In the past we had planned to form a club with people passionate about mathematical puzzles. Needless to say, our experience was rather sad. However, the wish of establishing such a club refuses to go away. I, alongwith a few fellow enthusiasts, are in the process of forming ?Gardner 90?. The charter for the same is being drawn up. A friend of mine has agreed to offer book prizes for the first six months. If you are interested, I mean really interested, then please send me an email at debkumar@kqscore.com. Please remember there is a fee for joining the club and all members should have access to computers. This is our tribute to dear old Martin Gardner.

PUZZLE 1

a) There are 8 small towns on the Triango island. They are interconnected by ?direct? roads: roads on Triango do neither cross nor branch outside the towns. How many of those connecting roads are there at most on Triango?

b) A horse named Cori lives on the edge of an 1,000-mile-long island. She has got 3,000 bananas that she wishes to transport to a market across the island. She can carry a maximum of 1,000 bananas at a time. Cori needs to eat 1 banana for each mile she travels. How many bananas can she get to the market?

Solutions on December 20

CORRECT ENTRIES

November 15

Kaushik Saha, IIT Kharagpur; Rohit Ray, Dum Dum; Vinod and Ragini Verma, Garden Reach, Cal-43; Pramit Mukherjee, Serampore; Arnab Sadhukhan, Barrackpore; Deepaloke Chatterjee, Calcutta Boys? School; Mahamudur Islam, Malda; Souvik Roy, Agartala.

CORRECT ENTRIES

November 8

Akhilesh Kumar, Tollygunje; Suhail Ghosh, Cal-75; Deepak K Agarwal, Jadavpur; Saptarshi Chatterjee, IJT-Calcutta; Gordhan Singh Rathore, IIT- Kgp; Sayan Datta Gupta, BEC-Sibpur; Vishal Lama, Siliguri; Sudipa Sarkar, Jamshedpur; Rajib K. Das,Tezpur; Narendra Kumar, NHPC-Assam; Sumona Bera, Ranchi; Rohit Ray, Dum Dum; Vinod Verma, Garden Reach; Partha Pal, Siliguri; Biswajit Saha, Medical College; Abhik Banerjee, Haldia; Anurag Gupta, Jamshedpur; Gautam Gupta, Rourkela; K.C. Satpathy, Rourkela; N.Srikanth Reddy, Jamshedpur; Antaryami Swain, Bhubaneswar; Joyita Mukherjee, Ranchi; Sabyasachi Kundu, Siliguri; Saikat Sengupta, Guwahati; Tapangshu Das, IIT-Kgp; Ravi Raja, via email; Rahul Ghose, Howrah; Vinod Verma, Meghana, Anubhuti and Ranjita, Garden Reach; Arijit Mutsuddi, Guwahati-11; Sumita Das, BEC-Sibpore; Avinash Singh, Katihar; Sudeep Agarwal, Purulia; Amalendu Mukherjee, BEC, Shibpore; Saibal Ghosh, Guwahati; Shouvik Chattopadhyay, Sodepur; Anamitra Majumder, Guwahati; Arnab Sengupta, La Martinierre; Steve Lalthantluanga, Shillong; Jnanendra Nath Ray, Cal-48; Sumantanath Naik, Balasore.

PUZZLE CRACKED

Solution 1: The smallest number divided by 2, 3, and 4, leaving a remainder 1, is: [L.C.M. (2, 3, 4)+1]=12+ 1=13. So Green had 13 candies.

Solution 2: Clark is the carpenter, Daw is the painter and Fuller is the plumber.

We have the following facts: the painter knows the carpenter, who in turn knows the plumber, but the painter does not know the plumber and Fuller does not know Daw. This implies that either of Fuller and Daw is a painter and the other is a plumber, and hence Clark is the carpenter. Also, we know that the plumber makes more money than the painter and Daw makes more money then Clark. From here, we can deduce the following: (i) Daw (Plumber); Clark (Carpenter); Fuller (Painter) (ii) Daw (Plumber); Fuller (Painter); Clark (Carpenter) (iii) Fuller (Plumber); Daw (Painter); Clark (Carpenter).