Tuesday, June 30, 2009

Wine Seller

Wine seller sells his wine in 300 ml and 500 ml quantities and naturally has measuring jugs in those sizes. One day, a customer asked for just 100 ml of wine, as he had very little money. The wine seller agreed to sell him the wine, and measured it out with just two jugs. How did he do it? (from Logic Puzzles book by the Diagram Group)

4 comments:

Alin Grin said...

The wine seller places both jugs near each other. He fills the 500ml jug up and pours 300ml of it to the 300ml jug. Now he starts pouring from the 300ml jug to the customer's bottle while comparing the liquid line on the 500ml jug. When the liquid in both jugs reaches the same height then the customer has 100ml.

John said...

Is this a trick statement?

Kalonni said...

Alin's logic is correct, except that the wine seller would have to be pouring the customer's portion into a 500 ml jug to ensure that the dimensions are the same... If he were pouring the wine into any other size bottle, Alin's explanation would be invalid...

Maria said...

Alin's explanation is brilliant.
He is leading the marathon now with 9 solved puzzles.

Here is another solution to this puzzle:
1) fill 300 ml jug and then empty it into 500 ml jug
2) fill 300 jug with wine again and then carefully pour 200 ml of this wine from the 300 ml jug into 500 ml jug until it is full
3)remaining 100 ml of wine in the 300 ml jug can be sold to the customer

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