For a change, this one is not a mathematical puzzle, but a nice logic puzzle (and there is no play of words here). I took this one from mathsisfun.com
A man is stranded on an island covered in forest.
One day, when the wind is blowing from the west, lightning strikes the west end of the island and sets fire to the forest. The fire is very violent, burning everything in its path, and without intervention the fire will burn the whole island, killing the man in the process.
There are cliffs around the island, so he cannot jump off.
How can the man survive the fire? (There are no buckets or any other means to put out the fire)
As always, please send your answers as comments within the blog (preferred), or send an e-mail to alokgoyal_2001@yahoo.com. Please do share the puzzle with others if you like, and please also send puzzles that you have come across that you think I can share in this blog.
Happy fire fighting!
If he can chop off neighboring trees or start another fire in a west->east direction, he will hopefully have some burnt remains on the east to camp safely 🙂
A controlled fire line can prevent forest fires from extending past a particular point. He can cut and burn some trees a safe distance east of the fire , so the fire will not spread.
Unfortunately he did not have any axe of any other material to do so, but a very good thought!