On re-reading this today, i’m dismayed that it reads like a criticism of Ian. It was meant to be an explanation as to why it took me so long to fumble through to a solution and to point out how difficult I have found it can be to create an interesting puzzle that is totally unambiguous (as I have found to my dismay, several times in the past).
You can hopefully print this off and try it out using £’s or tiddly-winks…
The aim is to fill nine of the ten red circles with coins or tiddly-winks or anything else that is handy.
Place a coin on any EMPTY circle on the star. Jump it over any ONE adjacent circle (either empty or filled) to another empty circle in a straight line. “A” jumping over “B” to land on “D” would be an example and D would then be filled and no longer available as a subsequent starting point.
It is possible to fill nine of the ten circles in this way.
There’s a handful of unsolved/un-explained Teasers in the thread. I’ll re-post them below and provide the solutions/explanations later today or tomorrow, unless others jump in before hand.
I cheated and used algebra and not geometry !
The line of the hypotenuse is y= 5-5/12 x and the diagonal line of the square is simply y=x. Therefore these two lines cross when x=5-5/12 x or x=60/17.
If you want to use geometry you can calculate the area of the overall triangle is 30. The square has area a^2 (and we’re searching for a) and the two small triangles have areas of 1/2 base x height and the base and height depend on a. Equating these three areas to the total yields the same answer as the algebra but in a few more lines.
I don’t expect anybody to go to the trouble of explaining the “Tethered Goat” problem that IanG solved a few days ago, so, in order to put all your minds at rest, and send most of you to sleep as well, here goes…
!
