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Topic: Lone tree (Read 844 times) |
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alien
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1. Tim is with his friend, who is a dressmaker. They agree about dining out tomorrow, and the question arose about who would pay the bill. So Tim takes his needle, and proposes following rules: He will leave the needle in the living room back at his place. The needle must be easily visible, in other words, he is not suppose to hide it. His friend can look for the needle, undisturbed, as much as he wants, and if he finds it, it is enough to call Tim inside and point at it. His pal agrees, and tomorrow he had to buy lunch, because he couldn't find his needle. How?
2. It is a windless autumn day. There are no life forms near our lone tree, excluding other plants. So there is a yellow leaf on the lowest branch, the pavement is about three meters right below it, and there's nothing between the two. But when this leaf falls off, it doesn't touch the pavement for about a day, even though nothing unusual occurred. So what happened?
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Whiskey Tango Foxtrot
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Re: Lone tree
« Reply #1 on: Sep 21st, 2006, 8:31pm » |
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Would your definition of an unusual event include the tree being knocked down?
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"I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use." - Galileo Galilei
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TomC588
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Re: Lone tree
« Reply #2 on: Sep 21st, 2006, 9:19pm » |
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Tim is a dressmaker and has a bunch of needles in his place. His friend is unable to find the needle that Tim proposed for the game.
The tree is not standing but it is knocked down with the lowest branch on the side stickin gstraight up into the air. The leaf falls onto the tree and does not hit the ground until the next day.
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cchris
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Re: Lone tree
« Reply #3 on: Sep 21st, 2006, 9:55pm » |
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1.) It's in a stack of needles?
2.) The wind caught the leaf, blew it away from the pavement, then a day later blew it back onto the pavement?
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Grimbal
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Re: Lone tree
« Reply #4 on: Sep 22nd, 2006, 6:30am » |
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1. reminds me of this Mad Magazine quizz. It is a picture of a stack of hay and you are asked to find the needle. If you look up the answer, it says: If you haven't found the needle, that's really bad. We made it especially easy for you, it is a stack of needles on the picture.
2. Is the leaf on the magic beanstalk, the one that reaches up to the clouds?
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| « Last Edit: Sep 22nd, 2006, 6:30am by Grimbal » |
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Whiskey Tango Foxtrot
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Re: Lone tree
« Reply #5 on: Sep 22nd, 2006, 5:00pm » |
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The way I interpreted this, possibly incorrectly, is that Tom is taking the needle back to his place, meaning Tom's place. Therefore there should be no stack of needles. Like I said, I may be wrong, though.
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"I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use." - Galileo Galilei
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alien
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on Sep 21st, 2006, 8:31pm, Whiskey Tango Foxtrot wrote:| Would your definition of an unusual event include the tree being knocked down? |
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on Sep 21st, 2006, 9:19pm, TomC588 wrote:
The tree is not standing but it is knocked down with the lowest branch on the side stickin gstraight up into the air. The leaf falls onto the tree and does not hit the ground until the next day. |
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The tree is upright, alive and green.
on Sep 21st, 2006, 9:55pm, cchris wrote:| 2.) The wind caught the leaf, blew it away from the pavement, then a day later blew it back onto the pavement? |
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No wind.
on Sep 21st, 2006, 9:19pm, TomC588 wrote:Tim is a dressmaker and has a bunch of needles in his place. His friend is unable to find the needle that Tim proposed for the game.
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on Sep 21st, 2006, 9:55pm, cchris wrote:| 1.) It's in a stack of needles? |
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Yes.
on Sep 22nd, 2006, 6:30am, Grimbal wrote:| 2. Is the leaf on the magic beanstalk, the one that reaches up to the clouds? |
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No.
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TomC588
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Re: Lone tree
« Reply #7 on: Sep 23rd, 2006, 5:27am » |
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It's Autumn and the leaves are falling of trees. This particular leaf is one of the last to fall and lands on top of the other leaves. The next day the leaves are raked and the yellow leaf hits the pavement.
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honkyboy
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Re: Lone tree
« Reply #8 on: Sep 23rd, 2006, 10:00am » |
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There is an abandoned spider's web attatched to the bottom of the branch. The leave becomes tangled in the web for a day before breaking free and falling to the ground.
