That confused me too. After reading the responses, I figured out that the puzzle refers to the cord – not plug – that switches a light on and off. So if a light has its cord pulled once, it’s off, twice, it’s on again, thrice, off again, etc. So the guy who pulls every 3rd cord will switch the 6th light back on, as well as the 12th, the 18th, etc. (In fact, he turns one light back on for each light that he turns off.)

Hope that clears the confusion.

(And that you weren’t jesting.)

Makeshifts last the longest.


In reply to Re^2: CarTalk Puzzler by Aristotle
in thread CarTalk Puzzler by freddo411

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":



  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.