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PARADE Magazine October 25, 2007 Dear Marilyn vos Savant, Because you have the world’s highest IQ, it is obvious that you are the only one capable of answering this question. My math teacher proposed it last month and said anyone who can solve it deserves a Nobel Prize! Here is the problem: A train travels due south-southwest from Springfield at 3:41 a.m. going 66 ½ miles per hour. A second train leaving from Main Street, painted red, left at 2:40 a.m. going one and a half times the speed of the third, which is actually more of a monorail, and which had left way before the other two, going much faster. If a fourth train arrives at the Capitol at precisely around 4 p.m., stops for eight minutes at an undisclosed station, and leaves at an original speed of 41 miles per hour, accelerating in proportion to the light drizzle arriving in a storm front from Chicago traveling at 59 miles per hour, then a fifth and sixth train, manufactured by the same company but separated upon completion, leave from Greenwich and Greenwich Village respectively, both going either 4 miles per hour or 103 miles per hour, and traveling perpendicularly based on planetary alignment, how many minutes will pass before a seventh train, blue, which left two and a half times later than the sum of the third and sixth trains’ passengers divided by the square root of the first train, allotting 20 seconds so a gaggle of geese can successfully cross the runway, leaves at noon going 13 miles per hour at 1:13 p.m., accelerating by 0.1 miles per hour at each mail drop, assuming there is no mail to pick up, heading for Scotland, or Scotland Yard, to meet an eighth train, again having striking monorail qualities, which didn’t leave at all, but is still traveling at 90 miles per hour slightly north-southeast, breaking erratically at every thirty-third railroad tie? Intuition tells me the answer is “nitrogen.” But I wanted to check with the smartest person in the world! Thank you for your time. I look forward to the correct answer!
Sincerely,
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