first ever day of school he turned up with a satchel, on which his parents has stuck little gold letters above the clasp that read:

PHISLEY

Oh, 241.

264 is what NickoliI meant I think.

Can't see 264 working either. Or 241.

Oh, hang on.....


...damn - screwed up.


Mick, how did you get your answer? I mean, I think it's right, but I also think I set it up wrong. And if I did, it can't be right.

In the right-hand figure, the top bar should be red, and the bottom right upright should be black.

That makes things different, then, doesn't it? Actually I see the 792 now. But I guess it does depend on whether you are going to require 6 of 7 bars for a 9 or 6, or just 5 bars. My first guess 261 was based on using 5 bars, but then I checked my microwave and saw it uses 6 bars for 9's and 6's. But then again, you could say it doesn't have to be perfect in this case, as it isn't a terribly important issue.

Anyway ... my eyes have been opened. My new answer is 742. No - 772! my Final answer. Did I get it right?

Yep 772 is what I'm going with - oh and on second thought, I think your change doesn't affect the answer, if I understand it correctly - and if 6's and 9's both use 6 bars.

I turned my head upside down (relative to the screen) just now, and 792 works. (9 having five bars)

Here's an image from the first page of results after searching google images for "digital clock" (from my computer):

http://www.pelnet.co.uk/elect/img/clock.jpg

Not every image includes a clock showing the number 9, but still, it is notable that in the next 9 pages of results, I found no other examples of a 9 made from only 5 bars. The six-bar version is a favorite by more than 10 to 1, I'd say. Either kind would work, though, if schoolboy Mark had to display the number he heard on the phone.

So, with my correction of my stupid error, 266 gives you 792, using the 5-bar 9 and 6.

Prendrelemick wins!

No, I think you win Nicolaii because I'm just confused, we'll call the Fizz question a tie breaker. So your go:yesnod:

Okay - this regards card counting in Blackjack and the problem is from "Blackjack Dealer Error" by ETFan...

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But whatever dealer you choose, if you sit there for thirty minutes and don't observe a single error in any player's favor, you're at the wrong table. Professorial types may be surprised to learn this factor is even more important than penetration.

If you're in an unfamiliar casino, you may be wondering just how to tell whether a dealer has been working there for three months or three years. There's a less obvious way to ask besides just coming out with "How long have you worked here?" (although there's no law against asking it like that). However, it involves telling a little white lie. I'll leave it to you to figure out, and to decide whether white lies fall within your moral calculus.
...

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I would say - Ey up Ralph, how are you? How long has it been? Must be three years, 'cause that was the last time I was in here!

I think something like that would work, but knowing this is a riddle I suspect that might be too simple or vague. If not, I'll be mad that I didn't suggest it :)