An Elevator Puzzle From Real Life
In the elevator going up to my office, the floor is listed on a standard old-school digital display, where parts of an 8 light up. On one such elevator, several of the lights in the display are missing or burned out. So here are the following true facts, which I have turned into a puzzle:
1. When traveling from the lobby to my office, only twice does the display read an actual number. The first is 7. Three floors later, it reads 17.
2. My floor is next.
Question 1: What floor do I work on?
Question 2: At two points in this journey (including on the two floors between 7 and 17), the elevator rider is shown a pair of back-to-back non-number symbols that are exactly the same for two consecutive floors. What are those symbols?
Question 3: For that matter, which parts of the 8 are burned out?
1. When traveling from the lobby to my office, only twice does the display read an actual number. The first is 7. Three floors later, it reads 17.
2. My floor is next.
Question 1: What floor do I work on?
Question 2: At two points in this journey (including on the two floors between 7 and 17), the elevator rider is shown a pair of back-to-back non-number symbols that are exactly the same for two consecutive floors. What are those symbols?
Question 3: For that matter, which parts of the 8 are burned out?
posted by Cowboy Dave Dickerson | 12:28 PM
3 Comments:
Okay, I’ll bite.
1. 11.
2. A backward “F.”
3. The two segments on the left-hand side, plus the one on the bottom.
Um, my coffee hadn’t kicked in earlier, and I began to think that maybe I should have kept my answers to myself… Not shared with the rest of the class, as it were.
My apologies.
Now, just to add further confusion, why did my last comment show up as “anonymous”? I’ve been logged in the whole time!
Sigh. No blogging before breakfast for me.
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