Category Archives: Puzzles

Puzzle #99: World’s Most Famous Puzzle Currently!

Posted on April 18, 2015 by Alok Goyal

I am simply amazed how one single puzzle has proliferated across the social media in the last 10 days – the puzzle from Singapore, popularized by Alex Bellos’ blog in The Guardian. Many of you would have seen this, but … Continue reading →

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Puzzle #98: How Many Days to be Disease Free

Posted on April 12, 2015 by Alok Goyal

Thanks to Pallav for yet another very interesting, and in this case, a classic puzzle. My 11th grade chemistry teacher, Mr. Gopinath, had given it to me, and I love this puzzle. Here it goes: In a village of 100 … Continue reading →

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Puzzle #97: Pirates and Gold Coins – Part II

Posted on April 5, 2015 by Alok Goyal

I had posted a puzzle earlier (Puzzle #3) – https://alokgoyal1971.com/2013/02/10/puzzle-3-five-pirates-and-looted-gold-coins/. This puzzle is an extension of the same puzzle, and also attributed to the same family – this time to Alok Mittal from his Mathematical Circles group. Original puzzles goes as … Continue reading →

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Puzzle #96: Daughter’s Ages

Posted on March 15, 2015 by Alok Goyal

This is a wonderful puzzle contributed by Pallav Pandey – thank you Pallav. This is a nice puzzle that does not require use of any specific concept, and should be fun for children as well. 2 maths prof who used … Continue reading →

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Puzzle #95: How Many Ways to Play the Tabla

Posted on March 8, 2015 by Alok Goyal

Heard this awesome puzzle yesterday while watching a video of Manjul Bhargava with my children (thanks to my wife Pooja to introduce me to this one). For those who do not know, Manjul Bhargava is a Princeton Professor who got … Continue reading →

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Puzzle #94: Two Eggs and a Building

Posted on March 1, 2015 by Alok Goyal

This is another beauty of a puzzle from Gurmeet’s puzzle collection at gurmeet.net/puzzles/, thanks Gurmeet! With two eggs and a building with 100 floors, what is the optimal strategy for finding the lowest floor at which an egg will break when … Continue reading →

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Puzzle #93: Slice a Pizza Within a Cricket Team

Posted on February 21, 2015 by Alok Goyal

Here is a world cup cricket puzzle, the text modified from an original one from http://www.mindcipher.com In Australia, the Indian cricket team was not able to get anything to eat, and were finally able to get one large circular vegetarian … Continue reading →

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Puzzle #92: Connecting the Four Corners of a Square

Posted on February 15, 2015 by Alok Goyal

This is a beautiful geometry puzzle that my friend, Alok Mittal, gave to children in his Mathematical Circles class yesterday. There are four towns at the corners of a perfect square with a side of 1 km. Your task is … Continue reading →

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Puzzle #91: Pebble Piles

Posted on February 8, 2015 by Alok Goyal

Another very nice puzzle I read on gurmeet.net/puzzles/, which as I have mentioned before, has a set of very nice mathematical puzzles. You are given three piles with 5, 49 and 51 pebbles respectively. Two operations are allowed: (a) merge two … Continue reading →

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Puzzle #90: The Three Gamblers

Posted on February 1, 2015 by Alok Goyal

Got this very nice puzzle from Vaibhav Kalia a while back, posting it on his behalf here. The three of us made some bets. First, Walter won from Martin as much as Walter had originally. Next, Martin won from Steve as much … Continue reading →

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