9, But Upside Down

Posted on July 20, 2008 by dingsan

Regarding the last question – the President of the United States must be elected! Congratulations to Yoz.

Anyway, this is a guest question from cokematic.  Enjoy!

- you are locked in a big cylinder.
- there are buttons located at the north, south, east, west sides of the cylinder (1 button each)
- each button has a state of on/off and can be changed by pressing the button. However, you cannot tell if a button is on/off
- at the centre there is a “confirm” button, when you step on it the cylinder will:
1. if all 4 buttons are at the same state (all 4 are on or all 4 are off) the cylinder will unlock and you are free
2. if they are not the same, the cylinder will spin until you can’t recognize the buttons (hint: the sequence of buttons
and the states won’t change… 1100 will become 0110 or 0011 or 1001 or 1100) otherwise.

How can you get out of the cylinder with the least number of steps assuming you are super unlucky?
one step = pressing the “confirm” button once

and no it does not involve making marks on the wall/button so that you can tell what you pressed.

Drop me a line if you would also like to submit a question.

Filed under: Brain Food | Tagged: , ,

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19 Responses

  1. Yitza, on July 21st, 2008 at 10:36 am Said:

    Find the key and unlock the door?

  2. Kairu, on July 21st, 2008 at 8:17 pm Said:

    O_o………I am just gonna say….I have no idea. I hate riddles
    *Bangs on the walls* Get me out of here!!!!! lol.

  3. Yoz, on July 21st, 2008 at 8:40 pm Said:

    I’ll give this a shot..

    1. Press the confirm button
    2. If the cylinder does not unlock, press the button on the wall in front of you
    3. Repeat steps 1 and 2 until cylinder unlocks

    I was hoping for a more intricate answer

  4. gndynames, on July 21st, 2008 at 10:14 pm Said:

    27, final answer.

  5. Llora-chan, on July 21st, 2008 at 11:52 pm Said:

    Kyaa~ I’ve looked at this thing so many times and I can’t figure it out.

  6. blissmo, on July 22nd, 2008 at 5:16 am Said:

    I don’t like cylinders

  7. issa-sa, on July 22nd, 2008 at 9:03 am Said:

    I hate to make this joke, but over 9000?
    I’ll have to go back and mull over this one a bit more

  8. dingsan, on July 22nd, 2008 at 9:24 am Said:

    I hope you guys realize that I don’t have the answer, and that I’ve given up long ago after my brain imploded trying to figure this out.

    =)

    I’ll “obtain” the answer eventually…

  9. gndynames, on July 22nd, 2008 at 9:56 am Said:

    The way I see it, there are 4^2 different configurations for the buttons. Two configurations allow the thing to open, so theoretically 15 tries to open the thing. 15×5 is 75 steps…I don’t know what I was thinking yesterday…

  10. Cokematic, on July 22nd, 2008 at 11:42 am Said:

    hint:

    there can only be:

    1. all 4 on / all 4 ohe answer is less te tff (they are the same)
    2. 3 on, 1 off / 3 off 1 on (they are the same)
    3. 2 on 2 off (on, off, on, off)
    4. 2 on 2 off (on, on, off, off)

    now the first step is to hit confirm… that gets rid of 1. you only have 3 configurations left.

    hope it helped!

  11. Cokematic, on July 22nd, 2008 at 11:42 am Said:

    edit: the above should say:

    “1. all 4 on / all 4 off (they are the same)”

    stupid touchpad

  12. issa-sa, on July 22nd, 2008 at 11:57 pm Said:

    Methinks the answer is 9.
    You know, since it’s in the title of the post and all.
    No really, I smoked something real good from the Math gods last night and came up with the answer. Tell me when I’m wrong.

  13. Cokematic, on July 23rd, 2008 at 10:51 am Said:

    close :O feel free to send me what you came up with though …

    and send me what you were smoking too

  14. Yitza, on July 24th, 2008 at 8:20 am Said:

    10 because cokematic said 9 was close. XD

  15. issa-sa, on July 24th, 2008 at 8:51 am Said:

    Assuming the worst of luck, 11? Trying to revise the last answer, since obviously the Math gods are not on my side (at any rate they weren’t last week when I had my test -_-”)

  16. Yoz, on July 24th, 2008 at 10:20 pm Said:

    EIGHT. CALLED IT

  17. dingsan, on July 25th, 2008 at 3:14 pm Said:

    So, apparently the answer is 8. Yoz isn’t getting this one because he guessed it. And 10 as well. Also, thanks to Cokematic for the question, and everyone else who felt their minds melt trying to answer this.

    Find the solution here: http://coke.dasaku.net/images/200807/solution6.jpg

  18. Yoz, on July 25th, 2008 at 4:09 pm Said:

    Give me half a point :)

  19. issa-sa, on July 27th, 2008 at 12:38 am Said:

    *Lousy Math Gods…*

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