COSQUISET (PRELIMS)

Q.1 How much will two cost? "$ 25"

How much will fifteen cost?" $ 50"

"Ok then, I will take two hundred and sixteen"

"Thank you that will be $75 please" Explain?

Q.2 Proving the impossible… Can you prove 1=2???

Q.3 Ryan to Tina:

'Can you find the next number in the series:

11, 34, 17, 52, 26, 13, . . .'

Tina is stumped. Can you help her?

Q.4 Can you combine four 4s with any other mathematical symbol except numbers and produce all the
whole numbers from 1 to 18? You may use the four symbols of addition, subtraction, multiplication and
division, the square root symbol, and the decimal point. You may even place fours side by side.

Q. 5 Two NIIT graduates bump into each other after 20 yrs

FIRST-"How have you been?”

SECOND-"Nice! I got married and I have three sons now"

FIRST-"Oh wow! How old are they?"

SECOND-" Well, product of my son's ages is 72 and the sum of their ages is same as the number on that
building there"

FIRST-"Right ... ohh wait.. I still don't know"

SECOND-"Oh sorry, the oldest one started to learn music recently"

FIRST-" Nice! My oldest son is of same age"

How old are the sons?

Q.6 Angry Cheta was attending some hacking conference and she was literally enamored by the hacker
abilities. She couldn't stop her instincts and asked the hacker, what would be at index 540 in this
sequence "AABBBBCCCCCC......................................................................................................."

Q.7 Dwindling gifts….

Two fathers gave their sons some money. One father gave his son Rs. 300 and the other father gave his
son Rs. 150. Then the two sons counted their money, they found that between them they had Rs. 300.
How do you explain this???

Q.8 The Boy who could only add…

Shambhu came to the city from a remote village. Though he had never attended school, he had been
taught by his father how to add and divide by two. This was all the arithmetic he add, yet, he told a
friend, he could rapidly multiply numbers with two digits. The friend was surprised.

“Very well”, he said, “what is 43 times 87?”

Shambhu came up with the answer, 3741, in a few seconds. How did he do it??

Q.9 It was vacation time. Two men were travelling in a train. One asked the other how old he was. The
man replied he was 19 years old the day before yesterday and he will be 22 the next year. Can you guess
during which vacation and on what day of the month they were travelling?

Q.10 Three men were travelling in a train compartment. One of them was a wealthy businessman. The
other two had food with them and invited the businessman to join them in the meal. One had brought 5
chapathis and the other had 3. The three of them ate together and the food was shared equally. On
parting, the businessman gave 8 gold coins to the two men, as a token of appreciation of their
hospitality, and told them to divide the coins in proportion to their contribution of food.

How was the gold shared?? Give reason…

Q.11 “How I want a drink, alcoholic of course, after the heavy chapters involving quantum mechanics.”
What’s the significance of the above line In mathematics???

Q.12 Broken Stones…..

A store keeper had a stone weighing 40 pounds which used to weigh goods in 40 pound lots. But one
day it fell and broke into 4 pieces. He was about to throw them away when another shopkeeper stopped
him. He said that he had 5 pieces of a stone that weighed 31 pounds and with the 5 pieces he could
weigh any whole number of pounds from 1 to 31. He advised him to check the pieces before throwing
them away.

The store keeper found to his surprise that the four pieces could add up to any whole number from 1 to
40.

What are the weights of the four pieces and the other five pieces???

Q.13 Can you arrange the digits 1,2,3,4,5 in such a way that, with the help of simple mathematical
signs, they will make 111, 222, 333, 444, 555, 666, 777, 888, 999???

Q.14 Sanaya and Gaurav recently went to see a magic show. In the same the magician performed the
following trick:

The magician left the room. The assistant handed over a standard deck of 52 cards to someone in the
audience. The audience member chose any five cards from the deck and handed them to the assistant.

The assistant then selected one of those cards which he concealed from the magician, and displayed the
other four cards side-by-side on a table.

The magician then entered the room, examined only the four displayed cards, and told the audience
what the concealed card was.

Everyone was impressed. However, Gaurav instantly knew that there was logic behind the trick and not
magic. Do you know what the logic was?
Q.15 Moonface’s friend Scarface took the wrong side of the law recently and landed in the same prison
again. The warden (the evil person that he is) this time has thought of an even more wicked game to
entertain himself. He has formed a group of 20 prisoners (Scarface included) and presented them with
the following condition:

All the prisoners will be made to stand in a queue before the executioner and hats will be put on each of
their heads. The color of hats would be either red or black. However, the prisoner wearing the hat will
not be able to see the color of his own hat; he will only be able to see the prisoners in front of him with
their hats on. Additionally, the prisoners will not be allowed to look back or communicate with each
other in any way.

Therefore, the prisoner in the back will be able to see the 19 prisoners in front of him, the one in front of
him will be able to see 18 prisoners in front of him and so on.

Once the above arrangement has been made, the executioner will start with the last person in the
queue and question each person one at a time:

'What is the color of your hat?'

The only answers allowed are “BLACK” or “RED”. If anything else is said then all the prisoners will be
executed immediately.

If he guesses the right color of the hat on his head the prisoner will be set free, otherwise he will be put
to death. And the executioner will then move on to the one in front of him and ask him the same
question and follow the same process based on the answer.

What advise should Moonface give to his friend so that the maximum number of prisoners are saved?

Q.16 It was back on January1, 2000 that Kriti and Arjun were celebrating the dawn of the new century
at a country bar when Arjun questioned: “Which of the following day(s) can't be the last day of a
century? Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday” Arjun well and truly
cornered Kriti with this one. Do you think she was able to come up with an answer?

Q.17 Mrs. Gupta is participating in the popular game show. On the same the host has presented her
with three doors A, B & C. She is told that one of these doors has a million bucks behind it. The
remaining two doors however have goats behind them. Mrs. Gupta does not know which door has what
behind it.

The host then asks her to pick a door and she promptly picks the door A. Listening to her choice the host
opens the door C and behind the same a goat is found. After this he asks Mrs. Gupta if she would still
like to go with the door A or would switch to the door B.
What would you suggest Mrs. Gupta to do in order to maximize her chances of winning a million bucks?

Q. 18 Kiki to her mom:

Y, Y, H, L, Y, E,...

What are the next three letters in the sequence and why?

What was the reply?

Q.19 You have 20 black balls and 14 white balls in a bag, you put your hand in the bag and remove 2 at
a time. If they are of same colour you add a black ball. If they are of different colors you add a white ball.
Note - if you take two balls out you don't put them again in the bag so the number of balls in the bag
keeps decreasing. What color ball is left in the bag?

What if there were 20 black and 13 white balls?

Q.20 An experiment has 10 equally likely outcomes. Let A and B be two non-empty events of the
experiment.

If A consists of 4 outcomes, the number of outcomes that B must have so that A and B are independent,
is..??
 DETAILS

 The solutions are to be submitted by October 16, 2010 at cosquiset.neuron@gmail.com

by midnight.

 All questions carry equal marks.

 Each team consists of 2 or 3 members.

 Submit the names, email ids and phone numbers of the participants with the solutions.

 The teams with the highest marks will be selected for the next round that will be held
during Neuron 2010, (22 – 24 OCT). The exact date and timings will be shown on the
official Neuron website www.neuronmnt.in

 For any further queries, contact

o Karishma Chowdhry - +917742184627

o Shounak Mitra - +918890754869