# Black and White

“The Pyramid,” by A.C. White, from the British Chess Magazine. White to mate in two moves.

# Calendar Boy

Gary Foshee presented this puzzle at the 2010 Gathering for Gardner:

I have two children. One is a boy born on a Tuesday. What is the probability I have two boys?

The first thing you think is ‘What has Tuesday got to do with it?’ Well, it has everything to do with it.

He proposed the answer 13/27, with this reasoning:

There are 14 equally likely possibilities for a single birth — (boy, Tuesday), (girl, Sunday), and so on.

If all we knew were that Foshee had two children, then it would seem that there are 142 = 196 equally likely possibilities as to their births.

But we know that at least one of his children is a (boy, Tuesday), and only 27 of the 196 outcomes meet this criterion. (There are 14 cases in which the (boy, Tuesday) is the firstborn child and 14 in which he’s born second, and we must remove the single case in which he’s counted twice.)

Of those 27 possibilities, 13 include two boys — 7 with (boy, Tuesday) as the first child and 7 with (boy, Tuesday) as the second child, and we subtract the one in which he’s counted twice. That, Foshee says, gives the answer 13/27.

This generated a lot of discussion when it appeared — unfortunately because the meaning of Foshee’s question is open to interpretation. See the end of this New Scientist article and the comments on Columbia statistician Andrew Gelman’s blog.

# Quickie

If I roll three dice and multiply the three resulting numbers together, what is the probability that the product will be odd?

# Disappearing Act

A puzzle by Joseph Horton, from MIT Technology Review, January-February 1999:

If the sun takes two minutes to set, what angle does it subtend from Earth?

# Black and White

By J. Dobrusky. White to mate in two moves.

# “Problem for Poultry Farmers”

Eureka, the esteemed journal of recreational mathematics published at Cambridge University, has placed its archives online under a Creative Commons license. Here’s a problem from May 1940:

The chicken was twice as old when when the day before yesterday was to-morrow to-day was as far from Sunday as to-day will be when the day after to-morrow is yesterday as it was when when to-morrow will be to-day when the day before yesterday is to-morrow yesterday will be as far from Thursday as yesterday was when to-morrow was to-day when the day after to-morrow was yesterday. On what day was the chicken hatched out?

# “Self-Explanatory”

This impressive puzzle appeared recently in the Magpie, a magazine for advanced UK-style cryptic puzzles. See the file for instructions.

# Correspondence

A problem from the Sixth International Mathematical Olympiad, 1964: Seventeen people correspond by mail, each with all the rest. They discuss only three topics, and each pair of correspondents addresses only one of these. Prove that there are at least three people who write to each other about the same topic.

# Black and White

A curious chess problem from the Jamaica Gleaner. White has just moved. If he retracts this move, he can play another that forces Black to checkmate White immediately. What move does he retract?

# Podcast Episode 325: Lateral Thinking Puzzles

Here are eight new lateral thinking puzzles — play along with us as we try to untangle some perplexing situations using yes-or-no questions.

See full show notes …