Links of Gold
Puzzler time.
This one is a little involved, so we better get started.
Here we go.
A struggling young art history major is working as a waitress in New York City while going to school.
It is just after Christmas. She has traveled home for the holiday and spent a lot of money on Christmas presents and such.
When she gets back to her little room in the rooming house after the holiday, she realizes that she can't pay the rent.
So she approaches the landlord with the following offer.
She says, "Look, I don't have the money to pay rent for the month of January. But I can give you a link of my gold necklace every day. Each day, I'll give you one link from my necklace to pay for the rent in gold."
As luck would have it, there are 31 days in January and her gold necklace has 31 links exactly.
So the landlord says, "Let me look at thing. I wanna make sure it is real gold."
So, he looks at it and verifies that it's authentic 18 karat gold. And he says, "You've got a deal. At the end of the month, I'll give you the necklace back, if you give me the money."
Now, obviously she could cut the thing into 31 pieces, and every day give him a piece, but then she'd have to have it repaired by a jeweler, which would cost an incredible amount of money. So she wants to make as few cuts as possible, right?
So here's what she's gonna do. Day one, she's going to cut one link.
On day 2, instead of cutting off another link, she cuts two links, gives that to the guy and takes the first one back.
Then on day 3, she gives him the first one. So he has three, but there are only 2 cuts made.
So the puzzler question is, how many pieces does she have to cut the chain into to be able to pay for all 31 days in the least amount of cuts possible?
And how long are those various pieces?
Here is the hint: 40 years ago, people would have had a much harder time solving this puzzle than they do today.
Good luck.
