IQ test

[Hardy Heinlin]

IQ Test

You've got an electronic scale to weigh things. The scale's battery is almost empty; so keep it off until you really need it. Only turn it on when the things to be weighed are on the scale pan already. When turned on, the display will indicate the measured weight for a fraction of a second and then it'll be blank forever.

There are four boxes; each box contains ten silver bars. We know that each bar weighs 100 grams.

However, one of the four boxes contains modified bars only. Each modified bar hides in its core a piece of gold, and we know that each modified bar weighs 101 grams.

Now find a method to determine the box which contains modified bars. The method must be robust and must not rely on any happy coincidence.

In terms of taste, smell, optics, and acoustics the bars are not distinguishable. So you need to use the scale, and that will work just once, for one quick moment. There are no other tools, no batteries, no battery chargers whatsoever.

[Jeroen Hoppenbrouwers]

AI gave me an answer. I won't post it here but it looks reasonable. Does that count?   :-)

[Hardy Heinlin]

So you tested the IQ of the AI :-)

[Kurt]

IQ Test

You've got an electronic scale to weigh things. The scale's battery is almost empty; so keep it off until you really need it. Only turn it on when the things to be weighed are on the scale pan already. When turned on, the display will indicate the measured weight for a fraction of a second and then it'll be blank forever.

There are four boxes; each box contains ten silver bars. We know that each bar weighs 100 grams.

However, one of the four boxes contains modified bars only. Each modified bar hides in its core a piece of gold, and we know that each modified bar weighs 101 grams.

Now find a method to determine the box which contains modified bars. The method must be robust and must not rely on any happy coincidence.

In terms of taste, smell, optics, and acoustics the bars are not distinguishable. So you need to use the scale, and that will work just once, for one quick moment. There are no other tools, no batteries, no battery chargers whatsoever.

If we can we remove the bars individually then I would take one bar from one box and 2 bars from the second, tree bars from the third and 4 bars from the fourth (10 bars in total and put on the scale) When turning on the scale the last digit will indicate what box has the modified bars.

I.E: if result is 1001g the modified bars are in the "first" box and if the result are 1004g then the correct box is the fourth

Cheers

Kurt

[Jeroen Hoppenbrouwers]

AI suggested the exact same thing.

If this is a standard puzzle, of course it may have been copying.

[Will]

I was also curious about AI, which produced the same answer that Kurt did.

How did AI do it?

Either this puzzle is a classic, in a common enough class of puzzles that AI could get the answer by pattern matching; or else it somehow (how?) reasoned it's way to a solution. This is the kind of thing that makes AI look unnerving.

[Kurt]

My selfconfidence is boosted now as I got to the solution purely by my own thought process in a couple of minutes (3ish).

If I just could apply that to the wizardry of coding in java, arduino or python then I would join all you good people coding usefull apps for PSX that I am so grateful for !!!!

Cheers

[Hardy Heinlin]

I saw that trick in "Columbo" episode 3 of season 6, title "The Bye-Bye Sky High I.Q. Murder Case", from 1977. Columbo's wife solved the task.

I changed a few things so that it's harder to google.

[Jeroen Hoppenbrouwers]

You can use AI as a great assistant to get some code hacked up. Usually it suggests a few libraries and other items that otherwise would take a lot of searching and study. Never trust its code, but it's usually good enough to get ideas and get going.

I recommend https://duckduckgo.com/aichat which has a few LLMs and promises not to remember your sessions. This is the core of their business model (not tracking you) so if this is a lie, they will feel it later.