Wednesday, June 29, 2011

Wacky Wednesday - Brain Teaser!

As mentioned before, I have switched the Tuesday and Wednesday topics for this week.

This one's kind of silly, but here it goes...

Monkeyopolis has a population of 12,345 monkeys. To regulate such a large group, Monkeyopolis' head monkey, Guyrilla, has made a new rule regarding 'monkey do chess' (http://www.pathguy.com/chess/MonkeyDo.htm). If a game is won, the losing monkey must give two bananas to the winning monkey. If a game is drawn, the monkeys must exchange one banana each in good faith. Fred Isachimp decides to play in a 'monkey do' tournament. He comes in with fifteen bananas. After all five games, his score is 3.0/5.0. Exactly two of his games were drawn. Assuming no bananas are consumed, created, destroyed, or given away outside of what is required by the new rule, how many bananas does Fred walk home with?

Answer below
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
V

If you said seventeen, good try, but Fred got a 1 point bye in his first game. He took home fifteen bananas. Since tournaments don't award byes to the same person (or monkey) twice, "fifteen or seventeen" is the most logical answer. That is, assuming Fred was in the pairing system every round, with no 1/2 point byes or withdrawn games.

Okay that one wasn't a very fair trick, so I'll have more brain teasers from Monkeyopolis some other time...