Quote:
Originally Posted by Lord Larehip
To help get the brain cells firing. No trick questions but they require a bit of thought.
Problem 1: A man saves his kingdom from disaster and is brought before the king to be rewarded. The king says, “Name your reward, my good man, and I shall grant it.” The man walks over to the king’s chessboard and places a single grain of rice on a corner square. He then says, “If you would, sire, double the amount on each succeeding square so that the second square shall have two grains and the third shall have four grains and the fourth shall have eight and so on until all the squares are filled in.” The king says, “Consider it done!”
Did the king make a wise decision? How much rice will the king require to fulfill the request?
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Senario 1
There is no correct answers. He never said that the rice had to stay on the previous square and continue to add more to the next, leaving out that stipulation the king could re-gift the rice for the next square. And he also never gave instructions to move up in file after the first rank was completed, so it could 256 or 18,446,744,073,709,551,616. If you think it should be the latter only a court gesture would would think it's feasible to fulfill such a capricious and ridiculous request. The king would be ill advice to make such a decision, that is like 35 quadrillion kg of rice.
Senario 2
Say if he does get to keep all the rice from the first square and then proceed to the second etc since he also didn't say in the attempt for fulfilling the request he also keeps all the excessive rice rolled off the chessboard. He is lucky to take home a few pounds of rice. He would never reach 9,223,372,036,854,775,808 grains of rice, at some point the chessboard would reach the maximum amount of rice that could be held and any addition rice would roll off the pile rice amassed atop the chessboard. When you even consider that last square to be filled you would know that it could no way support 18,446,744,073,709,551,616 grains of rice. And furthermore you very well know it is also impossible to carry home 9,223,372,036,854,775,808 grains of rice on a chessboard.
Senario 3
The king should ask the man to hold the chessboard as the king's courtesan fill it with rice, by until which time in the middle of fulfillment of said request he would be buried alive in a mountain of rice. The king having thus deposed of the menace would have enough to feed his entire kingdom for years to come. So yeah I think the king should take this guy on and show him a lesson on how not to be greedy.