The Grey Labyrinth is a collection of puzzles, riddles, mind games, paradoxes and other intellectually challenging diversions. Related topics: puzzle games, logic puzzles, lateral thinking puzzles, philosophy, mind benders, brain teasers, word problems, conundrums, 3d puzzles, spatial reasoning, intelligence tests, mathematical diversions, paradoxes, physics problems, reasoning, math, science.

mith · Pitbull of Truth

This thread is for discussing possible errors, typos, and other problems in old GL puzzles. All suggestions will be considered, but we reserve the right to disagree with you. Felicitous

guy · Icarian Member

MatthewV · Daedalian Member :_

Don't worry, all the text will be back to normal tomorrow. Have a nice April Fools day!

dooey100* · Guest

I would like to suggest that puzzle 15, Find the Soda say that all of the labels are wrong, I assumed that 1 could be right and the other two switched, which isn't the case.

Courk · Daedalian Member

It does say "Years of experience have shown that the labels are never correct."

beachbum* · Icarian Member

I believe that that official solution to Kevin Lin's Potpourri III, question #4, is incorrect.

Assume that the climber begins on a day (and in a location) where the conversion from standard time to daylight savings time takes place.

At 2 AM, the climber stops at point "X" to adjust the time on his watch to 3 AM.

Now, at noon, the climber decides to race down most of the mountain, and reaches point "X" sometime between 2 PM and 3 PM. Let's say for example, he (or she) gets there at 2:30 PM. At this location on the climb, it is true that the hour and minute hands would have swept through 2:30 as the climber moved the hands forward an hour. However, it is likely that the second hand (which on most watches moves independent of the hour and minute hands when adjusting the time), would not have been in the same position at that point.

I was actually quite surprised that this wasn't the intended answer, as I suspected a trick, especially since the question mentioned the second hand.

Of course, the reason it takes the climber a full 10 hours to travel the rest of the way down, while it only took 2 hours to climb to that point, is that he injured his leg by foolishly racing down most of the mountain so fast!

beachbum* · Icarian Member

Ok, I stand corrected. I just looked at the puzzle wording again, and it specifically states that the climber reaches camp "exactly 24 hours after he left". So much for feeling clever today!

I think it would have been a better puzzle with the 24 hour stipulation left out, because I suspect that most puzzlers would have come across some variant of this puzzle before, and might have missed the new twist.