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?

you need only cut one link but it must be the third link from one end of hte chain.
remove hoth ends of hte chain by pulling them through the cut in the link and that leaves you with 3 bits of chain: 1 four links long, 1 two links long and the final cut link.
first day give him the cut link
second day give him the 2 link chain and he returns the cut link
third day give him the cut link.
fourth day give him the four link chain and take back the other two pieces.
5th day give him cut link
6th day give him 2 link chain and take back the cut link
7th ady give him all

Posted by FatBoy on 2003-09-11 12:03:01