Problematics | Where Hitchcock meets Einstein
This week, an Einstein puzzle with Hitchcock movies rather than zebras, and an easier teaser that may look deceptively difficult.
If you have ever been to a film festival where a number of movies are playing simultaneously on different screens, the schedule may have sometimes forced you to miss a few you wanted to watch. At larger festivals, the organisers will likely ensure that the latest releases from top directors are never screened simultaneously. At smaller festivals showing a retrospective of a departed director, however,
you may have to choose between two or more movies playing at the same time.
Such situations can provide the setting for an Einstein or zebra puzzle. Like the one below.
#Puzzle 119.1
An Alfred Hitchcock retrospective is playing at a multiplex that has four screens housed in four halls. The halls are aligned in a row from left to right and are named after different colours, while the screens are numbered 1 to 4 based on the position of their respective halls in the row.
An elderly couple and their two children, each working in a different profession but all Hitchcock fans, arrives for the retrospective. To their disappointment, they find that four different Hitchcock movies will be playing simultaneously on the four screens. So they split up, each opting to watch a different movie. Your clues:
1. The vet watches the movie on Screen-3, the surgeon on Screen-1.
2. The other two members of the family are a radiologist and a poet.
3. No one watches a movie that begins with the same letter as their profession.
4. ‘Suspicion’ is playing on Screen-3, ‘Vertigo’ on Screen-4.
5. ‘Psycho’ is playing on an odd-numbered screen.
6. ‘Vertigo’ is playing in a hall adjacent to the blue hall
7. The daughter is in a hall adjacent to the hall where ‘Rebecca’ is playing.
8. The father is in the brown hall; another hall is white.
9. The mother is watching the movie on Screen-1; the son is in another hall.
10. The brown hall and the green hall are at the two ends of the row.
Who is what, and who is watching which movie on which screen in which hall?
#Puzzle 119.2
Martin Gardner loved to set this puzzle. In the illustration, O is the centre of a circle. The rectangle OAQP is constructed as shown. The side OA is extended to meet the circumference at B, and the lengths OA and AB are given.
What is the length AP?
MAILBOX: LAST WEEK’S SOLVERS
#Puzzle 116.1
Dear Mr Kabir,
The pricing scheme is as follows:
The three sisters (with 10, 30 and 50 eggs) divide their eggs into batches of 7 and sell them at a meagre 3.kopeks/batch. The eggs remaining will be: 3 with the eldest sister, 2 with the middle sister, 1 with the youngest sister. They sell these remaining eggs at 9 kopeks/egg. Their respective total earnings are:
Eldest sister: (1 x 3) + (3 x 9) = 30 kopeks
Middle sister: (4 x 3) + (2 x 9) = 30 kopeks
Youngest sister: (7 x 3) + (1 x 9) = 30 kopeks
Hence all the conditions set by their mother are fulfilled.
— Shri Ram Aggarwal, Delhi
#Puzzle 118.2
Hi Kabir,
The letters I could use were: E I R J V X Z. Possible words can be EERIE or REIVE. So, solving this is not possible with the given information.
— Dr Sunita Gupta, Delhi
When I created this puzzle, I had EERIE in mind, and tried to rule out all other possible solutions. I thought EERIE was indeed the only possible solution, but readers came up with the alternatives REIVE and REVIE. Both are dictionary words, so this is a case of the solver outmatching the setter. In the following lists, I am also mentioning those who gave EERIE as the only answer.
Solved both puzzles: Dr Sunita Gupta (Delhi), Sanjay Gupta (Delhi), YK Munjal (Delhi)
Solved #Puuzle 118.1: Shri Ram Aggarwal (Delhi), Yadvendra Somra* (Sonipat), Ajay Ashok* (Delhi), Kanwarjit Singh* (Chief Commissioner of Income-tax, retired), Professor Anshul Kumar* (Delhi), Sabornee Jana* (Mumbai)
*These readers and Shishir Gupta (Indore) gave EERIE as the answer to #Puzzle 118.2.
Problematics will be back next week. Please send in your replies by Friday noon to problematics@hindustantimes.com.
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