1) A mouse has built a home inside a perfect circle of straw. The diameter is 5 feet. The door is at the point furthest north. His armchair is one foot due south of the door. The mouse gets out of the chair and walks west till he reaches his wall. Then he walks south for a foot and a half to his fridge. How far is the fridge from the chair?
2) A mouse stores up grain for winter. On Monday, she stores x bags full. On Tuesday, twice that number. On Wednesday, twice the total so far filled, and so each day doubling the total of all previous days. By the end of the seventh day, one-third of the bags were filled. How long in all did the job take?
The answers to October’s puzzles were supplied in the October issue.
Here are the answers to this month’s puzzles:
1) The walk from chair to fridge places the mouse on the east-west diameter of his house. His walk forms two sides of a rectangle, and the diagonal is the circle’s radius, hence two and a half feet.
2) Each day, the mouse doubles the number of all previous days. On day eight, all previous days amounted to one-third. The mouse therefore filled two-thirds on day eight, and the job accordingly took eight days.
