The Pharmacy Scale

Let me launch right into the new puzzler. We've been blessed over the years with puzzles that we have encountered. They've come into our gravitational sphere, so to speak. We've had some great ones. I mean, the Monty Hall puzzle, for example, was a great one. The other one that comes to mind is the one from which My Fair City came.

That was a good one. And how about the three men in the hotel? I mean, that was one of the greats! And I was thinking about these puzzles and how great they are. And I was comparing them to today's lousy puzzle. On that note, here's today's puzzle.

Now, imagine this scene. It's a pharmacy. A grizzled old pharmacist behind the desk.

And he's got a young assistant, named George Bailey. He's received a shipment of pills. And George has dutifully put them on the shelf.

And the next day, I guess he gets in the mail a notification that there's something wrong in one of the bottles of pills he got. All the pills, in fact, are faulty. They are one gram too heavy.

These are, just for clarification purposes, these are all these are 20 bottles of the same medicine. So all the pills are supposed to be identical.

They look all the same. You can't look at any of the pills and say, "Oh, this one's heavier than the other one, being different by one gram only."

And there were only a few pills in every bottle. And another thing, all the bottles have different weights, so you could never put a whole bottle on a scale and say, "Well, this is the heavy one!" Because the bottles might weigh different amounts.

So the grizzled old pharmacist, the mean, old pharmacist assigns this job to sweet old George. He figures out an easy way to do it. In fact, he figures out how to do it with only one weighing on the scale.

So he knows how much a real non-counterfeit pill weighs, but remember, one whole bottle has bogus pills in it, the bottles don't necessarily weigh the same, and the bottles don't have the same number of pills in them.

So how does he do it?

Answer the Puzzler »

Remember last week's puzzler?

The Urgent Haircut

It's time for the new puzzler. It's an automotive puzzler.

Now imagine this scene. A fellow is driving. He's driving across the desert in Nevada. And he finds himself in desperate need of a haircut.

So he takes the next exit 411. A little one-horse town named One Horse, Nevada.

You got it? Is the scene set? I mean, can you see this?

And as luck would have it in One Horse, Nevada, there were two barber shops. Can you believe that? So he has to figure out which one to have his hair cut in, right?

So he goes to barber shop number 1, and he looks out the window. And there are no customers in this barber shop and the barber shop was kind of a mess. Even the barber, who's the only one in the place, is kind of messy. He's unshaven. He's got a lousy shirt on, the place looks terrible, there's hair on the floor and his hair cut is even lousy.

So the guy remembers that the other barber shop is at the other end of town. So he moseys along, which is what you do in a one horse town. So he moseys on down to barber shop B. And he looks in the window and that looks terrific. It's nice and neat and clean the mirrors are nice and shiny. And even the barber himself looks neat and tidy and well-groomed, with a great haircut and even one of those white jackets. Comb and scissors in the pocket.

So there you have it. Barber shop number 1: lousy looking barber, lousy hair cut. Barber Shop number B: Neat place, well-groomed barber, nice white shop coat, nice haircut. And he has to decide which barber shop to frequent.

So this is a two-part puzzler. Part 1 is which barber shop should he choose? And part B is why?