Everyone is sceptical about exit polls, especially when a couple have failed to identify the real winner. Mathematician John Allen Paulos hazards a guess or two (on the last US presidential elections): “Why did the exit polls taken on election day in the battleground states differ so starkly from the final tallies in those states? Of course, what makes these discrepancies more than a technical problem in statistical methodology is that there is a much less likely, much more ominous explanation for them: massive fraud. Fraud is hard to believe for many reasons, one being the widespread nature, extending over different states and regions, of the shift to Bush. The difficulty of concealing a conspiracy grows very rapidly with the number of conspirators. Another disturbing possibility is that there was no co-ordinated conspiracy, but rather many people were working independently to subvert the election. And there is one more scenario that doesn’t require many conspirators: the tabulating machines and the software they run conceivably could have been dragooned into malevolent service by relatively few operatives. Without paper trails, this would be difficult, but perhaps not impossible, to establish.”

PUZZLE 1: Each of the five bachelors, who all lived in the same building, ordered an item from the same catalogue. Unfortunately, the shippers got confused and each item was delivered to the wrong apartment. Can you determine each man’s full name, what each man ordered and what was actually delivered, and which apartment each man lived in.

Roger, who doesn’t live in an end apartment, ordered the Television set. Tom lived next door to the man who received the dishware.

Mr Weiseman, who didn’t receive the automotive tools, lives two apartments from the man who ordered the downhill skis and one apartment from Harry.

Ed, whose last name isn’t Smith, lives in apartment #3 but he didn’t receive the automotive tools. Mr Smith, who doesn’t live in apartment #4, ordered the golf clubs, but he received the item that Mr Campbell ordered, which weren’t downhill skis.

The bachelor in apartment #1, which isn’t Tom, ordered what Al received. The man in apartment #2, who didn’t receive the golf clubs, lives next door to where what he ordered was delivered. Mr Bates didn’t order the downhill skis. The television set was not delivered to Ed’s apartment. Tom lives in apartment #5.

Solutions on May 22

CORRECT ENTRIES

April 24

Kuntlesh Dewangan, Ranchi; Yash Patodia; Anwesha Chowdhury, Siliguri; Rashmi Kumari, Bokaro; Marufa Abdullah, Asansol; K Sengupta; Ashish Agarwal, Cal- 4; Nirmal Kumar Agarwala, Cal- 89; Sudipto Banerjee, Minneapolis, S.P.S.Jain, Noida, Abhinandan Khan, Abhijit Hazra, Barrackpore; Dipak Singh; Ravi Raja, Cal -20; Ranjan Sur Chaudhury, Cal- 112; Shayak Bhattacharjee, Ravi Raja, Cal- 20.

Please send your entries to knowhow@abpmail.com,within 10 days.

PUZZLE CRACKED

The response this week was great. Brainstormer Ravi Raja was methodical in his approach. Here goes the solution sent by him.

Solution 1: The initial number of horses was seven.

Hint: Let the number of buyers be , then the number of horses = (2n - 1). As there are three buyers so the equation reduces to 23- 1= 7.

Solution 2: The prices of the four items are: $1.20, $1.25, $1.50, and $3.16.

Hint: Let a, b, c and d be the cost of the four items. Based on the given conditions we get two set of equations: a + b +c + d = 711 and axbxcxd = 711000000 = 26 x 32 x 56 x 79. Since 79 x 9 = 711. Using these two equations we can find out the costs of the items. On solving , we get 7.11 as the answer, thereby implying that the cost of the items are $1.20, $1.25, $1.50, and $3.16