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Grimbal
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Re: Lone tree
« Reply #9 on: Sep 25th, 2006, 4:27am » |
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on Sep 23rd, 2006, 5:27am, TomC588 wrote:| It's Autumn and the leaves are falling of trees. This particular leaf is one of the last to fall and lands on top of the other leaves. The next day the leaves are raked and the yellow leaf hits the pavement. |
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The riddle states that there is nothing between the leave and the pavement. That would exclude other leaves or the tree trunk.
Maybe the leaf fell shortly before midnight. So, indeed, it didn't touch the pavement for almost the whole day.
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graphia
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Re: Lone tree
« Reply #10 on: Sep 25th, 2006, 4:50am » |
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There doesn't have to be a breeze for a leaf to fall somewhere other than directly down.
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TomC588
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Re: Lone tree
« Reply #11 on: Sep 25th, 2006, 7:16am » |
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Quote:| The riddle states that there is nothing between the leave and the pavement. That would exclude other leaves or the tree trunk |
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There are no leaves there to begin with but by the time the single leaf does fall, the other leaves have fallen first.
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Grimbal
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Re: Lone tree
« Reply #12 on: Sep 25th, 2006, 7:21am » |
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Aah, yes. Somehow my picture of the situation was that it is the only and last leave on the tree. Funny how phantom memories get created.
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BNC
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Re: Lone tree
« Reply #13 on: Sep 26th, 2006, 3:15am » |
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Similarly, it could also be that by the time the leave falls, the pavement is covered with snow.
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How about supercalifragilisticexpialidociouspuzzler [Towr, 2007]
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towr
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Re: Lone tree
« Reply #14 on: Sep 26th, 2006, 4:12am » |
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The tree+pavement are floating on a piece of rock in space, hence why it is possible for there to be nothing between the lowest branch and the pavement. (There'd be air if it was on earth)
Now, foregoing how the tree came to be in space, we can assume there is enough 'rock' for the pavement and tree to be on to have a small though noticable gravity. Otherwise, there would be no sensible distinction between up and down, and we'd have neither a lowest branch, nor would we have the pavement below it. And because we're talking about, in cosmological terms, a small piece of rock, the gravity is so faint, it takes a day for the leave to fall to the pavement.
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| « Last Edit: Sep 26th, 2006, 4:15am by towr » |
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alien
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on Sep 23rd, 2006, 10:00am, honkyboy wrote:| There is an abandoned spider's web attatched to the bottom of the branch. The leave becomes tangled in the web for a day before breaking free and falling to the ground. |
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That is it. 
on Sep 23rd, 2006, 5:27am, TomC588 wrote:| It's Autumn and the leaves are falling of trees. This particular leaf is one of the last to fall and lands on top of the other leaves. The next day the leaves are raked and the yellow leaf hits the pavement. |
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I guess I should've stressed the point that next day was windless and lifeless too.
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| « Last Edit: Sep 27th, 2006, 9:53am by alien » |
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towr
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Re: Lone tree
« Reply #16 on: Sep 27th, 2006, 10:48am » |
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on Sep 27th, 2006, 9:44am, alien wrote:| That is it. |
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But doesn't that contradict Quote:| there's nothing between the two. |
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?
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TomC588
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Re: Lone tree
« Reply #17 on: Sep 27th, 2006, 11:18am » |
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Well it said theres nothing between the leaf and the pavement. So a spider web with magical powers to suck in the leaf would work.
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alien
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It is infinitely easier to criticize than to create, and no work of art is ever finished, only abandoned. Said that, I propose we abandon this lone tree like Titanic, because of the reasons you have mentioned. And for those brave men who stay behind the women and the children, since there are not enough boats to go around, here is a plausible explanation and counterargument, which might save us: The structure of the leaf, particularly of a plane tree, is such that when it falls off, it probably falls at least half a meter or more away from the spot that was right below it, when it was still attached. So my idea was, a thread of an abandoned spider web was loose but attached to the stalk, before the leaf fell off. Or even better, and in the spirit of wording of the riddle, a long thread of a spider that was descending down the tree, as it happens, was about half a meter aside from our leaf, not right below it. So when the leaf fell, it became tangled in this thread for about a day. And what untangled it was that what untangles us all: decay and time.
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SWF
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Re: Lone tree
« Reply #20 on: Oct 1st, 2006, 6:04pm » |
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1. If the answer is that the needle is in a stack of needles, wouldn't the needle in question have been found (but not identified)? If the needle was placed in a particulary messy living room, finding a needle would not be easy nor worth looking for when the only reward was who pays the bill for dinner.
2. There could be an old spiderweb attached between the back of the leaf and the branch so that it was not in between leaf and pavement.
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