The snake’s bite

Mr Noone is in a dense jungle. For those who may wonder why he is still alive (see Hell or Heaven), let’s just say he made the wrong choice and had to reincarnate 🙂

Anyway, while he is trying to find his way out, a strange snake bites him. It is not really painful yet, but Mr Noone starts to feel a little dizzy. Fortunately he manages to find a very small village, and explains what happened to the chief.

The chief tells him that the snake was deadly, and if nothing is done, only death awaits. However, there is a cure: 2 small potions. It doesn’t matter when he drinks the 1st one, but the 2nd one has to be drunk exactly 15 minutes later.

It seems easy, but Mr Noone lost his watch, and there is no such thing in this village. So the chief hands him 2 short threads, and explains:

Those threads will burn in exactly 1h each. However, they won’t burn in an homogeneous way. for instance, it may take only 10 min to burn 90% of one thread, and 50 minutes for the remaining 10%. To sum up, you can’t fold/cut them in 4 to measure the 15 minutes.

So… if you were Mr Noone, would you survive?

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *