Hoody

Hi ManofKent, Would it be an idea to use cleaned wood scoops of iced-lollies as base to make your switches? Maybe this reduces the effort with the hand-saw? Getting them clean is quite easy, just throw them into the cutlery container of your dishwasher next time. Why do you need coils made of copper tubing? Might it be an idea to use copper or brass wire instead of tubing? Solid material is far easier to bend without special equipment. Electrical installation wire (not the flexible kind) you might use with or without its insulation around. I personally prefer 4mm aluminium rods from the DIY store for several reasons - one is that I can bend it on an (old) cooking pot. But I must confess, I never tried to wind a narrow spiral of more than one turn with these rods. It might work with copper wire 1,5² (has roughly 1.2mm in diameter) and a coil former core of appropriate size - when you are ready with the coil it will widen up a little bit and thus let the core out without a hazzle. But I think you have some experience already. To use 16mm balls for me just was natural: All the marbles I already had in those days had this size. The smaller the balls the smaller the tracks need to be, the bigger the balls, the track manufacturing precision is getting less important but the tracks need to get more sturdy. Hope these lines help you a little bit Hoody PS: Some issues might take months to get tracked down to their root cause. Other's are visible at once. So do not despair of work getting stuck. It will only take some time to get a solution.

Hi Richard, nice to have one more marble runner here. Maybe you might want to enjoy these:

Hi ManofKent, welcome to this forum here. Now I might suffer from some insomnia until you giave us the first picture of your marble run - even if it is a building area ...

Hi, I already was thinking of how this "light bulb = lighbulb = incandescent lamp" riddle would work out in a decade or so. But let's be honest: even the most modern LED light sources get warmer when on. So I think for the next ten years we can stay with this. Maybe we need to go for a party instead of just one coffee. I like kbobam's idea also. A nice additional solution. No, I do not get spell-check warnings. Spell checking seems to be off. =================== In 50 years or so the problem must be reduced from 3 to 2 switches. It will take everybody 5 to 10 minutes to program his smart underwear to find about about the doing ... and in a hundred or so years people's brain are stressed to the limit when asking about a switch - everything will be controlled just mentally in those days ...

The knight's bridge (you know now how things work ): They lay the first tree across one corner of the water barrier, at an angle of 45°. The second tree they put from the midpoint of this first tree to the opposite corner. Just take a piece of papaer and a pencil, do a sketch and you see yourself ...

kbobam, maybe what is known as "Schrodinger's Cat" (Schrödingers Katze) fits your bill? All who are not interested to the solution of the light switch problem might refrain from highlighting the lines hereunder (highlighting means to mark it as if you mark any text for copy&paste - it is a nice trick Steph figured out): You flip the first switch to ON, flip the second switch to ON and go for a coffee. When you come back you flip the second switch to OFF and open the door to the room. If the light is still on, you immediately know it must be the first switch still at its ON position. If the light is off, you went in, carefully touch the light bulb and when it is hot then it is the second switch. If the lightbulb is still cold, it must be the third switch (we assume, that the lightbulb is working).

Seems Steph has an idea. All others: if you think the "dark room riddle" is too hard or you just know the solution you can advance to this one: The ancient knights want to attack a castle. The water barrier is a rectangular shape and itself is 8 feet wide. The attacking knights just have two sturdy trees to build something like a rudimentary bridge but both of them are just 6 feet long - way too short. They have no nails and no ropes and nothing to fix the two trees together so the knights can pass with their heavy harnesses. But finally they managed to cross the water barrier using their two trees and the defenders of the castle gave up ... Do you find out how they did it? (Okay, it is not so new I guess)

Just simple on-off switches.

Hi, maybe I did not give the rules exact enough. When the door is open (or has been opened and closed afterwards to let someone in or take the table out) then no switiching is allowed any more. So let's say: No changes to the setup, first switch while no one is in the room then open the door and tell. Video equipment or measurement stuff for anything can also not get inside before the door is open. The room has a ceiling and a floor and when the door is close nothing comes in or out - no light, no sound, no ... So Steph, winnie, maybe you would like to rethink your strategy? @kbobam: Steph played around with the font colour - she set it to "white" - And - yes, there is a way to find it out for sure.

Here is a tricky one: You have a room without any windows, inside is a lightbulb mounted on a table, the room is empty otherwise. The one and only door to the room is made so that there no sound or light escapes from the room. There is no slit below the door! Outside there are three light switches, one energizes the lightbulb, the others two do not. You are allowed to play around with the switches as long as you want, flipping them on and off as you want but only while the door is closed. As soon the door is open the switches shall remain in their state. You are allowed to enter and leave the room exactly once. Can you tell for sure which of those three switches controls the light bulb?

Oh my god. The money laundering was quite the obvious part - we know this term also here in Germany as a crime: Geld waschen. But with the other two I had no chance. Even migbar's comment just gave me no idea. Thank you Steph, now I know what the two others mean. All the time I thought of them to be indiviudally "in", not as a mating pair

Oh, I am so ready for a hint (or send a message). Meanwhile I amuse with the "mandatory". Quite good stuff (today I am not in the office, so there are no restrictions).

It is always the European Union regulations - which is more or less the same as c) to z)

Oh, a present for me? Unfortunately I noticed it but forgot to check it out at the week-end. Now I have to wait until I am back in an area without internet restrictions... But I am still wondering about Steph's cartoon with the washing machine, the salt and the battery

Congrats:

Hope you get into a better condition soon.

Sometimes we all just need to lay back, relax and then have a different view on the same things. And sometimes new ideas are born just by a lack of proper translation ... Why do you think there is something wrong with you? Is there maybe something wrong with all around you Just think about this: In the radio is a traffic announcement warning because of a wrong-way driver. "What shall it mean a wrong-way driver? They are all driving wrong-way!" ... Is it just a bad joke or an Englishman on a German motorway? ... Or this one (from a movie I can not remember the title): If a tree in the woods is falling down, then there are at least three different stories on this - my version, your version and the tree's version!

Spilling your guts sometimes makes you feel better. Indigestible things need to get back out. Now I start wondering why 'terrific' is so close in sound to 'terrible' ...

Exactly. Now I found it out, I think: need to store them elsewhere and then insert as a regular picture...

There are some more around but I am failing to post them here. Somebody has an idea?

Great ideas -

Those you mean. I see. You have got one of those?

So we then need to consider pizza calzone (folded and filled pizza) a sandwich also? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calzone What about american pigs in blankets? https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datei:American_pigs_in_blankets.jpg Quite similar to a hotdog but is this then also considered a sandwich? Or take this one: döner kebab - the german variant at least - then also is a sandwich? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doner_kebab#Germany However, I just stop right now and go to have some lunch without bothering how it is called ...