Monday Microsofty 95: I Told You Her Name But …
You weren't listening. Getting to the core of a problem doesn’t need to involve math. Here’s one that doesn’tExceptional nerds can uncover solutions that others overlook. Test yourself.
There’s a woman with an unusual first name. She is a doctor in her mid-forties; her specialty is internal medicine. She likes to take long walks and is a social conservative. Her husband works as a licensed electrician, primarily in new housing developments. He is socially liberal. Despite their political differences, they have been married twenty-six years. They have four children, a girls and three boys.
When her husband needed to have his gallbladder removed, she refused to do the operation.
I have actually told you her unusual name in the information above. What is it? Answer next Monday.
Solution to Micro Softy 94: The Tree Shortage
Last week, we said that Landscaper Lou was given 10 apple trees and instructed to plant them in five rows with four trees in each row. How did he do that?
The answer is shown in Figure 1. The ten trees are planted in the geometry of a star. That means five rows of four trees each.
The solution to Monday Microsofty 94. Ten trees are planted in five rows of four rows each./ChatGPT.
The Monday Microsofty is a weekly feature of Mind Matters News. Here are the links to all the puzzles and answers to date:
Monday Microsofty 94: A Tree Planting Dilemma This week’s puzzle sounds simple but it involves thinking in terms other than squares. The answer to last week’s “count the squares” puzzle can be turned into a formula that can be applied to any number of dimensions.
Monday Microsofty 93: Square dance with the mathematicians! How do we determine how many squares there are in squares of squares? Or cubes of cubes? Hint for the handshake problem in Microsofty 92: Friedrich Gauss (1777–1855) provided a formula for this.
Image Credit: ngad - Monday Microsofty 92: When the nerd enters a room… Shaking hands is expected. Here’s a math question about the custom, to delight the true nerds among us. A hint for Microsofty 91: Where might Jimmy the Mooch have found some spare energy? You can find links and answers to Microsofties 91 through 87 here as well.
Monday Microsofty 87: Are you as good a detective as you think? Here’s a test from the world of codebreaking To solve last week’s puzzle, look up the definition of “calorie.” Are we using the word to mean the same thing? You can find links and answers to Microsofties 77 through 86 here as well.
Monday Microsofty 76: The Smoking Gun explains a computer scientist or engineer, a law enforcement officer often relies on abductive reasoning to crack a case, so with this in mind, you will have to crack last week’s puzzle. You can find links and answers to Microsofties 55 through 75 here as well.
Monday Microsofty 55: “It happens every spring.” Baseball, that is. Here’s a puzzle that takes in baseball’s summer. To solve last week’s puzzle, you don’t need to know the distance. Check the problem again for the number you do need to know. You can find links and answers here to Microsofties 51 through 54 as well.
Image Credit: Oleksiy - Monday Microsofty 50: Cutting through the cornbread. How did Yuri Senior cut the cornbread into eight identical portions using only three straight cuts? You can guess the answer to Microsofty 49 if you try the test question yourself at home, using a small mirror. You can find links and answers here to Microsofties 46 through 49 as well.
Monday Microsofty 45: Can Tony beat the fast-food curfew? An early curfew on fast food service motivated a boy to exercise more vigorously. But how fast was he pedalling? To solve Micro Softy 44, recall that Tony doesn’t need to take the individual pills each day, only the prescribed amount of each. You can find links and answers here to Micros Softies 41 through 44 as well.
Monday Microsofty 40: The fate of a false prophet. He wasn’t actually fired for being a false prophet but for something that his prophecy unintentionally revealed. The solution to Micro Softy 39 lies in considering an alternative possible meaning of a word commonly used in sports. You can find links and answers here to Micro Softies 30 through 39 as well.
Image Credit: New Africa - Monday Microsofty 29: A funeral lament in four lines. The funeral director was puzzled by Dan’s description of his relationship to the deceased but there was no question that his grief was sincere You can find links and answers here to Microsofties 22 through 29 as well.
Monday Microsofty 21: Finding More of the Deadly Fentanyl Pills. You can find links and answers here to Microsofties 11 through 20 as well.
Monday Microsofty 11: What Happened to That Other Dollar? You can find links and answers here to the first ten Micro Softies. Have fun!
