Decades have gone by since my school leaving examination. However, the mathematics paper has not changed. It is still very low on ?thinking? and very high on tedious calculations and sundry tricks.

This year?s secondary examination in West Bengal was no different from other years. The same old complaint over the mathematics paper: it was too tough. I took a peek at the paper and found it bordering on the ridiculous.

I guess the people who want to put the examinees to ?test? have little or no sense of reality. If the examination was meant to drive away people from mathematics classroom then this was a class act, but what about the future of those for whom this test was a stepping stone? Please send your response at debkumar@kqscore.com.

PUZZLE1: A rather silly car thief stole, without knowing it, the car of the chief of police. The police immediately started an investigation and on the basis of witness depositions, four suspects were arrested that were seen near the car at the time of the crime. Because the chief of police took the case very seriously, he decided to examine the suspects personally and use the new lie-detector of the police station. Each suspect gave three statements during the examinations.

Suspect A: (1) In high-school I was in the same class as suspect C. (2) Suspect B is the guilty one. (3)The thief didn?t know that it was the car of the chief of police.

Suspect B: (1) Suspect C is the guilty one. (2) Suspect A is not guilty. (3) I didn?t do it.

Suspect C: (1) I never met suspect A until today. (2) Suspect B is innocent. (3) Suspect D has a driving license.

Suspect D: (1) Suspect C is innocent. (2) I never sat behind the wheel of a car. (3) Suspect A is the guilty one.

With so many contradicting statements, the chief of police lost track. To make things worse, it appeared that the lie-detector didn?t quite work yet as it should, because the machine only reported that exactly 6 of the 12 statements were true, but not which ones.

The who is the thief?

Solutions on April 4

CORRECT ENTRIES

February 28

T. Sreevani, Jamshedpur; Dhruba Jyoti Daityari, Cal-75; Rajashree and Rajdip Hazra, Kulti; Vineet Bhansali, Siliguri; Koustuv Bhattacharya, Rampurhat; Rajat Tibrewal, Calcutta Boys? School; Vikash Jain, Cal-53; Abhinandan Khan, Cal-30; Abhigyan Mundhra, Apeejay School; Divya Kaul, BIT Mesra; Arunabha Majumder, Malda; Subhasish Hazra, Cal-6

CORRECT ENTRIES

February 21

Sunaina Pal, Jadavpur; Arundhati Sikder, Jamshedpur; Haren Bordoloi, Jorhat; M. Iqbal Shaikh, Sibpore; Subhash Chandra Chattopadhyay, Jharia; Arun Kumar Singh, Bhagalpur.

Send your entries to knowhow@abpmail.com within 10 days

PUZZLE CRACKED

The response for the puzzle posed on February 28 was dismal. Well, here?s the answer and the hint. Solution: ?There is no future in time travel?. It should have been clear that there can be no more than 25 possible seeds to try. Despite the apparent polyalphabetic nature, it is, in fact, a monoalphabetic cipher with a clever twist and is similar in principle to cracking a Caesar-shift cipher. In addition, it seems that there is no easy method of decoding other than trying each combination.

First write down the alphabetic values of each letters (X=24; B=02; M=13 and so on). Now by starting with a seed of 1 and working upwards, we can analyse the first, say five, letters to look for anything promising. Seed 1, 2 and 3 may look unpromising. So carry on with the fourth and the message will be revealed.