The following question was presented:
OK, so here's a brain teaser that I just came across on another site somewhere. (Just to carry on the theme of tesing one's intelligence). I ran a map program to get distances from England and it came up with the following:
America 1,800 miles
New Zealand 2,400 miles
Japan 1,200 miles
Brazil 1,400 miles
How far away does it say Argentina is?
Results:
1600 miles, 1800 miles, 1900 miles and 2000 miles tied with 25% of the votes each from the following selection:
- 1000 miles (0%)
- 1200 miles (0%)
- 1400 miles (0%)
- 1500 miles (0%)
- 1600 miles (25%)
- 1700 miles (0%)
- 1800 miles (25%)
- 1900 miles (25%)
- 2000 miles (25%)
- 2200 miles (0%)
Graphic of Results:
Pre-Result Discussion
Analysis:
Oh dear! Yet again we have failed miserably. The only thing I will say this time is that I did actually get this one right when I looked at it. That either means I'm smarter than you or just weirder than you - I'll leave you to decide that one.
First thing you need to do is forget geography. This is not a geography question. The question even states that it's a brain teaser, however I suspect that one or more of you looked at a map and tried to figure some kind of distance logic into this.
So, if it's not a geographic question, what is it? A very simple algebra question really - the answer is 2200 miles and it's calculated by assigning a value of 200 miles to a consonant and 300 miles to a vowel, hence Argentina = (5 * 200) + (4 * 300) = 2200.
From my end, I noticed that all the distances were divisible by 200. That's not relevant to the answer, but it gave me the means to figuring out how to get the answer as it got me thinking that there was some kind of assignment going on (rather than being related to geography). Next I noticed that Brazil was 200 miles more than Japan and I noticed that there was one letter difference between these two countries, so first I wondered if it was as simple as 1 letter = 200 miles. That didn't quite work, but there was obviously some sort of pattern around this and then you can see that they both have two vowels, so I thought perhaps it's the consonants that are worth 200 and working backwards you figure out that the vowels are worth 300 and then you check against the other countries to confirm your answer.
(Regardless of whether you're listening to The Proclaimers when you're trying to figure it out).
07:42:05
8th December 2008