The Lt. Columbo Forum

An area where fans from all over can ask each other questions and voice their own ideas and opinions on anything Columbo.

This Forum is fondly dedicated in memory of  "cassavetes45"  (Carleen Zink),
Columbo's greatest fan and a great friend to us all.
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The Lt. Columbo Forum
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Re: The Columbo puzzle?

No. If each piece of real gold weighs a pound then 16 bags should weigh 136 pounds. If bag 16 had the fakes, then you would have 137 pounds on the scale. You see you just subtract the expected weight from the actual weight, in ounces, and it reveals the bag number, regardless of working in pounds or not. It would work equally well if you added up in ounces so that one would expect 2176 ounces.

Re: The Columbo puzzle?

You would be in trouble if you had more bags than you had coins in each bag. Eg 50 bags each with 20 coins and thus only 20 fakes.

Re: The Columbo puzzle?

So what if you decided there were 8 sacks, but each sack only had 4 pieces of gold,