After the recent BrainBashers drone racing contest, the four contestants were congratulating each other.
Only one drone had the same race number as the position it finished in. Adrian's drone wasn't painted yellow, or blue. Andy's drone beat Avery's drone, whereas Alex's drone beat the drone with race number #1. The drone painted green (Alex's) finished second, and the drone painted blue had race number #4. The drone that had race number #3 was painted red, and beat the drone that finished third. Avery's drone had race number #1.
Can you work out whose drone finished where, its race number, and the colour it was painted?
Hint
Alex's drone finished second, so where did the red drone finish?
Answer Pos Owner # Colour
1 Adrian #3 red
2 Alex #2 green
3 Andy #4 blue
4 Avery #1 yellow
Reasoning
The four colours were: Blue, Green, Red, Yellow.
The four contestants were: Adrian, Alex, Andy, Avery.
By (4), second place was Green, and owned by Alex.
1
2 Alex green
3
4
By (5), Red beat third place, and since Green was second, Red must have been first (and had race number #3).
1 #3 red
2 Alex green
3
4
By (2), Adrian's drone was Red or Green, but we now know that Alex's drone was Green, so Adrian's drone was Red.
1 Adrian #3 red
2 Alex green
3
4
By (3), Andy beat Avery, so they were third and fourth respectively.
1 Adrian #3 red
2 Alex green
3 Andy
4 Avery
By (6), Avery's drone had race number #1.
1 Adrian #3 red
2 Alex green
3 Andy
4 Avery #1
By (1), second place must have had race number #2 (as first place had race number #3, and fourth place had race number #1).
1 Adrian #3 red
2 Alex #2 green
3 Andy
4 Avery #1
Which leaves third place with race number #4, and by (4) was Blue.
1 Adrian #3 red
2 Alex #2 green
3 Andy #4 blue
4 Avery #1
Which leaves fourth place as Yellow.
1 Adrian #3 red
2 Alex #2 green
3 Andy #4 blue
4 Avery #1 yellow
??
Puzzle 2
We have been quite lucky with the weather recently, it has got steadily warmer each day, over the last five days.
By this, I mean that the temperature rose by the same amount each day.
The average temperature was 2 °C, and I know it froze on two occasions (0 °C).
I also know the product of the temperatures was over 500 but below 2,000 and each temperature was an integer.
Hint
What must the middle temperature be? Remember that the temperature are in degrees Celsius.
Answer
The temperatures were -6, -2, 2, 6, 10 °C.
Each day increased by a steady 4 degrees.
Reasoning
As the temperature rose steadily each day, we know that the middle temperature (Day 3) was 2 degrees (because the average was 2 degrees).
Since Day 3 was 2 degrees, and there were two negative temperatures, we know that the daily increase must have been at least 3 degrees (otherwise Day 2 would not have been negative).
If we check a daily increase of 3 degrees, the sequence would be -4, -1, 2, 5, 8, but this doesn't work as the product is less than 500.
If we check a daily increase of 4 degrees, the sequence would be -6, -2, 2, 6, 10, which does matches all of the requirements.
If we check a daily increase of 5 degrees, the sequence would be -8, -3, 2, 7, 12, but this doesn't work as the product is more than 2000.
Any larger increase makes the product even larger, so we can stop checking.
Hint
How many statements would be true if the culprit was Alex?
Answer
Emery committed the crime.
Reasoning
If we assume that Alex was the culprit, we can see that there would be 6 true statements, but we know there were exactly 5 true statements, so it can't be Alex.
We can repeat this will all five suspects and quickly see that only Emery being the culprit would result in exactly 5 statements being true.
Odd numbers expressed in base 8, 11 in base 8 = 13.
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