Magnetic Moments

E4

Want to play a game? Okay close your eyes (not now — after you’ve finished reading) and conjure up in your mind the image of your favourite room. Now slowly make things begin to vanish from there. All the furniture along with all the fixtures like conditioners of air, cleaners of vacuums, cookers of ranges, colours of televisions, carpets, couches, curtains, cushions, closets, cabinets, clothes, cutlery, crockery, kitchenware, commodes, cosmetics, correspondence, cameras, computers, crooks, cutthroats, crabs and whatever the heck else you have in that favourite room of yours, till you’re left with just four walls, a ceiling or two, a door and a floor without any windows either.

Got that so far? Good, now turn the room into a wooden one with no metal, none at all. If there’re nails or concealed wiring, ducting or cabling, make those disappear too. Finally, take off all your clothes and throw them out the door and imagine yourself standing inside the room in your birthday suit holding two small identical bars of metal of the same shape, size, colour, taste and smell. And if you think that’s going to make you feel like a fool, here’s another one: one of those pieces of metal is a magnet and one of them isn’t. Unless you can tell which is which they’re neither going to give you your clothes back nor your favourite room. Can you do it?

Those who are in the habit of still remembering their junior high school days might immediately come up with a nice ninth grade answer that’s correct but, well, a bit boring. So here’s the twist: can you think of at least one more way other than that to find out which piece is the magnet? You should be able to because there are about four more ways and more are being discovered almost every day.

DEAR MS

Paper-Tiger-Dept:

(The problem was: “Consider the following words: ROUND*, PUZZLE, HOT, LADY*, CRADLE, BOMBAY, LAUGHING*. Each word represents one part of a two-word set with the asterisk indicating whether the second word comes in front or the back. You have to complete each with the name of an animal and then say what’s the logic in listing them together.”

The Endgame was too easy to waste time on but the other was tempting, so here goes: round ROBIN (league matches); MONKEY puzzle (tree); hot DOG (fast-food); lady BIRD (beetle); CATS cradle (string game); Bombay DUCK (kind of fish); laughing JACKASS (bird). The logic is that the addition of an animal completely changes the meaning of the word. Looking forward to more such puzzles (which don’t make a monkey of me!) — Hema Parthasarathy, hemapartha133@gmail.com

Good one, here ! ROUND ROBIN is a tournament; MONKEY PUZZLE is a tree; HOT DOG is fast-food; LADY BIRD is a beetle; CAT’S CRADLE is a string game; BOMBAY DUCK is a fish and LAUGHING JACKASS is a bird. The logic is obvious. The meaning of the word formed is nowhere near the meaning of the two separate words. — Saifuddin Khomosi, saif_sfk@hotmail.com

(Yes, Chris D’Souza, cryptoverse@gmail.com; Nalanda Chakraborty, nalanda_c@yahoo.com and Altaf Ahmed, ctrlaltaf@yahoo.in you also got it right. But that’s nothing compared to how many got the watermelon problem right. So I suggest in the interests of retaining some nonexistent dignity here, we quietly forget about it and pretend it was never run. Bear in mind though that it was a reader submission and I was kind of blameless. — MS)

ENDGAME(S)

1.American coin denominations go like this: 1 cent, 5 cents, 10 cents, 25 cents, 50 cents and one dollar. Now a box contains two coins that total 55 cents. One of the coins is not a 5 cent coin. What are the coins?

2.Only one of the following statements is true — which one? (a) One of these statements is false. (b) Two of these statements are false. (c) Three of these statements are false. (d) Four of these statements are false. (e) Five of these statements are false. (f) Six of these statements are false.

(To get in touch with Mukul, mail him at mukul.mindsport@gmail.com)