Ken's blog

Dapper and broke young Jasper went to a local bank to cash a check he had received for mowing Mr. McCloud’s lawn and doing some gardening work.

The cashier, a cross-eyed blonde named Lotta, was distracted by Jasper’s good looks and in her flustered state managed to cash the check in transposed order about the decimal point, that is, she moved the right-side part of the amount to the front and the dollars part to the back, and paid accordingly.

Jasper did not notice the payment error due to Lotta’s handing him her phone number on a pink bank slip with a coy smile.

Only later after he had spent twenty-one dollars and forty-six cents for a hearty meal at an Indian curry restaurant did he check how much cash he had left.

To his great surprise, it turned out that he had twice as much money in his pocket as the value of the check he had cashed in the bank.

…What a lucky cashier. Will have to follow up on her…

Can you work out the amount the check was made out for?

A man named Chadwick wanted to build a square pyramid with three levels to house his wife and kids.

Chadwick wanted the ground floor to be 2000 square feet larger in area than the first floor, which would have 2000 square feet more than the second floor, where he figured to do some meditation and store a good deal of food for his wife Mabel.

Chadwick decided that the length of a slanting edge of the pyramid should be 1.5 times the height of the pyramid.

Can you work out the respective lengths of the side of each floor?

What do you figure is the height of the pyramid?

The small village of Bloemenfontein had two churches which were located quite near each other. The bells of the churches rang with different periods, the Church of the Five Trinities ringing every 5/3 seconds, the Church of the Eleven Pentalphan Saints every 11/5 seconds.

To summon the members of the congregations for service on Sundays, both churches would sound their bells for 12 minutes precisely at 11 am in the morning.

A peculiar effect with these bells was that every now and then people could only hear one bell ringing, which would confuse members of the congregations, resulting in an equal proportion going to the wrong church.

But this did not matter much, as the preachers of the churches actually were twins and would switch roles every other week or so, thus saving time in writing sermons to give more free time for their hobby of fishing.

The local bicycle shop owner Joop Visser, who was also the mayor of Bloemenfontein, had worked out that when the clappers of the bells struck within an interval of 0.6 seconds of each other, only one bell ring could be heard.

Visser, being a meticulous person, had also counted the number of bell rings with the aid of a sound recorder.

Being a business man, mayor Visser decided to hang up a poster on the large, spreading oak tree in the main plaza of the village.

The poster stated that the first person who could correctly say how many bell rings in total were heard during a period of 12 minutes each Sunday would win a new, red bicycle.

Entry fee for submitting an answer to Visser was ten guilders.

Visser received numerous payments and responses very quickly, but the first correct one was from a young computer nerd.

Under these conditions, what would you say is the number of rings heard from these bells sounding on Sunday mornings?

On the average how many congregation members do you figure would wind up at the wrong church on a Sunday?

At the hotel Excelsior, Melvyn had stopped by the security office run by his friend Zack. They were watching the elevator on the split screen monitor, with one screen for each of the ten floors of the hotel and the ground floor.

“Zack, you see the seven people entering the elevator on the ground floor?”

“Sure, Melvyn, especially that hot blonde that just wiggled in before the door closed,” said Zack, chewing on his bubble gum.

“Zack, I’ll bet you a hundred bucks that there will not be a group of exactly three people getting off the elevator at any floor,” said Melvyn.

“You’re on, I could really use a hundred bucks,” chuckled Zack.

“Are you really sure that three persons will be getting off at some floor?” quieried Melvyn, raising an eyebrow.

“That’s what I’m betting on, Melvyn.”

“Well, let’s see how it goes, Zack.” Melvyn made himself comfortable in an armchair to watch the monitor.

What do you figure are the chances that Melvyn will win his bet with Zack?

Can you work out the probability that only one person gets off the elevator at each stop?