The "Pizza and Panini" column is available at the link
here. The puzzle to solve is the one below. So, pick a number from 1 to 20. And email your answers to : askthedelphicoracle@gmail.com with the Subject : "Whiling the days away on Chandrayaan 12".
(Whiling the days away on Chandrayaan 12) The
astronauts on board Chandrayaan 12 are busy aboard their ship taking
care of business, but they are also trying to challenge their minds a
bit to keep their minds active. Some are solving crossword puzzles to
keep their little grey cells from going to rust. Others are doing
Sudoku. And some others are sending each other mathematical puzzles.
Here is the latest one.
The astronauts had to hurry upstairs for a drill earlier that day and
had to pick up their boots on the way up the spiral stairway. The boots
were in a closet, and you could not see inside the boot closet because
it was dark inside. All you could do was to feel around and pick up a
boot. When it was the last astronaut's turn, what was left in the boot
drawer were ten left boots and ten right boots. That is, twenty boots in
all that are all the right size for her. What is the minimum number of
boots N that the astronaut would have to pick up to be certain that she
had a pair of boots that could be worn - one left and one right? Note
that these boots would have to be complementary, that is, one left and
one right. Further, note that the astronaut has to be certain that she
had a complementary pair of boots. Note also that the number N is not
equal to two. If the number N were equal to 2, then this would mean that
every time the astronaut would pick up N = 2 boots, she would be
certain that she had a complementary pair of boots, but this is not the
case because the first two boots she picked up might turn out to be left
boots. In this puzzle, we want a single number as the answer.
Send your answers to: askthedelphicoracle@gmail.com
with the Subject: "Whiling the days away on Chandrayaan 12".
