I was recently given this puzzle and I thought I would share it with everyone else. So the puzzle starts…
There’s a pharaoh who wants to build a huge pyramid to compensate for his lack of self confidence. He hires a stonemason to build his pyramid in 7 days and agrees to pay the mason one gold bar upon completion for his work.
The stonemason doesn’t like the pharaoh very much nor does he trust him. So, he demands that the pharaoh pay him at the end of every day an equivalent fraction of the gold bar as the number of days that he worked. That is, after the first day of work, the pharaoh must pay him 1/7 of the gold bar, 2/7 at the end of the 2nd day, 3/7 on the 3rd, etc until the end of the 7th day where he will receive his full payment of the gold bar. The kicker is the pharaoh may only make two cuts on the gold bar. Reluctantly, the pharaoh agrees to these terms.
The question is “How does the pharaoh do it?”
As with a lot of puzzles, it helps to talk it through so feel free to post a comment or question. 🙂
I’ll post the answer later for everyone or I can answer it for myself…depending if anyone else is reading this.
Hint: There’s only one way to pay him the first day.
[…] a big fan of logic puzzles. Normally, we only get asked these kind of questions during interviews but they are pretty fun to […]
Looks perfectly straight to me. Of course, I’m also the type of person who allegedly [ahem! allegedly] agree with everything.
cut the bar into three pieces; 1/7 , 2/7 and 4/7. 1st day he gives 1/7, second day king takes back 1/7 piece and gives
him 2/7. Third day he gives him 1/7 piece again. Fourth day he takes every thing back and gives him 4/7. fifth day adds
1/7 piece. Sixth day takes back 1/7 and gives 2/7. seventh day he asks mason to go to a gold smith to get the three
pieces attached
Day one: cut off a segment and pay them. They now have one segment.
Day two: cut off a piece 2 segments big and give them that and ask for the first days gold back – they now have two segments
Day three: Give them the single segment again. They now have three segments
Day four: give them the remaining piece with 4 segments and ask for all the other bits back. They now have 4 segments.
Day five: give them the single segment. They now have 5 segments.
Day 6: Give them the ‘2 segment’ piece and ask for the single segment back. They now have 6 segments.
Day 7: give them the single segment. They now have 7 segments.
_____________________________________________
Buying Gold Online