mattgadient.com

Let’s get right down to the problem… You have 3 people who are on an island. We’ll call them Mark, Ryan, and Evan. Unfortunately, they have to leave. Maybe they’ve run out of food, maybe the island is burning down, or maybe they just need a change of scenery. We don’t know why, and it doesn’t matter. The point is, they need to travel to another island which is miles and miles away. The good news is that they have a boat. Their boat can hold up to 200 pounds in weight. This creates a problem though because: continue reading…

Not everything I put in the riddles, puzzles, and brain teasers section involves a king and some sort of puzzle that has to be solved with fancy logic. Sometimes it’s a real life question, and this is one of those times.

The question of course is if you have a 2-prong outlet (live + neutral) and want to convert it to a 3-prong (live + neutral + ground), why can’t you simply use a little jumper-wire on the new outlet and hook up ground to neutral? After all, they both go to ground eventually. This would mean that your surge protector that needs ground to operate correctly would work (surge protectors simply dump surges to ground before they hit your equipment). The problem is, by connecting neutral to ground in the outlet, there’s a situation that could happen that could kill you. No, it doesn’t have to do with the surge protector or power surges. Want to guess what it is? continue reading…

Once upon a time, there was a powerful kingdom with a powerful king. Like so many other kings, this king had a lust for popularity, a lust for power, and a lust to be loved by all. Unfortunately for the king, his people did not look up to him. Rather, in times of need, they looked to the 4 wise men who lived in his lands, as they were very wise, and very kind, and had the answers to all problems. It was generally accepted that the wise men were smarter than the king, and this bothered the king greatly.

In most cases, the king could simply order that they be put to death. However, he knew that this would greatly upset the people. He decided to come up with a plan to outsmart the wise men, proving that they were not as wise as the people believed. After embarrassing them publically with a problem they could not solve, he knew the people would more readily accept his decision to end their lives. continue reading…