Thursday, January 27, 2005

On Plagiarism, Apple Pie and Sumo Wrestlers...

As you all know, Ravikiran recently had a dream where there was this innocent person who, by force of habit had started to make photocopies of newspapers from all around and distributed them from the middle of a desert. You also know that the folks who actually owned the content of the newspapers built the now-famous highway to the desert for readers to drive over and swear at the innocent person.

Now, when all the readers went there to do that, they found that the owners of the newspaper were already there swearing at "innocent person" left, right and center. I was there too. And I am so pleased that the whole issue has ended peacefully now. You might be interested to know how it was finally resolved...


Owners: (making angry faces) Give us an explanation for why you copied from all our newspapers?
Innocent Person: I always thought I could!
Owners: (bewildered) Is that right??
Innocent Person: Yeah, I never knew I should not copy!
Owners: (with happy faces) Oh Okay, fine then! Come people, lets all go.

After that, we all got on our cars and drove back to our homes.

By the way, here's some more puzzles. Assume that you are the arbiter and...
1. Devise a method to split a piece of apple-pie between two Sumo wrestlers without dispute.
2. Devise a method for 3 Sumo Wrestlers.
3. Extend to n
.
Since I am very careless with my logical deductions, I might have missed a few assumptions/constraints in this puzzle. So assume as you deem necessary. Do give your solutions. I don't know what to do with the second and third situations myself.

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