Back to life

I intend bring a new lease of life into this blog. The team members and myself had quite a busy year over the last year and half. One went on to start his own firm, the other being a big time software programmer at one of the leading companies, and myself going places. Currently I have landed up at IITB, and hence my schedule is not too packed(with exceptions) unlike the others. I hope I can bring in a new lease of life into this blog, and hope to sustain it.

My intention is to write on technical stuff in this blog.

Welcome back friends!!!!

Maths Puzzle

Using 3,3,7,7 make 24....
Pls post ur responses...

Critical Links

The son of a rich bullion merchant left home on the death of his father. All he had with him was gold chain that consisted of 93 links. He rented a place in the city center with a shop at the lower level and an apartment at the upper level. He was required to pay every week one link of the gold chain as rent for the place.

The landlady told him that she wanted one link of the gold chain at the end of one week, two gold links at the end of two weeks, three gold links at the end of three weeks and so on.

The son realized that he had to cut the links of the gold chain to pay the weekly rent. If the son wished to rent the place for 93 weeks, what would be the minimum number of links he would need to cut?

In a contest, four fruits (an apple, a banana, an orange, and a pear) have been placed in four closed boxes (one fruit per box). People may guess which fruit is in which box. 123 people participate in the contest. When the boxes are opened, it turns out that 43 people have guessed none of the fruits correctly, 39 people have guessed one fruit correctly, and 31 people have guessed two fruits correctly.
How many people have guessed three fruits correctly, and how many people have guessed four fruits correctly?

Palindrome date

"October 2, 2001" in MMDDYYYY format is a palindrome (a string that reads the same forwards as it does backwards). Pretty cool, check it out: 10/02/2001 --> 10022001. When was the last date before October 2, 2001 that is also a palindrome?

Camel Puzzle

You have 3,000 bananas that must be transported across a desert that is 1,000 kilometers wide. You have a camel that has a 1,000 banana capacity. However, the camel must eat one banana for each kilometer that it walks.

What is the largest number of bananas that can be transported across the desert?

Saving The Prisoners

There are some prisoners(say 500) to whom the death sentence is annouced. But being liberal the jailar gave a chance and annouced a day before to the prisoners that
"I will keep a colored hat on your head, it will be either Red or Blue,
I will make you stand each one on the stairs (rule or clue - the top most stair guy can see all the prisoners hats and thier colors down to him, means standing one person per stair)
**Rule - No one is allowed to see their hat color but can see all others who are down to them.
I will come to each person from top stair to down and ask their hat color, if you say correct color.. .you are escaped.. else shot"

Then the prisoners gathered and decided on one strategy so that maximum people can be saved.

what is that strategy and how many prisoners can be escaped?