MYTHEMATICAL GAMES
GREEK PHILOSOPHERS AND MISSING NUMBERS SUPPLY THE FORMULA FOR FUN
Mathematical
games are something like the story problems you struggled with in
school. The difference
is that you can throw them in the garbage anytime
without flunking algebra.
Math teasers
break down into two categories: those that cannot be solved, and
those that can be solved,
but not by you. Although hundreds of years old,
mathematical games are unique in that
Aristotle did not invent them. He was,
however, the first scholar to list the answers
upside down on the problems page.
Here are several problems selected from an upcoming
anthology of brainteasers,
Mathematical Games That Could Not Be Solved by People Who Claim
They Have High
IQs!
1. If John has three apples and Mary has two plums, what country is
this?
2. Mr. Cook, Mr. Baker, Mr. Sailor, Mr. Refrigerator Repairman, and Mr. Nuclear
Power
Plant Community Information Officer were in a boat fishing one day when
Mr. Cook noted that
each of their names described the occupation of one of those
present.
"That's quite
interesting," offered Mr. Sailor, who preferred to be called Oscar
Bateman. "Gimme 'nother
beer."
The man who called himself Mr. Refrigerator Repairman chimed in, "We gonna fish
or
talk?"
"Say, fellas, what do you say we just pack it in and go bowling?" Mr. Nuclear
Power
Plant Community Information Officer said nervously. He knew that less
than two miles
upstream his employer was dumping deadly plutonium waste in the
water, creating a new breed
of fish that lived on boat hulls and human blood.
Mr. Baker muttered under his breath. He
hated his companions and had agreed to
the fishing expedition only because his wife had
found out about the Darcy twins
and the photographs and she was threatening to sing to the
police unless he
forked over 80 percent of the profits and put the house in her name.
Which
man is whom, who does what, where does he do it, and who cares? The really
important
questions are, Who are the Darcy twins, where are those photographs,
and why should Mrs.
Baker get most of the profits?
3. Achilles, the fleet-footed Greek hero, was bragging to
friends about his
remarkable athletic prowess when Aristotle, overhearing, challenged him
to run a
footrace with a tortoise. The tortoise would start the race at a point half the
distance to the finish line. By the time Achilles reached that point the
tortoise would
have covered another half distance to the finish. And so it
would go, Aristotle smirked,
with Achilles forever closing on the tortoise but
never catching it.
Achilles thought long
and hard, then asked the philosopher, "Uh, what if I stabs
it?"
"What?" asked Aristotle.
"What
if I stab the turtle?"
"You can't just stab it!"
"I got a sharp spear. Cuts through turtle
shell easy," the hero said. "Whaddaya
say?"
"It's a tortoise, nectar head!"
Although the rest
of this story is lost, mathematicians have long wondered, How
could two such remarkable men
have conversed so casually when one died more than
600 years before the other was born?
4.
Numbers have always played an important part in mathematics. Without them
such fields as
geometry never would have progressed beyond "Fun With Squares."
Yet it's long been known
that besides zero through nine there exists an extra
digit wedged somewhere between six and
seven. Mathematicians have avoided using
the mystery number because it is tricky to spell
and has an embarrassing shape.
The lack of that number has caused quite a few anomalies in
physics. For
instance, the mystery number can be used to prove that the sun is only about
150
yards from the earth and is the size of a Frisbee. Use the mystery number to
recalculate
some " old wives"' equations to prove that:
a. When you're traveling by car, the close-up
scenery really does pass by faster
than the faraway scenery.
b. It's now 1847 and whipped
cream cheese is not feasible.