thnik again!

At the last conference I covered for my local newspaper something strange happened. Suddenly, and without visible provocation, one of the delegates got up and screamed on the top of his voice to all the others “You are all liars!”

Half a minute later a second delegate got up and screamed the same! And, it continued in the same fashion. Finally all 100 delegates had accused the others of being liars.

Assuming that each delegate always tells the truth or always lies, how many truthful delegates were there?

It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit. - Harry S Truman

The ham in the middle is a card game where one only uses Ace, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9 of Spades. The Ace counts as 1. Three players get three cards each. The one whose sum of cards is in the middle of the other two is the winner.

When I played ham in the middle last night I got three cards that I knew would make me the winner. Which three cards?

Last night somebody broke into my apartment and replaced everything with exact duplicates… When I pointed it out to my roommate, he said, ‘Do I know you?’ - Steven Wright

Two youngsters standing at the same spot in a circle start to run in opposite directions. When they meet again where they started one has run 11 laps and the other 7. How many times did they meet?

I’m a godmother, that’s a great thing to be, a godmother. She calls me god for short, that’s cute, I taught her that. - Ellen DeGeneres

Adrian Paenza is an Argentinian University math professor and sports journalist. He has written four books to popularise mathematics. They can be downloaded for personal use as pdf files here. 

Here is a problem he presented in a TV series that can be seen in all of Latin America and the US.

Several of this week’s problems were taken from here.

Play the Eyeballing game here.

- Imagine you were in a room with an infinite number of ten cent coins.
- Wouldn’t the floor cave in?
- There is also a watch in the room.
- Am I alone?
- No, I am there with you.
- Oh! I was hoping for Marilyn Monroe.
- Sorry!
- What do we do?
- We have one minute to do what we do.
- And that is?
- In the first 30 seconds I will put coin 1 to 10 in a hat.
- The coins have been numbered?
- Yes, but that was done before we entered so you don’t have to worry how that was done.
- OK. Now what?
- Before the 30 seconds have ended you will remove coin number 1 from the hat.
- What on earth for?
- Bear with me. It will get more interesting.
- OK.
- The next 15 seconds I will put coins 11 to 20 in the hat.
- And I will remove coin number 2 before the 15 seconds have lapsed?
- Exactly!
- And we continue like this? For the half of the time that is left you will add ten more coins and I will remove a coin.
- Yes, but not just any coin. The first time you will remove coin number 1, then 2, then 3, and so on.
- I thought that was understood.
- It doesn’t hurt to make it clear.
- And the question is?
- How many coins will there be in the hat when the minute is gone?
- But that is obvious! Can we dream about Marilyn now?

The rules of Go are so elegant, organic and rigorously logical that if intelligent lifeforms exist elsewhere in the universe they almost certainly play Go. – Edward Lasker