Google treaure hunt
The Google Engineering team is launching its first ever Treasure Hunt, a contest designed to challenge your problem-solving skills.
Find more details at Google Australia blog here
They will be releasing first four puzzles in the next consecutive four weeks, one is alread released.
To get the URL of the contest you have to decode:
aHR0cDovL3RyZWFzdXJlaHVudC5hcHBzcG90LmNvbS8=
And yeah,
I was able to that do that. I’ll tell you the answer its http://treasurehunt.appspot.com/, as its already on Google Blog
Actually its the base64 decode of the given code.
You can find the first puzzle here.
A robot is located at the top-left corner of a 34 x 49 grid.
The robot can only move either down or right at any point in time. The robot is trying to reach the bottom-right corner of the grid. How many possible unique paths are there?
I have solved this one. Give it a try, its not that difficult. Any way I’m there to help ![]()
Here is the solution to the problem :
The number of paths for n x m grid (n-1 down blocks and m-1 right blocks) is equal to number of ways of arranging n-1 D’s (Down move) and m-1 R’s (Right move). So it’s
(n-1+m-1)! / ((n-1)! * (m-1)!)
You can calculate it using calculator in Windows/Linux.
I’m waiting for the next to come.
The second puzzle will be appearing soon — to be exact, 936266827 seconds before Y2K38,
Update:
Unix internal time is commonly stored in a data structure using a long int containing the number of seconds since 1970. This time is used in all time-related processes such as scheduling, file timestamps, etc. In a 32-bit machine, this value is sufficient to store time up to 18-jan-2038. After this date, 32-bit clocks will overflow and return erroneous values such as 32-dec-1969 or 13-dec-1901. Read More about Y2K38.
According to wikipedia The latest time that can be represented in this format, following the POSIX standard, is 03:14:07 UTC on Tuesday, January 19, 2038. So when you calculate specified 936266827 seconds before that next puzzle should come around 19may2008 17:07:58 (The puzzle is alread there)(UTC) .
I have removed exact timing for you to get it on your own.(or is it still there ..haha ). And still if you need it, you can request in comments.
I calculated it using stata. You can easily calculate this in two lines in python:
>>> import time
>>> print time.ctime(2**31 - 1 - 936266827)
Related Post:
Orio’s Riddle Completed
Twisty Puzzles
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cant blv they gave such a question!