Trivia: A page from my Mensa 2008 calendar

March 06, 2008

If anyone’s out there, I think the folks at Page-a-Day Online Calendars might have the answer to this one wrong. It’s the first time this year that I’ve needed confirmation, but let me know what you think. I’ll post their answer and mine tomorrow.

In your top drawer are two pairs of gloves in white and three pairs in blackĀ— all the same because you like the style. How many gloves must you take out (without looking) to guarantee a matched pair?

If you’ve never had one of these calendars you should put one on your Christmas list. When you buy a desk calendar by the same company, you get a free online calendar, too.

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 6th, 2008 at 2:01 pm and is filed under Trivia. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

6 Responses to “Trivia: A page from my Mensa 2008 calendar”

  1. Chad said:

    Mar 07, 08 at 5:21 pm

    No answers … I guess nobody’s reading. Anyway, I’ll still go through my answers.

    First of all, I think there are two acceptable answers to this question. That’s because they don’t specify that the gloves are non-ambidextrous. For that reason, the first answer is 3 (guaranteed two of the same color on 3rd glove). The second answer is 6, assuming the gloves are hand-specific. You could pull all left- or right-handed gloves five times before you would be absolutely guaranteed a matching pair.

    For some reason, the Page-a-Day people have the answer listed as 5. If you can give me a reason why that is correct over my two answers, I’m all ears.

  2. Eddie said:

    May 12, 08 at 10:52 pm

    Maybe they have five as the answer because the guaranteed matching pair would be in the drawer after you take out the five.

  3. Eddie said:

    May 12, 08 at 10:54 pm

    Disregard, I misread the problem.

  4. Eddie said:

    May 15, 08 at 1:46 pm

    I think they put five becasue they meant a matching pair of the same color and the same hand. It makes no sense, becasue no one considers a matching pair of gloves to be two right handed or two left handed gloves, but that is how you get five.

  5. Chad said:

    May 15, 08 at 1:55 pm

    After a quick search online, the Page-A-Day folks admitted to making an error on the calendar (the answer should have been listed as “6″). However, your reasoning behind the answer of “5″ makes sense and is probably more “Mensa-ish” than the actual answer.

    See: http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080306091914AA3HMmV

  6. Mensa said:

    Sep 13, 08 at 9:59 pm

    if you want more research info on the Acai check out http://www.galileolabs.com

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