[Math Lair] Lateral Thinking Puzzles #5 Answers

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Here are the answers to Lateral Thinking Puzzles #5.

  1. The highway has been closed off for an automobile race that Bill is taking part in. The police officers are spectators.
  2. Yes. Had the fifth president not died on July 4, then the article would almost certainly have said "three out of the first four presidents," not "three out of the first five presidents." So, Bob is almost certain to be correct if he guesses the fifth president, which Bob knows to be James Monroe.
  3. Mr. Lucre had previously said the exact same thing.
  4. When the warden said "if you were able to change the numbers at the rate of one per second without resting, it would take you a hundred years to hit the right combination," he meant literally that it would take a hundred years, not figuratively. So, the prisoner determined how many seconds are in a hundred years, which turns out to be 3,155,673,600, tried 3155673600 on the combination lock, and found that it worked.
  5. Her husband was also standing still.
  6. I've seen this happen personally at least once. The setting is a store in Canada that accepts U.S. currency at the current exchange rate (Sobey's used to do this; not sure if they still do). The woman gave the cashier a U.S. $20 bill, which at the exchange rate at the time was worth, say, $25 Canadian. As the salsa cost, say, $4, the woman would receive $21 in change.
  7. The man is a lighthouse keeper. As a result of his turning off the lamp, a passenger ship struck a rock nearby and sank with great loss of life.
  8. The person in the Atlantic state is located in western Florida (say, in Pensacola, Florida), which observes Central Time. The person in the Pacific state is located in eastern Oregon (say, in Ontario, Oregon), which observes Mountain Time. Usually, there is one hour difference between the two time zones; however, for one hour immediately after the Central time zone switches to standard time (on the first Sunday in November), the Mountain time zone will still be observing daylight savings time, so the two local times will be the same between 1:00 and 2:00 a.m.
  9. Connect the dots as follows:
    Several other solutions are possible if you challenge other assumptions about the question. For example, if you reject the assumption that the lines have to go through the exact centre of each dot, you can connect the dots using three lines in a zig-zag fashion.
  10. The two men were stuntmen in a movie that was being filmed. The one stuntman fell into a safety net that had not been rigged properly and died. The person responsible for rigging the safety net was charged with negligent homicide.