The Coffee Place's Puzzle and Brain Teasers
The King's Gold
While pondering this, you should probably be drinking a cup of French Vanilla(cup-in-hand)!
coffee.
There once was a king who ruled a large kingdom!
Within this kingdom there were ten towns (excluding
the capital where the king's castle was). Every
month the king would receive ten bars of gold from
each town, each weighing ten pounds. That's 100
pounds of gold from each town for taxes, protection
services, etc. provided by the king. The king
learns through his spy network that one of the
towns is sending in ten bars of gold weighing
NINE pounds each. The king doesn't know which town
it is and this makes him furious! To help him
solve this dilema, he consults his wizard. After
working in his laboratory the wizard produces a
scale for the king to weigh his gold with. There's
only one catch, since the wizard is a magician and
not a mechanical engineer, the scale has a one-time
use only. The scale is very accurate and gives
the correct weight(in pounds), but once a weight has been
placed on the scale and the weight is read, the
scale is useless. The king can weigh as little or
as much as he desires, but still, the scale will
only work once!
If the king can weigh only one amount of gold,
how will he determine which town is ripping him
off?
Please give me a hint
Please give me a another hint
Post an Answer to this interesting question
Review other solutions
This page is maintained by: mark@thecoffeeshop.com
Changes were last made on 1/20/2001
Return to the top of Brain Teasers list
Return to The Coffee Shop's Home Page