The following special catch puzzle appeared in the issue of The Weekly Dispatch for All Fools' Day, 1900. It caused considerable amusement; for out of a very large body of competitors, many quite expert, not a single person solved it, though it ran for nearly a month.

" A race between a man and a woman that I happened to witness one All Fools' Day has fixed itself indelibly on my memory. It happened at a country-house, where the gardener and the cook decided to run a race to a point 100 feet straight away and return. I found that the gardener ran 3 feet at every bound and the cook only 2 feet, but then she made three bounds to his two. Now, what was the result of the race?"

A fortnight after publication the editor added the following note: "It has been suggested that perhaps there is a catch in the 'return,' but there is not. The race is to a point 100 feet away and home again—that is, a distance of 200 feet. One correspondent asks whether they take exactly the same time in turning, to which I reply that they do. Another seems to suspect that it is really a conundrum, and that the answer is that 'the result of the race was a (matrimonial) tie.' But I had no such intention. The puzzle is an arithmetical one, as it purports to be."

(In reply to re: Solution (of the simple-minded type) by Kenny M)

For assumptions, of course I assumed what you said about factorial (or rather, non-partial) bounds. I quite clearly stated so in my proposed solution, with the explanation that the whole "turning" thing could be ignored. No "However" is needed.

The only reason I did this is because all prior replies had not chosen to ignore (or just didn't make mention of) the "turning" part of the problem. Nor did any of the posts conclude a tie. Yet there is still no solution up. Just covering the bases rather than rehashing what others have already said, you know?

I've read up on the latest replies, and it seems more likely that the "trick" is in the semantics of which sex to assign the gardener and cook. In which case, I'm wrong with my solution anyway.

Then, as you said, there's that pesky "All Fool's Day" reference. I think that either the "All Fool's Day" part is significant, or the solution was already given, but goFish is waiting for that solution to be properly elaborated on. In either case, unless some miracle happens I won't be the one getting the correct solution. Good luck to everyone else!

Posted by Monika on 2006-03-12 09:18:00