Today’s puzzle is as a picture below – see what you can do! (Answer below)
Puzzle as text (accessible):
A king asks a scholar to visit his palace.
The man says “I will come some day next month, but I will not tell you on which day.
Further, you must give me gold in grams equal to the date on which I come.”
In preparation for the visit, the king demands that his jeweller make gold rings of 1 to 31 grams.
The jeweller was smart and makes only 5 rings.
What were the weights of those rings?
Solution
The jeweller makes the following rings: 1 gram, 2 grams, 4 grams, 8 grams and 16 grams
Explanation
From these 5 weights, we can make all the numbers from from 1 to 31 by adding them together! Take a look below:
1 gram: 1
2 grams: 2
3 grams: 1 + 2
4 grams: 4
5 grams: 1 + 4
6 grams: 2 + 4
7 grams: 1 + 2 + 4
8 grams: 8
9 grams: 1 + 8
10 grams: 2 + 8
11 grams: 1 + 2 + 8
.
.
.
29 grams: 1+ 4+ 8 + 16
30 grams: 2 + 4 + 8 + 16
31 grams: 1 + 2 + 4 + 8 + 16
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