Monday Microsofty 87: Are You As Good a Detective As You Think?
Here’s a test from the world of codebreakingTo solve last week’s puzzle, look up the definition of “calorie.” Are we using the word to mean the same thing?
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Monday Micro Softy 81: Termites Are Surprisingly Smart
Provided we agree to count swarm intelligence, which we also use in computer scienceSwarm intelligence enables the colony to converge on the shortest and most efficient path to food without any individual being especially smart.
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What AI Has and Hasn’t Solved Recently in Math
We need to look at the distinction between horizontal and vertical innovationAI displays very impressive horizontal integration (integrating existing concepts) but not vertical integration (entirely new inventions).
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Monday Micro Softy 80: The Digits of Least Significance
The patterns found in numbers can be useful as well as fascinatingLast week’s puzzle is also easier to solve if we observe some of the patterns that number theory reveals.
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Monday Microsofty 79: The Last Digits in Fermat’s Last Theorem
Did Andrew Wiles really prove Fermat’s Last Theorem? Today we offer you a chance to decideAbout last week’s MicroSofty: Think of the probability issue as just a distraction…
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Micro Softy 62: The Ordeal of Sisyphus Fats
A hill, a bowling ball, and the mathematics of persistenceSisyphus Fats, exercises by pushing a giant bowling ball up a 100 foot hill. Every minute, he pushes the ball three feet closer to the top and then the bowling ball slides two feet back.
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Monday Micro Softy 57: My Mother’s Mother-in-Law
Can you figure out this relativity puzzle?Part of the trick to solving Monday Microsofty 56 is to decide whether or not to give it a high five.
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Micro Softy 56: Elon Musk Parody’s Circle of Numbers
The circle of numbers looks pretty simple until you start thinking about it...If you suspected that last week’s talk of baseball was just a distraction from the real puzzle hint, now you can find out.
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Monday Micro Softy 55: “It Happens Every Spring”
Baseball, that is. Here’s a puzzle that takes in baseball's favorite season, summerTo 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.
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Micro Softy 54: A Plane Problem for Aspiring Engineers
The senator is leaving Washington to avoid the governor and their planes are headed in opposite directionsToday’s Micro Softy tests whether you are clever enough with math to code computers or be an engineer. Here’s the story: Senator Kornn did not like Governor Friar. Both were from Texas. When Kornn learned that Governor Friar was visiting Washington, DC, Kornn said “This town’s not big enough for the both of us.” So Kornn decided to leave DC for that period. Kornn and Friar get on planes at the same time. One was at Reagan International Airport in DC and the other was at the Dallas Fort Worth (DFW) Airport. So each was flying to the other’s airport. Both planes took off at the same time. After a while, Kornn looked out of his first-class window and saw Read More ›
Home Ownership: Madness Over 30-Year Mortgages
It is tempting to put borrowing and investment decisions in separate mental buckets, but they are intimately relatedWhen considering a mortgage, the correct comparison is not total payments but the return on the borrowed money versus the loan’s annual percentage rate.
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Monday Micro Softy 53: Kicking In the Door
To solve this puzzle, you will need to sharpen your abductive reasoning skillsThere are actually two possible solutions to last week’s puzzle, depending on how you interpret the pattern of the arithmetic.
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Monday Micro Softy 52: Elon Musk Parody Asks: Are You a Genius?
The puzzle comes from a parody X account but it is a genuine stumperLast week’s puzzle is easy to solve if we recall how many parents a child needs and of what type…
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Monday Micro Softy 51: A Tale of Two Auto Mechanics
I recognized the two mechanics when I went to the garage…To solve Microsofty 50, about cutting a loaf of cornbread into eight pieces by making three slices, try thinking in three dimensions.
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Monday Micro Softy 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.
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Monday Micro Softy 46: Three Loving Brothers in New York State
Why did Mario, who was just trying to economize on Uber trips, end up visiting Luigi five times as often as he visited Bob?A hint for solving Micro Softy 45: Average speed is independent of the distance to the store.
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Monday Micro Softy 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 pedaling?To solve Micro Softy 44, recall that Tony doesn’t need to take the individual pills each day, only the prescribed amount of each.
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Micro Softy 44: Pete’s Pill Problem
Pete, alone on a desert island, accidentally scattered the pills he must take in the correct order. He has only a few numbers to work with to reconstruct his instructionsFor Micro Softy 43, the bookkeeper’s trick consists in applying the fact that when two adjacent digits are switched, the difference is always divisible by 9.
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Micro Softy 43: The Bookkeeper’s Trick
How could division by 9 explain what happens when numbers in a sum are inadvertently transposed?Micro Softy 42 is easier to solve if we recall the rules for dividing by each of these numbers in turn.
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Monday Micro Softy 42: Bacteria Multiply by Dividing
But our puzzlers must solve this math question without doing either. And no calculators allowed.A hint for solving Micro Softy 41: Dividing an unusually shaped piece of land among four sons rather than three is easier if you think in terms of fractals.
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