One of the things I like the least about New Scientist (which, in many respects, is probably the best popular science magazine out there) is the “Enigma” brainteaser. I am sure it appeals to the “oh I am ever so smart!” Mensa member crowd out there but…<\/p>\n
Well, the thing is, I never liked brainteasers. Are you really smarter than someone else because you happen to remember a random historical factoid? Does it really make sense to ask you to complete a series like, say, 1, 4, 9, 16, ? when the answer can be anything, as there is no compelling reason other than psychology (!) for it to be a homogeneous quadratic series?<\/p>\n
But then… sometimes brainteasers reveal more about the person solving them than about the solution itself. I remember when I was in the second or third grade, our teacher gave us a simple exercise: add all the numbers from 1 to 100. (Yes, this is the same exercise given to a young Gauss.) Like Gauss, one of my classmates discovered (or perhaps knew already) that you can add 1+100 = 101; 2+99 = 101, 3+98 = 101, and so on, all the way up to 50 + 51 = 101; and 50 times 101 is 5050, which is the correct answer.<\/p>\n
Trouble is, my classmate didn’t finish first. I did. I just added the darn numbers.<\/p>\n
Between quick and smart, who wins? What if you’re so quick, you don’t need to be smart? Is it still smart to waste brainpower to come up with a “clever” solution?<\/p>\n
Last week’s New Scientist Enigma puzzle<\/a> caught my attention because it reminded me of this childhood memory. It took me roughly a minute to solve it. Perhaps there is a cleverer way to do it, but why waste all that brainpower when I can do this instead:<\/p>\n Yes, I am quick with C. Does that make me smart?<\/p>\n One of the things I like the least about New Scientist (which, in many respects, is probably the best popular science magazine out there) is the “Enigma” brainteaser. I am sure it appeals to the “oh I am ever so smart!” Mensa member crowd out there but… Well, the thing is, I never liked brainteasers. […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36,48],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2129","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-programming","category-science","category-36-id","category-48-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2129","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2129"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2129\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2136,"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2129\/revisions\/2136"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2129"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2129"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2129"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
\/* New Scientist Enigma number 1647 *\/\r\n\r\n#include <stdio.h>\r\n\r\nint main(int argc, char *argv[])\r\n{\r\n int d1, d2, d3, d4, d5, d6, n;\r\n\r\n for (d1 = 1; d1 <= 9; d1++)\r\n for (d2 = 1; d2 <= 9; d2++) if (d2 != d1)\r\n for (d3 = 1; d3 <= 9; d3++) if (d3 != d1 && d3 != d2)\r\n for (d4 = 1; d4 <= 9; d4++)\r\n if (d4 != d1 && d4 != d2 && d4 != d3)\r\n for (d5 = 1; d5 <= 9; d5++)\r\n if (d5 != d1 && d5 != d2 && d5 != d3 && d5 != d4)\r\n for (d6 = 1; d6 <= 9; d6++)\r\n if (d6 != d1 && d6 != d2 && d6 != d3 &&\r\n d6 != d4 && d6 != d5)\r\n {\r\n n = 100000 * d1 + 10000 * d2 + 1000 * d3 + 100 * d4 + 10 * d5 + d6;\r\n\r\n if (n % 19 != 17) continue;\r\n if (n % 17 != 13) continue;\r\n if (n % 13 != 11) continue;\r\n if (n % 11 != 7) continue;\r\n if (n % d4 != d3) continue;\r\n printf(\"ENIGMA = %d\\n\", n);\r\n }\r\n\r\n return 0;\r\n}<\/pre>\n<\/blockquote>\n