Google Brain Teasers:

Today I stumbled across a very interesting list of brain-teasers that Google used to force its potential employees to answer. So, just for fun, I decided to list my responses below:

Google Questions and my Answers:

How many golf balls can fit in a school bus?

Answer: Enough. More if you don’t want it to go anywhere.

How much should you charge to wash all the windows in Seattle?

Answer: Twelve first-born sons, six first-born daughters, two immortal souls, and the cost of water and equipment.

In a country in which people only want boys every family continues to have children until they have a boy. If they have a girl, they have another child. If they have a boy, they stop. What is the proportion of boys to girls in the country?

Answer: Non sustainable. Hello, China!

Design an evacuation plan for San Francisco

Answer: Quietly and calmly exit the city before anyone realizes something’s wrong (who's gonna miss San Francisco?).

Why are manhole covers round?

Answer: So dumb-bells can be used in a pinch. Alternatively, so they can be more easily transported and replaced.

How many piano tuners are there in the entire world?

Answer: A comfortable surplus.

How many times a day does a clock’s hands overlap?

Answer: Depends on whether the clock has a second hand. If it doesn’t, 24 times (Once every hour). If it does, then the second hand overlaps with the other two 2880 times a piece and overlaps with both at the same time 24 times.

Explain the significance of "dead beef"

Answer: Either a redundant phrase or the product of someone misusing his words. Or both.

A man pushed his car to a hotel and lost his fortune. What happened?

Answer: He was coming to the hotel to collect his lottery winnings. He was late, so they donated it to the UN. Now no one will ever see that money again.

You need to check that your friend, Bob, has your correct phone number, but you cannot ask him directly. You must write the question on a card which and give it to Eve who will take the card to Bob and return the answer to you. What must you write on the card, besides the question, to ensure Bob can encode the message so that Eve cannot read your phone number?

Answer: Write the message in Latin telling him to write the number in Braille. Alternatively, entrust this mission to someone I don’t mind reading my phone number.

You're the captain of a pirate ship and your crew gets to vote on how the gold is divided up. If fewer than half of the pirates agree with you, you die. How do you recommend apportioning the gold in such a way that you get a good share of the booty, but still survive.

Answer: Suggest that slightly more than half of the pirates join me in killing the rest and dividing up their shares.

You have 8 identical balls, 7 of them weigh the same, and one of them weighs slightly more. How can you find the ball that is heavier by using a balance and only two weighings?

Answer: For the first weighing, you put three balls on each side of the balance. If one side is heavier, it contains the heavier ball. If they balance, one of the two remaining balls is the heavier. In the former case, remove all the balls from the lighter end and set them aside. Then remove one ball from the heavier end, move the other to the other side, and weigh. If they balance, the removed ball is the heavier. If they don’t, the heavier side will be revealed. In the latter case, simply weigh the two remaining balls.  

You are given 2 eggs. You have access to a 100-story building. Eggs can be very hard or very fragile means it may break if dropped from the first floor or may not even break if dropped from 100th floor. Both eggs are identical. You need to figure out the highest floor of a 100-story building an egg can be dropped without breaking. The question is how many drops you need to make. You are allowed to break 2 eggs in the process

Answer: I decide that this test can have no practical use so I go home and scramble the eggs instead. Alternatively, I simply start at floor one, drop the egg, and retrieve it each time to drop it again.

Explain a database in three sentences to your eight-year-old nephew.

Answer: It’s a place where people store information so they can find it later. It’s on computers. Making it is a very boring job.

You are shrunk to the height of a nickel and your mass is proportionally reduced so as to maintain your original density. You are then thrown into an empty glass blender. The blades will start moving in 60 seconds. What do you do?

Answer: Hop into the middle and unscrew the blades with my belt-buckle. Then use the blades to cut my way out and get revenge. 

Any different answers? 

Disappointing Halloween

There are a number of families in my apartment complex, so I naturally assumed there woudl be trick-or-treaters.

I was fairly excited about it; I boought a bunch of large candy bars to overflow my largest bowl, then I went out and bought a few more just to be safe. I bought a pumpkin, threw together a quick 'Death' costume, and even came up with a few macabre jokes to play on the kids ("Your fate involves eating too much candy"). Switched on the light, settled in, and waited.

Turns out I may have overestimated the number of children in my apartment complex.

No trick-or-treaters: not one. I was disappointed, even a little sad. I had been looking forward to handing out candy to the cute little ghoulies and ghosties and pop-culture beasties. Now I'm stuck with a large bowl of candy-bars that I have to finish myself.

At least I got some writing done. And my costume was pretty cool for all it's simplicity.