Category Archives: Puzzles

Puzzle #149: The Funny Plane Seating

Posted on August 8, 2016 by Alok Goyal

A very catchy puzzle contributed by my friend and entrepreneur, Pallav Pandey – thanks Pallav! Imagine there are a 100 people in line to board a plane that seats 100. The first person in line realizes he lost his boarding … Continue reading →

Posted in Puzzles | Tagged , | 7 Comments

Puzzle #148: The First Black Ace

Posted on July 30, 2016 by Alok Goyal

Yet another wonderful puzzle from Martin Gardner’s book “The Colossal Book of Short Problems and Puzzles”. This one is a probability puzzle, and something you should try with your children. A deck of 52 playing cards is shuffled and placed facedown … Continue reading →

Posted in Puzzles | Tagged , | 5 Comments

Puzzle #147: The “Aha” IBM Puzzle!

Posted on July 17, 2016 by Alok Goyal

Sometimes I worry whether I will continue to get good puzzles for children, but every such time one comes across some beautiful puzzle! I came across one such yesterday in Martin Gardner’s book “The Colossal Book of Short Problems and … Continue reading →

Posted in Puzzles | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

Puzzle #146: The Proud Party Goers

Posted on July 10, 2016 by Alok Goyal

This is a very nice puzzle I got from a site (fivethirtyeight.com) recommended to me by Suman Saraf – thanks Suman. It’s Friday and that means it’s party time! A group of N people are in attendance at your shindig, … Continue reading →

Posted in Puzzles | Tagged , | 2 Comments

Puzzle #145: The WHO Puzzle

Posted on July 3, 2016 by Alok Goyal

This is another puzzle from the Ramanujan collection, a nice probability puzzle! The World Health Organization has just identified a new disease. The good news is that it is very rare: only 1 in every million people has it. The … Continue reading →

Posted in Puzzles | Tagged , | 2 Comments

Puzzle #144: Pirates and Gold Once Again!

Posted on June 5, 2016 by Alok Goyal

This is a beauty of a puzzle taken from the recent internet puzzle series on Ramanujan going on. Several great puzzles, this one of them. Jack and Will are very successful pirates who have become very wealthy from their years … Continue reading →

Posted in Puzzles | Tagged , | 2 Comments

Puzzle #143: Magic 8

Posted on May 28, 2016 by Alok Goyal

This is a simple puzzle, and I hope that the adults will take the pain of showing this to their children. This was contributed to me by my daughter, Arushi, who got this puzzle in her holiday homework. While the … Continue reading →

Posted in Puzzles | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Puzzle #142: Bills and Two Hats

Posted on May 22, 2016 by Alok Goyal

This one is a simple problem, is a variation of a probability puzzle posted about 3 years back – try it with your teenage children! This one is again taken from The Colossal Book of Short Puzzles and Problems by … Continue reading →

Posted in Puzzles | Tagged , | 3 Comments

Puzzle #141: Wolfs and Sheep

Posted on May 15, 2016 by Alok Goyal

This is a “addictive” problem – hard to get rid of until you solve it. Thanks to Pooja Goyal, my wife, who gave me this puzzle a few days back from a  Math festival she was at. Place 5 wolves … Continue reading →

Posted in Puzzles | Tagged , | 4 Comments

Puzzle #140: Traffic Flow in Floyd’s Knob – Version 2

Posted on May 2, 2016 by Alok Goyal

As I mentioned in the answer for Puzzle #138, I ended up posting the original version of the puzzle and not the one posted by Martin Gardner. I like the puzzle so much, that I am posting the variation from … Continue reading →

Posted in Puzzles | Tagged , | 1 Comment