You have nine brass rings, but three are actually gold. Can you pick these out using a balance scale three times at the most?

(In reply to The answer is ... by Charlie)

I'll agree that it would take 5 weighings if you were to weigh them all seperately, but what if weighing 2 was dependent on the outcome of weighing 1 and weighing 3 was dependent of the previous two? I don't know how you would decide what to weigh next, but I have a feeling that you can solve it in three weighings if you take the previous weighings into account when deciding what to weigh next.

Posted by Tiralmo on 2005-06-23 23:48:22