Darwin thought that all life arose from a one-celled organism. But to evolve from a one-celled organism to a human being with a least a trillion cells, there would have to be many changes. Darwin says these changes would have had to occur in the right order. But Darwin may have been “grossly wrong”. According to proponents of “Intelligent design”, Darwin’s assumptions are mathematically “not possible”. They argue that even if we limit the number of necessary mutations to 1,000 and half of these mutations are beneficial, the odds against getting 1,000 beneficial mutations in the proper order is 21,000. Expressed in decimal form, this is about 10,301. “Such a number of mutations is far beyond the capacity of the universe to generate.”

PUZZLE 1: “Oh fudge!” said Zack! “I have forgotten my locker combination! Now I am going to be late for class!”

“Relax,” said Kyle. “What do you remember about it?”

“Well, as you know, each of the three numbers of my combination can be anywhere between 1 and 39. I do remember each one was different and the sum of the first two numbers was 42,” said Zack.

“Okay, go on,” urged Kyle.

“And the last two numbers differed only by two. Oh yes, and all three numbers were primes,” a harried Zack told his friend.

“Well Zack, it just so happens that I actually remember your combination. But since you think you’re so smart, I’ll only give you one hint. If you take the three numbers of your combination and multiply them together, the last digit of the product will be....” And Kyle whispered something in his ear.

With that, Zack was able to deduce his combination and open his locker.

Can you deduce the combination?

Solutions on April 3

CORRECT ENTRIES

March 6

Nirmala Kumar Agarwala, Cal- 89; Anirban Narayan Chowdhury, Garia; S P S Jain; Saumya Mondal; Rahul Rungta; Saidul Islam, Farakka; Chanchal Kumar Roychowdhury, Chandannagor; Sreechandra Banerjee; Siddhart Udani, Cal- 25; Kuntlesh Dewangan, Ranchi; Rhitwik Barman, Guwahati; Ravi Raja.

CORRECT ENTRIES

February 27

Rekha Sutodiya; Niraj Kheria; Aveek Chatterjee; Sourya Pal; Ananya Saha; Kuntlesh Dewangan; Arpan Kr Chakravarty; Khushbo Baid; Arayan Chowdhury

PUZZLE CRACKED

The response this week (March 6) was good. Here goes the solution: Solution 1: Only two links are to be cut. Hint: There will be exactly four links in the chain, consisting of one, three, six and 12. He can then pay the rent as follows. For the first two days he can give a cut link. On the third day he gives the chain of 3 and gets his two cut links back. He uses them on days 4 and 5, and then trades all given so far and gives the 6-link chain on day 6. Using this logic arrange statements and respective case logically.

Solution 2: The answer is 10. It takes 10 binary digits to make a number greater than or equal to 1,000.