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"You are perched on top of the Madhubala memorial... this is an 80-metre bare stone wall and the hydraulic ladder can come up to only 40 m. Can you come down 40 metres." "And how do you suppose I can do that?" "Do you have rope?" "Yeah, but it’s only 30 m" "That’s alright. The building has solid rings every 20 metres, which means you’ll find one halfway down to which you can attach your rope. It should be easy after that, but remember, do not jump or fall because you might fall off the ladder then." Assume that you are on top of this building and you have a 30-metre-long rope, and you may not jump or fall. The only way down is along the flat wall. You can cut and tie the rope as much as you like and disregard the length of the rope you spend on knots. Can you get yourself to the ground? That was the situation six weeks ago. This is not as simple as it looks, especially if you have the fear of heights. Here, you can give a wrong solution and live to tell your friends about it, but once you are at the top, coming down can be very painful at times. Two thoughts for the man at the top: "He can come down 40 m easily. First, he should come down 20 m and cut the other 10 m rope and tie it on his ankle, while standing on the ring. Then, he should tie the other end of the 10 m rope to the ring and move up 10 m. Then, he should cut the 20 m rope into two halves and again reach the ring and while standing there, he should tie the two 10 m ropes together and move down another 20 m." This solution is from Brahm Kiran Singh and quite achievable, although I’d much rather prefer the older method of climbing, where no strings are attached to the ankles. Bungee jumping gives me the shivers, but I’d say Brahm did it. He was there last week as well to save the doctor. I have another rescuer, one who gave up. "One cannot get down from this building. This is because to get down, one must tie the rope somewhere on top of building to start getting down. Once one has tied the rope (let’s assume any length: 10, 20 or 30 metre), once a person is hanging from the rope, he won’t meet a ring until 20 metres. It means that in any case, he needs at least 20-metre rope or more. "Once he has attached that rope to top of building and has descended down (any distance), he cannot unfasten the rope from where it is tied (to the top of the building). Because one can’t do this, one cannot in any case extend the rope more than 10 metres. Because any two consecutive rings have a separation of 20 metres, he can’t get more rope, so there is no way to come down unless he is given a longer rope." Rishabh Singla wrote this solution. He has a point, but that’s way over the top. Cut the rope in two pieces: 10 metre and 20 metre, tie a bowline at one end of the short piece, attach the other end to the roof, slide the long piece through the noose and fold it in half. Now you have a 20-metre composite rope, enough to get to the midpoint. Attach one end of the long piece to the ring and slide it out of the noose. Now you have a 20-metre rope to go 20 metres down. If we ignore minor details like how are we going to perform the acrobatics, I think this can be one solution and probably a better one. The man on top has since come down to Mother Earth. It normally doesn’t take six weeks to report that.
(Write at Mind Games, The Tribune, or aditya@tribunemail.com) |
