Buzz
While this Olympia problem appears straightforward, it manages to challenge contestants.
The Road to Olympia Summit is the foremost intellectual arena for high school students. Despite its 21-year existence, the program has never lost its edge in perplexing contestants. Sometimes, viewers also gain additional knowledge from the program's questions.
During the third week of March in the fifteenth year, a question emerged in the Finish Line round: 'A tourist group of 36 people crosses a river on a boat. The boat can carry a maximum of 6 people, including the driver. Fortunately, there's exactly 1 person in the group who can steer the boat. How many trips does the group need to make at minimum to cross the river?'
After a lengthy contemplation, a contestant provided the answer 8, but the MC declared it incorrect. Subsequently, another contestant quickly buzzed in and proposed the correct answer: 7.
This contestant explained: Subtracting the boat driver leaves 35 people, and each trip can carry an additional 5 people excluding the driver. We divide 35 by 5 to get the answer of 7. With such rigorous reasoning, it's natural for the MC to award points to the contestant.
This problem is relatively easy to assess, yet it can easily deceive contestants who overlook certain details, leading to incorrect answers like the male student's.
Another question from the twenty-first week of the year poses a clever yet super easy riddle:
Bird A was flying when it encountered flock B flying in the opposite direction, so it exclaimed: Hello, 100 of you. The leader of flock B replied: 'Hello, we're not 100, but all of us, plus all of us, plus half of us, and a quarter of us, and you make 100. How many birds are in flock B?'
With this question, audiences believe that despite its longer and more convoluted conditions compared to other questions, it's incredibly easy if you're observant and know how to formulate equations from the given data. Accordingly, the contestant's answer to this question is 36 birds. This is also the program's answer.
The solution to this problem is explained as follows:
First, subtract 1 from 100 to get 99 birds.
Let x represent the number of birds in flock B:
Thus, we have the equation: x + x + ( 1/2)x + (1/4)x = 99
=> 2x + (3/4)x = 99
=> 11x/4 = 99
=> x = 36 birds.
