Comments on: Brain Game: Mrs. Sasse’s Class

By: Sandy Wood

Sandy Wood — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 02:27:09 +0000

Andrew, nice call on the variables – I did the same exact thing when devising the puzzle.

By: Andrew

Andrew — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 20:09:45 +0000

To keep the variables straight I used the second letter of their names. Wyatt = Y, Wendy = E…. on to A, O, and I.

It was pretty easy; once I saw that Y = 6*O my “order of magnitude” sense told me that O was going to be either 1 or 2.

By: Larchie

Larchie — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 18:50:10 +0000

I don’t like trial and error with all the arithmetic, so my key was to recognize that Willy must be the odd vote total because:

Given: Wyatt=x, Willy=y

x + (3/6)x + (2/6)x + (1/6)x + y = 31

reduces to:

2x + y = 31

2 times any number is even, so Willy (y) must be odd to get an odd sum (31).

And Wyatt (x) and must be a multiple of 6, and must be less than 15.

So Wyatt must be 12.

By: HeyBeckyJ

HeyBeckyJ — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 17:56:41 +0000

Great puzzle! Keeping the names/variables straight was almost more challenging than answering the question. :)

By: sam

sam — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 16:53:32 +0000

willy:7
wyatt:12
wendy:6
wally:4
woody:2

By: Sandy Wood

Sandy Wood — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 16:16:27 +0000

Christine, I’m afraid that answer doesn’t quite work.

Remember in the clues that Wyatt earned twice as many votes as Wendy.

Your solution has Wyatt with 20 and Wendy with 4, which would be five times as many.

By: Ryan Smith

Ryan Smith — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 16:08:57 +0000

Silly me, I misread others’ solutions, previous comment withdrawn :-)

By: Ryan Smith

Ryan Smith — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 16:05:28 +0000

I’m not sure where others are getting it, but the solution 31 votes for Wyatt and 0 votes for all other candidates is not possible. The description states that Wyatt’s vote count is equal to 2 times, 3 times, and 6 times the votes of Wendy, Wally, and Woody respectively. As 0 times any number is still 0, the 31-0-0-0-0 solution is not correct.

By: Rod

Rod — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 15:53:38 +0000

I started with algebra, but once it dawned on me that you cant have partial vote, gridding it was way easier

By: SP

SP — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 15:10:07 +0000

I got the above solution, but there’s an alternate:

Wally: 0
Wendy: 0
Willy: 31
Woody: 0
Wyatt: 0