Brain Teasers
Fish Length
A fish has a tail as long as its head and a quarter the length of its body. Its body is 3 quarters of its total length. Its head is 4 inches long.
How long is the fish?
How long is the fish?
Answer
128 incheshead = 4 inches
body = 96 inches
tail = 28 inches
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Comments
Thats one big fish!
tasty too!
This teaser is wrong. There is no answer. The given answer does not have a tail as long as the head. The given answer does not have a tail that is a quarter the length of its body.
The first two statements require a head and tail each one tenth the length of the fish. The third statement requires a head and tail one eighth the length of the fish. There is no solution.
The only real mysteries here are:
1) How did this teaser get approved with such a glaring error?
2) How come in almost seven years nobody has pointed out the error?
The first two statements require a head and tail each one tenth the length of the fish. The third statement requires a head and tail one eighth the length of the fish. There is no solution.
The only real mysteries here are:
1) How did this teaser get approved with such a glaring error?
2) How come in almost seven years nobody has pointed out the error?
The teaser states the fish has a tail the length of its head (4 inches) plus one quarter of its body (24 inches), which is 28 inches, exactly the length of the tail.
I am not sure where your confusion is.
The teaser is fine.
I am not sure where your confusion is.
The teaser is fine.
No, it doesn't say "plus", it says "and" as in also. I reread it four or five times before posting my comment to see if I could figure out what you meant. Your intended interpretation never occurred to me.
The teaser's unclear at best, although I think my interpretation is the natural one.
The teaser's unclear at best, although I think my interpretation is the natural one.
well seeing as your interpretation is the first of its kind in 7 years, as you pointed out, then it is safe to assume it is definitely not the "Natural" one.
Well, I thought the teaser was OK, but I had the same confusion with what the problem was. I thought there wasn't a solution, but I did finally figure out what the teaser meant to ask. The wording could definitely be improved.
Definitely awkwardly worded but I figured it out anyway. Reasonable puzzle apart from the plus/and mixup.
I agree with javaguru, the way it's written results in an incalculable formula. Saying the head is the same length as the tail and 1/4 of the total length (instead of plus) means it's the same length of the tail (4") and that 4" is 1/4 of the total length.
It's like if you say your house is 40'x40' and 1600 square feet, those are just alternate ways of expressing the size of the house. Doesn't mean it's 3200 square feet.
So the way it's written is at least ambiguous, would improve by editing it to say plus.
It's like if you say your house is 40'x40' and 1600 square feet, those are just alternate ways of expressing the size of the house. Doesn't mean it's 3200 square feet.
So the way it's written is at least ambiguous, would improve by editing it to say plus.
I agree with javaguru. Saying the head is the same length as the tail and 1/4 of the body length (instead of plus) means it's the same length of the tail (4") and that 4" is 1/4 of the body length. Which implies that the head is 4", the body 16", and the tail 4".
It's like if you say your house is 40'x40' and 1600 square feet, those are just alternate ways of expressing the size of the house. Doesn't mean it's 3200 square feet.
So the way it's written is at least ambiguous, would improve by editing it to say plus.
It's like if you say your house is 40'x40' and 1600 square feet, those are just alternate ways of expressing the size of the house. Doesn't mean it's 3200 square feet.
So the way it's written is at least ambiguous, would improve by editing it to say plus.
Please ignore my first comment, when doing this on Android we can't see the teaser while commenting, so I accidentally referred to total length instead of body length.
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