Alternate Currency
Puzzle: The Magic
Money Machine
xkcd.com
The wizards at Wall Street are up to it
again. The Silverbags investment bank
has invented the following machine.
The machine consists of 6 boxes
numbered 1 to 6. When you first get
the machine, it contains 6 tokens, one
in each box. You have two buttons A,
B on the machine and you can press
them as many times as you like and in
any order.
Button A Choose a number i from 1
to 5 and then take one token from box i
and magically two tokens will be added
to box i + 1.
Button B Choose a number i from 1
to 4 and then take one token from box i
and then the contents of boxes i + 1 and
i + 2 will be interchanged.
The machine sells for one trillion
dollars. The contract says that you can
take the machine back to the bank at
any time and then the bank will give
you one dollar for each token in the machine. Is the machine worth buying?
Find the solution at: http://xrds.acm.
org/bemusement-solutions/ 2010.cfm
Allergy season
PhD Comics ©Jorge Cham
Can you can do better? Bemusements would like your puzzles and mathematical games (but not Sudoku).
Contact xrds@acm.org to submit yours!
