In a surprise move, N. Crocosia agreed to halt its nuclear program in return for 20 million iPods. According to the terms of the agreement, all iPods should come read-only, prerecorded with the same 10 tracks, 1 hour long each. The first half of each track is a speech by the country's leader followed by music in the second half without any pauses.

The Ministry of Songs provided 24 songs for the musical part, all with different durations in whole minutes. In addition, they requested that two of the leader's favorite songs, 10 and 12 min long, be together, as well as two others, respectively 4 and 13 min long.

Can these conditions be met?

In case you are wondering, this is simple if we remove the requirement that the leader's favorite songs are on two tracks.  There are many ways to do it.  One way is:
24 + 6
23 + 7
22 + 8
21 + 9
20 + 10
19 + 11
18 + 12
17 + 13
16 + 14
15 + 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + 5

Posted by Steve Herman on 2007-02-27 13:34:02