So Arwen and I were watching this year’s “I’m a big dope on National Television (With Tense Theme Music and Dramaaaaaaaatic Pauses)” because 30Rock (Go TIna Fey – Woot!) wasn’t on, and in this particular episode of Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader (AYSTA5G), we both got a question wrong. (Go here for the breakdown of what we got wrong, and why).
Right. So we thought this was odd, and Arwen went off to figure out why we were wrong on something that seemed pretty straight-forward, and in the meantime I pulled up my recently tagged urls to see what I’ve flagged to remember, or just to read later. One of them was a partial list of Microsoft Interview Questions, and the raw list of riddles, algorithms, applications, and thinkers from Microsoft.
Most of them, we agreed almost immediately on how we would attack the problems, which is sorta neat, ’cause we don’t really think the same way, but we’d very quickly agree on the best way to figure out the answer (even if we were too Saturday Morning to *actually* see if we were correct in our hypothoses).
One of the questions under the Riddles was this:
- There is a room with a door (closed) and three light bulbs. Outside the room there are three switches, connected to the bulbs. You may manipulate the switches as you wish, but once you open the door you can’t change them. Identify each switch with its bulb.
I’m sure I’m ignoring the “spirit” of the question here, but I came up with this, and I think it speaks to how I work with technology in general, and why (maybe) I’m interested in things like viruses, spyware, and security, but here’s my “solution,” and I came up with it about 10 seconds after Arwen asked the question:
- Pull the plate off the switches, and rewire when together, so all three are turned on/off with one switch. My response to ‘Identify each switch with its bulb’ would be ‘all of them on this switch.’
No wonder I make suits nervous sometimes.
March 18th, 2007 at 3:55 pm
See…you and I think kind of alike except I think that you are way more efficient. I would rip the drywall down and maybe even bits of the floor and ceiling and do a trace, all without opening the door, and find out which switch wires to which socket. I like your idea better though.
March 20th, 2007 at 10:16 am
Yes, that would be my answer. You left out the exasperated snort – as in – “Don’t these people have anything better to do” then I would carefully remove the plate, re-wire the switches so any one would work, carefully put the plate back on, flip the switches and enter. Unless there was a crying baby in the room, in which case (in switch case?) I would open the door, go in in the dark, retrieve the baby, and exit, casting scornful glances at the switches. Who needs them?
March 28th, 2007 at 6:20 am
You are going to take over the world. Send me a postcard from World Takeover Headquarters!