Hello, I am Jimmy, half of SpotTheJaguar, and I am currently studying Computer Science at Wash U. When interviewing for big tech company jobs, you need to be prepared for at least one challenging puzzle to solve on the spot, with the interviewer staring at you. Talk about nerve-racking. Anyway, in preparation for these interviews (and because I think they’re fun), I have tried to solve as many of these as I can get my hands on. Elise, the other half of STJ, gave me several more great puzzles to solve and then share. So, we’re now going to share our collection of these puzzles with the Geocaching world, manipulating them slightly to make them work for a puzzle cache. Good luck! We will post hints and suggestions for solving each riddle after FTF, but it is definitely possible to solve without any, and we hope you attempt each of them before looking for a hint. Try to do all of them before you look at the hint because the next hint could catch your eye!
There's a travel bug that I found in Coasta rica that started in Germany, so please take it and move it if you are going somewhere fun! Theres a puzzle under the lid of the container. take a picture of it, or solve it while you're celebrating the find. You will need these numbers for the final cache of the series, STJ's Riddles Part 4.
1.
You have a 3 oz pitcher, a 5 oz pitcher, and a faucet. You have no means of measuring any other amounts besides 3 and 5. You can fill up either pitcher all the way, pour water from one pitcher to another, or dump out the entirety of either pitcher.
A friend of yours had his pipes break, and unfortunately he doesn't have water. He asks you if he can have 4 oz of water. The task is, of course, to get those 4 oz of water into your 5 oz pitcher.
A = The minimum number of times you would have to fill up either pitcher using the sink to get 4 oz in the 5 oz pitcher (there are two ways to do this problem, so be careful)!
2.
You are the proud owner of 25 horses, as well as a beautiful 5-horse track. However, you want to know which 3 horses you should be proudest of, so you decide to determine which 3 are the fastest. You have no stop-watches, but luckily these horses do not get tired, so they each will consistently run the same speed every race.
B = The fewest number of races (with 5 horses racing at a time) it will take to figure out the three fastest horses.
3.
You have 9 diamonds that are identical in size, shape and color. One is fake, however, and it weighs lighter than the rest. You do not know which it is. All you have is a very simple balance scale, in which you can weigh any number of diamonds against any other number of diamonds to see which is group is heavier/lighter, or if they’re the same.
C = The fewest number of weighings it will take to figure out which diamond is the fake one.
4.
You have 3 pennies and 2 dimes, in the order of PDPDP. The only way to move a coin is to move both a penny and a dime at the same time. The two coins have to be touching each other to be moved, and you can’t swap the order of the moving penny and dime.
D = The fewest number of moves to get to DDPPP (also acceptable: PPPDD)
5.
3 anthropologists found 3 cannibals in the middle of the forest, and the anthropologists are bringing the cannibals back to their lab to study them. On their way back, the anthropologists realized that they have to get to the other side of a river. Unfortunately, their only means of transportation was a small 2 person row boat. The anthropologists worried that if there were ever more cannibals than anthropologists on a side of the river, the cannibals would eat the anthropologist(s). Nobody wanted that, so they had to find a way to transport everyone across the river, without ever having more cannibals than anthropologists on either side. (NOTE: If the cannibal stays on the boat, this still counts as being on that side. Therefore, if a cannibal and an anthropologist go across first, and the cannibal comes back, even if he/she would stay in the boat, this is still a 3:2 ratio, and a anthropologist would get eaten. Yikes!)
E = You can probably guess.. The fewest number of times the boat has to go from the starting side to the ending side (ie. return trips do not count!) to get all 6 members safely across the river
F= B-C
G= A
H = C+E
I= D+A
J= B-A
K= B-A-C
coords can be found at:
N 38° 35.FGH W 90 22.IJK
check your answer here: