Party puzzles
Tihomir Nakov wrote a very popular blog post a couple of months ago giving some of the crazy questions they ask at Google job interviews. I don’t know exactly what Google looks for in your answers, but I think the questions are very good.
For a start, a lot of them are non-technical. I love puzzles that you can throw out in a room full of people at a party (and not a developers’ gathering), and have everyone chip in with their two cents.
I think question #6 is particularly neat:
How many times a day do a clock’s hands overlap?
It’s neat because it’s so simple, and yet there are 8 or 9 common answers people give, including 0, 1, 11, 12, 13, 22, 23, 24, 25. Of those, four are “right”, depending on how you look at it. But of course there are always several people who can’t get past the fact that it “must be 12”, even when you count it out for them using a real clock.
Another one I like, but don’t know the answer to myself, is question #2:
You are shrunk to the height of a nickel and your mass is proportionally reduced so as to maintain your original density. You are then thrown into an empty glass blender. The blades will start moving in 60 seconds. What do you do?
I like the answer someone gave in the comments:
You jump out! Any small rodent or large insect can easily jump several times his own height. Since you still have the same proportions, that means you have more muscle than the average small mammal, hence, you can easily jump it.
It makes sense, but my physics is a bit rusty. It seems to me it would only work if muscular power is proportional to length or area rather than mass. And I guess that’s probably true. Boy, it’d be fun to be the height of a nickel for a day …
Oh yes, that reminds me of one other one:
Write down the digits 101010 on a bit of paper. Then add one straight line to make it read 950.
Anyway, who else has some good share-at-a-party puzzles?
3 December 2007 by Ben add a comment