12 Soviet puzzles for those who are one hundred percent confident in their ingenuity

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

Time-tested puzzles are waiting for you to solve them.

1. Wise miller

The miller showed his acquaintances 9 bags of grain, which stood as shown in the picture, and said:

“I’ll ask you a riddle about these sacks of wheat. Notice that there is 1 bag on the sides, then there are pairs of bags, and in the middle you see 3 bags. If you multiply the left pair 28 by the left bag 7, you get 196, which is indicated on the middle bags. But if you multiply the right pair 34 by the right bag 5, you will not get 196. The problem is as follows: rearrange these 9 bags so that each pair multiplied by its neighbor gives the number in the middle.

You need to place the bags as follows: 2, 78, 156, 39, 4. Here, each pair multiplied by the adjacent bag gives the number in the middle. At the same time, five bags had to be moved.

There are three more bag layouts: 4, 39, 156, 78, 2, or 3, 58, 174, 29, 6, or 6, 29, 174, 58, 3, but this would require moving seven bags.

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2. How many potatoes?

3 peasants walked and went to the inn to rest and dine. They ordered the hostess to boil potatoes, but they themselves fell asleep. The hostess cooked potatoes, but did not wake the guests, but put a bowl of food on the table and left.

One peasant woke up, saw potatoes and, in order not to wake up his comrades, counted the potatoes, ate his share, and fell asleep again. Soon the other woke up; he did not know that one of the comrades had already eaten his share, so he counted all the remaining potatoes, ate a third, and fell asleep again. After him a third woke up; believing that he woke up first, he counted the remaining potatoes in the bowl and ate the third part.

Then his comrades woke up and saw that there were 8 potatoes left in the bowl. Then they understood everything. Count how many potatoes the hostess has served on the table, how many have already eaten and how many more each must eat, so that everyone will get the same amount.

The third peasant left 8 potatoes for his comrades, that is, 4 for each. So he himself ate four potatoes. After that, it is easy to realize that the second peasant left his comrades 12 potatoes, 6 for each, which means that he himself ate 6 pieces. It follows that the first peasant left 18 potatoes to his comrades, 9 for each, which means that he himself ate 9.

So, the hostess served 27 potatoes on the table, and therefore each had 9 potatoes. But the first peasant ate his entire share. Consequently, of the remaining 8 potatoes, the share of the second 3, and the share of the third - 5 pieces.

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3. Numbers in a circle

The numbers from 1 to 9 must be placed in the figure in the figure so that 1 number is in the center of the circle, the others - at the ends of each diameter and so that the sum of 3 numbers of each row is 15.

The answer is shown in the figure.

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4. Boiling eggs

What is the easiest way to measure the 15 minutes required to boil eggs with a seven- and eleven-minute hourglass at hand?

Here are 2 possible solutions. The first of them is optimal from the point of view of the duration of all operations, the second - from the point of view of how many times the watch has to be turned over.

1. After putting the egg in the water, let the seven- and eleven-minute hours run at the same time. After 7 minutes, turn the seven-minute clock over to the first, and after 11 minutes (when all the sand from the upper half of the eleven-minute clock is poured into the lower half) - a second time. The sand will stop pouring from the upper half of the seven-minute clock to the lower one just by the end of the fifteenth minute.

2. Turning over the seven- and eleven-minute clocks at the same time, we begin the countdown. After the top half of the seven-minute clock is empty, put the egg in the water. After waiting until all the sand from the upper half of the eleven-minute clock is poured into the lower one, we turn them over. When the top half of the eleven-minute clock is empty again, exactly 15 minutes will have elapsed since the start of boiling.

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5. Relatives

When hiring a new employee, they asked if he had a large family, he replied:

- I have equal number of brothers and sisters, but my sister has twice as many brothers as sisters.

No one has been able to calculate how many children are in the family of a new employee. Maybe you can do it?

The family of the new employee has only seven children. Four of them are boys and three are girls. Therefore, each boy has 3 brothers and 3 sisters, and each girl has 4 brothers and 2 sisters.

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6. A good couple

- How old is Ivanov?

- Let's figure it out. 18 years ago, in the year of his marriage, he was, I remember, exactly three times his wife's age.

- Let me, as far as I know, is now just twice his wife's age. Is that another wife?

- Same. And therefore it is not difficult to establish how old Ivanov and his wife are now.

So how much?

If the wife is now x years old, then the husband is 2 years old. 18 years ago, each of them was 18 years younger: husband - (2x - 18), wife - (x - 18). It is known that the husband was then older than his wife: 3 (x - 18) = 2x - 18. Let's solve the equation: 3x - 54 = 2x - 18. 3x - 2x = 54 - 18.x = 36.2x = 72. Wife now 36, husband - 72.

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7. Two coffee pots

There are 2 coffee pots of the same width, one high and the other low. Which one is more roomy?

Many, probably without thinking, will say that a tall coffee pot is more roomy than a low one. If you, however, began to pour liquid into a tall coffee pot, you could pour into it only up to the level of the opening of its spout - then the water will start pouring out. And since the spout holes of both coffee pots are at the same height, the low coffee pot turns out to be as roomy as the tall one.

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8. The slow-witted gardener

Once the owner instructed the gardener to plant 10 trees. At the same time, he demanded to place them in such a way as to get 5 rows and 4 trees in each row. Only with the help of the wandering sage did the gardener manage to fulfill the master's order. How would you arrange the trees?

The gardener needed to place the landing in the shape of a five-pointed star. In this case, the trees should have been planted at the intersection points of the lines of the star, as shown in the figure.

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9. Six steamers

Three steamers are walking along the canal, one after the other: A, B, C. Three more steamers seemed to meet them, which also go one after the other: D, D, E. The channel is so wide that 2 steamers cannot part, but in There is a bay on one side of the canal, which can only accommodate 1 steamer.

Can the steamers part so as to continue on their way as before?

Steamers B and C go back (to the right), A enters the bay; D, D and E pass along the channel past A; then A comes out of the bay and goes its own way (to the left). E, D and G retreat to their original place (to the left); then everything that was done with A repeats with B. In the same way, C goes by, and the steamers sail their own way.

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10. Divide the moon

The figure of the moon crescent needs to be divided into 6 parts, drawing only 2 straight lines. How to do it?

It must be done as shown in the figure. It turns out 6 parts, which are numbered for clarity.

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11. And one more bull's-eye

There is a basket with 5 apples. How to divide them between 5 people so that each of them gets 1 apple and 1 more apple remains in the basket?

4 people take one apple from the basket, and the fifth takes the apple along with the basket.

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12. To the factory gates

Two workers, an old man and a young man, live in the same apartment and work in the same factory. The young one reaches the factory in 20 minutes, the old one - in 30 minutes. In how many minutes will the young man catch up with the old one if the latter leaves the house five minutes earlier?

The old worker spends 10 minutes more than the young worker to complete the entire path. If the old man had come out 10 minutes earlier than the young, both would have come to the plant at the same time. If the old man came out only 5 minutes earlier, then the young man must catch up with him just in the middle of the path, that is, after 10 minutes (the young worker goes all the way in 20 minutes).

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All these riddles are taken from the book "" I. E. Gusev and A. G. Mernikov. Time-tested tasks will help to distract from gadgets and train logical thinking.