101.   A Problem of AgeRecently  I met a women I hadn’t seen for a long time. In the course of conversation she said, ‘Do you know something funny? If you reverse my own age, the figures represent my husband’s age. He is, of course, senior to me and the difference between our age is one-eleventh of their sum.Can you find out the woman’s age as well as her husband’s age?

 

102.  The Passenger Train and the Goods Train

Two trains, a passenger train and a goods train, are running in the sane direction on parallel railway tracks. The passenger train takes three time as long to pass the goods train    even when they are going in the opposite directions.

If the trains run at uniform speeds, how many times faster than the goods train in the passenger train moving?

 

104.  Rice for the Festival

At a certain festivity a rich man decided to distribute free rice to deserving people. He had altogether 100 kilos of rice and he wanted to distribute the grain to 100 people in such a manner that each old person received three kilos, each young person two and each child half a kilo. How many old persons, young persons and children were there?

 

105.   Threes to Make Thirty-one

Can you write 31 using only digit 3 five times?

 

106.   Swarm of Bees

Here is another problem from Bhaskaracharya’s Lilavati:

The square root of half the number of bees in a Swarm has flown out upon a jasmine bush; eight ninths of the whole swarm has remained behind; one female bee files about a male that is buzzing within the lotus flower into which he was allured in the night by its sweet odour, but it now imprisoned in it. Tell me the number of bees?

 

107.    Story of the Three Farmers

Three farmers paid Rs.1,000 for a small pasture. One farmer grazed his 9 mules, another his 12 cows for twice the time and last man put in some goats for 2 ½ times as the second man’s cows and paid half the cost of the pasture.

Can you find out how many goats did the last man have, if 6 cows eat as much as 4 mules and 10 goats as much as 3 cows? And how much did the first and second man each pay?

 

108.What Were You Doing When the Lights Went Out?

Last time there was load shedding in Calcutta, I was reading a very interesting book and I could not stop. My neighbour Parveen gave me two candles and assured me that I could manage with them.

Though the candles were of the same length, Parven told me that one candle would burn for four hours and the other for five hours.

After I had been reading for some time I put the candles out as the lights came on again. And I noticed that what remained of one candle was exactly four times the length of what was left of other.

Can you find out just how long those two candles were burning?

 

109.  Staff and the Steeple

A five feet long staff casts a shadow 2 feet long. Can you find the height of a steeple whose shadow at the same hour, is 120 ft. long?

 

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