you’re right. Well twice anyway.
Ok, he disconnects one, he turns one on then he walks up to the top floor. He knows which one is on is the one he turned on. The one he can’t turn on from the top floor is the one he disconnected.
they are all on the top floor.
Good thinking, but his goal is to fix the wiring/determine the relationships in one trip-- with one disconnected in the basement, he’s now broken something and has to travel down again to fix it.
I know. I said so here:
We’re all going to be upset when we find out that the lazy electrician was hired because he lives on the top floor. He can do the string solution suggested above, because he can confirm all three fans are off before descending the stairs. Then he can walk down, flip one switch on, toggle the other on for a bit then off, and leave the third alone. Walk back up to confirm the answers and go back to his apartment. The wiring sucks because he was too lazy to do it right in the first place and was too lazy to write down the answers when it was initially completed.
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It doesn’t say he’s has to fix it, it also doesn’t say he can’t come back downstairs. It just asks to determine which is which with only one trip UPstairs. Did you think he is going to live up there forever? Maybe he has already fixed whatever he was called there to do and he just has to get them labelled correctly. I think we can safely assume that he has to eventually come back down.
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Nah man, it’s from that one scene from the 1977 “Wizards” where the good wizard, losing the duel with his brother, the evil wizard, pulls out a pistol and blows the antagonist’s guts out.
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I’d be lazy too, if it took me an hour to climb stairs.
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The problem plainly states his job is to fix the wiring/switch problem, and it’s easily deduced that he starts downstairs. Also,
(Oops, way too tall. Click.)
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There is no elevator in the building and… it will take him nearly an hour to climb all the stairs.
Who would live in these apartments?
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Magneto.
It’s the perfect lair for someone whose nemesis is wheelchair bound.
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Solution:
Attach multimeters that can record and store historical readings in place of each of the switches. Make sure the clocks on the multimeters are correct and in sync.
Climb to the third floor. Spin the first fan, wait a minute, spin the second fan, wait a minute, spin the third fan.
Go back to the basement.
Check the readings on each multimeter. Each should show a voltage across the switch, caused by the spinning of the fan blades, which should turn the fan motor into a generator.
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Only if you don’t have one…
I’ve heard variants of this problem, the “correct” answer appears to be using some thing you know about the fan (or light bulb) that happens after you turn it off (it still spins a while, it stays warm, whatever).
The real life answer, “Ask a friend/co-worker/the homeowner to look while you turn the switches on and off” is usually rejected as chaeting.
Which is why I fucking hate “puzzles” like this.
But I’ve never heard a version where the person solving the puzzle is an electrician. That enables a lot of really easy solutions using tools electricians would have.
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Does “any assistance of any kind” include tools like multimeters, candles, pieces of string, etc.? Any kind seems fairly unambiguous.
It depends on the definition of “assistance,” which is rather ambiguous. Does he “use the assistance” of the stairs to climb to the top floor? Of the doorknobs to open the doors? Of his shoes to protect his feet on the way up?
I wouldn’t consider it “using assistance” to make use of a tool that I had in hand. I read it to mean that he refuses to accept assistance of any kind from any person.
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This one?
(Rumor has it the script called for fancy swordplay but Ford was feeling under the weather that day and ad-libbed. The other guy was a good enough actor to roll with it and they kept it that way.)
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Needs more likes!
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actually that’s the answer … except that when he gets to the top two of the fans are not moving - he tries to turn them by hand, the one that is shorted will be much harder to turn
Edit: BTW that should be shorted to line, NOT ground
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When do we get the answer?
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