You must use a gold chain to pay a worker for seven days of service. The chain has seven links on it, and you agree on a price of one link per day.

However, the worker will not work without getting the day's pay up front, and you do not wish to give him more than his due for the fear that he will take it and leave. Therefore, you realised that you must cut some of the links on the chain.

What is the smallest number of links you will need to cut, so that you can make sure that the worker receives one link for every day that he works, but not more?

Actually, you only need one cut. Remember, when you cut a link, you can make 3 pieces (the broken link, the part to the right of the broken link, and the part to the left of the broken link) just break the third link and you are left with a single broken link, a double link, and a triple link.

Posted by Fizzle on 2002-05-08 13:15:02