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The Break Room
(Issue 7, 2006)
You Get What You Pay For

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A popular story within the cruise line industry relates that on April 12, 1912, a British citizen, Mr. Ralph Henderson, successfully argued that he shouldn’t have to pay the full rate for his outside cabin on his cruise ship. Henderson pointed out that the ship was new and its crew was still learning the various service routines of the ship. Reluctantly, he was given a 10 percent discount by the reservations manager of the H.M.S. Titanic.

- John M. Capozzi, Why climb the Corporate Ladder When You Can Take the Elevator” 500 Secrets for Success in Business, Villard Books, New York.

Getting Ahead

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Jan E.W. Tegart in Reader’s Digest tells this story: “On my way to an appointment during a heavy rainstorm, I received a call on my pager that required an immediate response. When I spotted a pay phone, I parked my car and stepped out into the deluge. As I approached the telephone, it started to ring. Water running down my face, I told the caller there was no one around, and that I needed to make a call right away. ‘You wouldn’t be standing in the rain if you had a cellular phone,’ the man replied. ‘Look across the parking lot. I’m the guy in the car waving.’ He was a car phone salesman, waiting for potential customers.” Now that’s a salesman who wants to get ahead!

Brainteasers

1. The King’s new flag



The King of Puzlandia has designed a new national flag for his country as shown above. He specifies that the flag should be 5 feet high and 7.5 feet wide, and that the two colors should have exactly the same area (he wants to use the same amount of light and dark blue cloth in each flag). How wide must the dark blue stripe be?

Extra credit: The flag makers of the kingdom aren't very good with complex math. Can you come up with a simple rule for determining the width of the stripe for any size flag (with this same ratio of height to width ratio, of course)?


2. Irregular Chess

The chessboard factory in Puzlandia has produced some “irregular” chessboards. Can you find a way to cut this chessboard into two pieces and reassemble it into a proper chessboard (with the white and black pattern intact)? It would be easy to cut off the two white squares and move them, but that would require cutting the board into three pieces.

3. Cubes

Find cubes of whole numbers whose digits add up to the value of their cube root.

For example: 512 is the cube of 8, and 5+1+2 = 8.
“1” is another (rather trivial) example. There are four others.

Click here for Brainteaser answers

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