Loading
Categories, Archives and Tags

Brainercise: GBD-sitter edition
Posted by Kathy
March 6, 2009
Categories:  Randomness
13
comments

The GBD has minds as sharp as tacks I tell you!  My answer to last week’s brainteaser is the same as Audrey’s, which is comment #1.  Thank you Audrey for saving me the trouble of writing out my answer.  I’m just going to do that from now on…refer to you guys for the answers.  Oh laziness.  How I love thee.

So here is this week’s brainteaser:

Taylor has to babysit Marcus and dogsit Kernie (Kendra’s dog), Dublin (Kristin’s dog), and Teddy (Jessica’s dog).  Taylor decides it would be a good idea to spend the day in the park, a really big park, like a national park.  Yeah.  Um, I should also add at this point that Taylor is an ALIEN!  Yep.  And because she’s an alien, she has an unhealthy obsession with chocolate pudding – the real kind, not the poop kind -  because they don’t have chocolate pudding where she’s from.  So she brings an abnormally large container of chocolate pudding with her, instead of things like sandwiches and trail mix.  For whatever reason, while walking happily through the woods with Marcus and Kernie and Dublin and Teddy, Taylor comes upon a river and, inexplicably, is possessed with an overwhelming desire to cross it.  There is a boat, but it is small and can only fit Taylor and 2 other things.

Taylor can’t leave any of the dogs with the pudding or else they’ll eat it.  Because that’s what dogs do.  They’ll eat anything.  Plus, aren’t dogs allergic to chocolate?  So that wouldn’t be good.

Taylor can’t leave Marcus with any of the dogs because he’ll drool all over them, and the dogs will run away to avoid drowning in his drool.  Then she’ll have to look for them in a huge friggin’ national park.  That also wouldn’t be good.

So how will Taylor get everyone across the river?  When she can only bring 2 things with her at a time?  And she can’t leave the dogs with the pudding, or Marcus with the dogs?

And don’t worry.  Marcus is a smart baby, and has the good sense not to go into the river because he knows he can’t swim.  So he can be left by the riverbank for a short while if necessary.  But Taylor and I think it’s best if we don’t mention that little detail to Kendra.  ;)

last post next post

You must be logged in to post a comment ·

DeannaRochelle

March 6, 2009

okay Taylor takes two of the dogs across, (let’s say Teddy and Dublin), goes back for Kernie, drops him off, and then goes back once again for Marcus and the giant tub of pudding :)


DeannaRochelle

March 6, 2009

oops i messed that up…I meant to say she brings Marcus and the pudding across first, goes back for two of the dogs, exchanges them for Marcus and the pudding, exchanges THEM for the third dog, and goes back again for the baby and the pudding.


jessica f

March 6, 2009

HAHAHH aww this made my day. thanks Kathy! :) what a great ending to this horrible week of mine.
i love the references to poo and teddy.


superkurre

March 6, 2009

Couldn’t she just take Marcus and the pudding on the boat and let the doggies swim? They would probably follow the lovely scent of the pudding across the world, so maybe over a river too :)


jessica f

March 6, 2009

@superkurre-very smart. never thought of that. but teddy is deathly afraid of water. kernie and dublin will prob swim across without good ole ted ball. :(


superkurre

March 7, 2009

@ jessica f
Aww, poor Teddy. Well, then I stumped… :)


G

March 7, 2009

You know what the real brain teaser is? How itty bitty Taylor can walk three dogs and a baby while eating giant tub of chocolate pudding. O_O


Roma

March 7, 2009

hmmm taylor eats the pudding first and then takes marcus and one of the dogs with her then comes back and takes the other two dogs..or she could find a bigger boat :)


Ayman Mohsen

March 7, 2009

ok 1st u said: ”2 things” with Taylor.. that means the pudding is one of the things and marcus is the second (although it’s not right to say he’s the other ”thing”.. or else kendra will kill me lol) PS: kathy u didn’t say anything about marcus not being alone… so she’ll grab pudding and marcus and cross to the other side, put them there, and gets back to bring kernie and dublin (for example).. then when they reach the other side she exchanges the dogs with the pudding and marcus and gets back to get the third dog… here, taylor will leave once again marcus and pudding and takes teddy, cross over and goes back one last time to get marcus and pudding.


foretold

March 7, 2009

HI KATHY!
I have uncovered your brainteaser as being a translated version of the popular “ferryman problem” from cs. You can represent it with some kind of graph and solve it with some augmented depth-first search like algorithm. This problem is also very closely related to the “Tower of Hanoi” problem.

In the original version, there is a farmer with a wolf, a goat, a cabbage, a ferry and a river. The ferry only has enough space for one additional item next to the farmer and he’s supposed to convey all items to the other side of the river (and there is no bridge and neither one of them can swim). The wolf would eat the goat and the goat would eat the cabbage if they would ever be left alone, which is a bad thing considered that all items are supposed to cross the river untouched.


foretold

March 7, 2009

Just one more question madam: can Taylor safely leave Marcus alone with the pudding or will he start dispersing it out before eating it?


foretold

March 7, 2009

I think I found all possible shortest solutions to Kathy’s GBD-sitter brainteaser, but I won’t tell ya yet :P .

But if you are interested, there are exactly 9 possible shortest paths that each require 7 river crossing steps.

Also, Kathy could walk one more dog at the park and the crossing of the river would still require 7 crossing steps, but she can’t walk more than 4 dogs in total, or else she won’t be able to cross the river at all.


Girls by Design: This is a Blog » Blog Archive » Brainercise: Danny edition version 1.0

March 13, 2009

[...] yo yo GBD!  For last week’s brainteaser, I agree with DeannaRochelle and Ayman Moshen.  There are other answers, but they vary only in the sequence of who crosses, but [...]