Design and Do V

Design and Do V

This challenge contains 10 logic and reason items.

41. In Roman times, a balance scale (libra) was used for weighing. It had a balance arm from which two scale pans were suspended at equal distances from the point of suspension. The goods to be weighed were placed on one scale pan, and pre-measured weights of lead, stone, bronze, or iron were placed on the other pan until the two pans balanced.

What are the fewest pre-measured weights that would be needed to measure any exact number of ounces from 1 to 120?

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42. For most Romans, home was an insula, a multi-storied apartment building that might occupy an entire block. Tenants usually rented the small rooms (cenacula) built over the shops on the ground floor, but it was possible to buy a room or a floor outright. Based on the following information, match the names of six tenants with their occupations and the locations of their shops on the floor plan of the insula shown on the right.

Every other shop is run by a woman, but one shop is vacant.

Aulus sells warm drinks and snacks at the corner thermopolium.

Lucius, a librarius, has a stall next to Melissa, a seamstress.

The taberna between Cornellia and Aulus has no tenant.

Gaius is a tonsor, and his neighbor operates a bakery.

Tullia works around the corner from the laundress.

The barber's shop is on a corner.

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43. One of several systems used for dating years in the Roman era was based on the founding of the city of Rome: ab urbe condita (AUC). According to tradition, that happened in 753 BC. How would the date AD 2005 be expressed in Roman numerals AUC?

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44. Many of the houses in Pompeii used tile mosaics as decorations. Can you duplicate this design for a mosaic floor without lifting your pencil from the paper or crossing or retracing any lines?

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45. Scintilla returned home after a day of shopping and discovered a total of 71 coins in her saccus. At the time of her purchases, 1 gold aureus = 25 silver denarii = 100 brass sestertii = 400 bronze asses.

If the money had a value of 3½ aurei, how many coins of each type were in her purse?

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46. An argentarius has three denarii, one of which is counterfeit and heavier than the genuine coins. Using his balance scale only once, how can the banker determine which coin is fake?

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47. Prior to a meeting of the Senate, Gaius Perplexus challenged the assembly with this proposal: "I'll give an amphora of wine to the first citizen who can give a solution to this riddle."

Which letter of the alphabet is most like a
Roman emperor?

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Falco 48. The owner of a seaside villa has been murdered! The visitors to his domus that day were Aulus, Brutus, and Claudius; Falco suspects that one of them is the murderer. He shows these statements from various household slaves to Helena.
       a. The murderer arrived at the villa later than at least one of the other two visitors.
       b. One of the visitors, a lawyer, arrived at the villa at midnight and earlier than at least one of the other two visitors.
       c. Neither Aulus nor Brutus arrived at the villa after midnight.
       d. The earlier arriver of Brutus and Claudius was not the lawyer.
       e. The later arriver of Aulus and Claudius was not the murderer.

Helen thought for a moment and said, "Then the murderer must have been...." But the baby started to wail, and Falco couldn't hear the name. Can you help him?

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49. By the late republic, several marks were used in conjunction with Roman numerals. A bar above a number multiplied it by 1,000; lateral lines were added to denote 100,000. It was also common to use the superimposed bars in two other ways:
· to distinguish numbers from letters in composite words () and
· to denote numbers being used as adverbs ().

Based on this information, what number does represent?

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50. A tangram is a Chinese puzzle consisting of a square cut into seven pieces to be reassembled into different figures.

Can you rearrange the pieces to form each of these Chinamen? The second one is a "foot" shorter, but both figures contain all seven pieces.

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