Lateral Thinking Questions

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ANSWER: L.T.Q. #50  !
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Date: Thu, 7 Nov 1996 23:19:57 -0500 (EST)

>Anyway, the next couple of questions will be of the Logical Thinking style. Do you remember your High School Math?

As for me, I may not remember the Math figures, but I remember the figures of some of the girls in my Math class!  $8-)

Here is this week's question:

You have two traditional hourglass-type egg timers, named Ridley and Orson. One takes 7 minutes for the sand to run through, the other takes 11 minutes. You want to boil an ostrich egg for exactly 15 minutes. How can you do it? And how soon after the start of the whole process will the egg be ready? Needless to say, you want to consume the delicious ostrich egg as soon as possible, though not necessarily in front of Ridley and Orson, as that would be rude and cruel!

ANSWER:

There are a number of ways of doing this; the quickest takes just 15 minutes from the start. Start both timers together. When the 7-minute timer is finished, turn it over immediately. It will then run for 4 minutes before the 11-minute time finishes. Turn the 7-minute timer over again at that point and it will measure a further 4 minutes; i.e. 15 minutes in total.

Mike B. and Liz both had answers taking a total of 22 minutes, which meant having to wait for 7 minutes before putting the egg in the water.

Andrew cheated by using the timer on his microwave!

I figured you could just have five 3-minute chicken eggs instead.

And oddlystrange gets the Golden Omelet for the answer with the most common sense, and for being so considerate of our Fine Feathered Friends: "Throw out the 11-minute timer. Now run the 7-minute one... when it's done turn it over and run it again. When it runs out stand there and count "1 mississipi 2 mississippi" until you get to 60 then go eat your egg and get some water with it since you might be hoarse after counting for a minute." One of her friends gave her the correct answer, to which she replied, "Personally I just think standing there and counting for a minute is better since it will give you time to hide the timers from the eggs."

>Now I'm getting a little bit hungry. Anyone have any idea how long it will take for me to make my lunch? And how many egg timers will I need to accomplish the task?

Lunch, BTW, consisted of Mexican Eggs: eggs fried with salsa in the middle of a ring of oriental noodles. If you want to send me your favourite egg recipes, I'll compile them and put them on the new web site!

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