puzzle 1 ) Two trains enter a tunnel 200 miles long, traveling at 100 mph at the same time from

opposite directions. As soon as they enter the tunnel a supersonic bee flying at 1000 mph starts fro m one train and heads toward the other one. As soon as it reaches the other one it turns around and heads back toward the f irst, going back and forth between the trains until the trains collide in a fiery expl osion in the middle of the tunnel. How far did the bee travel? puzzle 2 ) A bad king has a cellar of 1000 bottles of delightful and very expensive wine. A neighboring queen plots to kill the bad king and sends a servant to poison th e wine. Fortunately (or say unfortunately) the bad king s guards catch the servant after he has only poisoned one bottle. Alas, the guards don t know which bottle but know that the poison is so strong that even if diluted 100,000 times it would still kill the king. Furthermore, it takes one month to have an effect. The bad king decides he will get some of the prisoners in his vast dungeons to d rink the wine. Being a clever bad king he knows he needs to murder no more than 10 prisoners believing he can fob off such a low death rate and will still be able to drink the rest of the wine (999 bottles) at his anniversary party in 5 weeks time. Explain what is in mind of the king, how will he be able to do so ? (of course he has less then 1000 prisoners in his prisons) puzzle 3 ) Four glasses are placed on the corners of a square table. Some of the glasses are upright (up) and some upside-down (down). A blindfolded person is seated next to the table and is required to re-arrange the glasses so that they are all up or all down, either arrangement being acceptable, which will be signalled by the ringing of a bell. The glasses may be re-arranged in turns subject to the following rules. Any two glasses may be inspected in one turn and after feeling their orientation the person may reverse the orientation of either, neither or both glasses. After each turn the table is rotated through a random angle. The puzzle is to devise an algorithm which allows the blindfolded person to ensu re that all glasses have the same orientation (either up or down) in a finite numbe r of turns. The algorithm must be non-stochastic i.e. it must not depend on luck.