I can't take credit for this. It was submitted to a quiz page on the CBC's (Canadian Broadcasting Co) website by Professor Maria Klawe of the Computer Science department at the University of British Columbia. But I thought our group would enjoy it.
Remember when a bar of plain milk chocolate was scored to allow you to break it evenly into smaller pieces?
What is the smallest number of breaks needed to divide a 4 by 8 chocolate bar into single squares, where each break splits any one of the pieces along an original horizontal or vertical line of the bar? Your answer should explain why your number is the smallest possible.
(In reply to
re: Also errr by levik)
In that case I can't see how it can be anything other than Cheradenine's answer: you start with 1 "portion" of chocolate - every break breaks a new "portion" of chocolate (of some size) off. To get to the 32 squares this means 31 breaks are needed. Every single way you can try of breaking up the chocolate ends up with this result. So, I don't get what the puzzle is - there is no 'smallest possible' number - only one number is possible (okay, so there technically is a "smallest number", but smallest of a set of 1 isn't too interesting).
Or am I missing another point of the question here?
re2: Also errr
