Two fifty foot ropes are suspended from a forty foot ceiling, about twenty feet apart.

Armed with only a knife, how much of the rope can you steal?

Assuming the rope is attached to the roof and not able to be untied and your height is about 6foot.
The two ropes are twenty feel apart. If you hold one rope whilst you climb the other you would be able to cut off the held rope at twenty feet. so you would be able to get thirty feet of the first rope.
The second rope is tied to the main rope at 10 feet from the ceiling.(the rope is thirty feet tall)this means you can cut the main rope and get a rope of fourty feet!
Depending on how desperate you are for rope you could cut about another 6 feet of rope from the tied piece.
46 feet of rope.

Posted by justn on 2003-02-09 16:22:59