Gold Bar Puzzle

Puzzle:

You’ve got someone working for you for seven days and a gold bar to pay him. The gold bar is segmented into seven connected pieces. You must give them a piece of gold at the end of every day. What and where are the fewest number of cuts to the bar of gold that will allow you to pay him 1/7th each day?

gold bar puzzle for interview

Puzzle Solution:
Lets split the chain as,
gold bar cut puzzle
Day 1: Give A (+1)
Day 2: Get back A, give B (-1, +2)
Day 3: Give A (+1)
Day 4:Get back A and B, give C (-2,-1,+4)
Day 5:Give A (+1)
Day 6:Get back A, give B  (-1,+2)
Day 7:Give A (+1)

0 Thoughts on “Gold Bar Puzzle

  1. Twinkle on October 5, 2013 at 12:15 am said:

    didn’t understand. can anybody xplain?

    • if u are not understanding this simple explanation then u are a damn fool.

      • Bhausaheb on March 14, 2014 at 11:15 am said:

        I understand its very easy… but this reply is so rude :)

        • Namrita Sharma on December 12, 2014 at 4:09 pm said:

          Even I did’nt understood this..?? who made this faltu puzzle :\

          • Tribhuvan Joshi on February 12, 2015 at 2:14 am said:

            Break the bar as shown in the figure i.e. at two places so that you have one single piece, a group of 2 and a group of 4 pieces.

            Day 1: Give him the single piece

            Day 2: The main point here is that on 2nd day you take back the one gold bar which you gave on Day 1 and give him group of 2 unbroken bars. So you again have one single bar

            Day 3: He gives back the single bar which he got in retrun on day 2 from the worker

            Day 4: Take 3 coins in return and give the set of 4 unbroken bar. Now he has one single and 2 connected bars.

            Day5: Similar to Day 1

  2. we just cut it into 3 part .
    at 1st and 3rd position …
    at day 1 we give 1 coin
    at 2nd we take 1 coin from him and give him 2 coin joind..
    now at 3rd day we give him 1coin …
    now we have only 4coin left
    on 4th day we give all 4 coin and take from him all 1coin and 2 coin…
    now other remainig day we give him these 1 and 2 coin

  3. chethan on October 23, 2014 at 3:42 pm said:

    exclusive for “twinkle”
    it is simple we know binary representation
    decimal binary(b2,b1,b0)
    1 1
    2 10
    3 11
    4 100
    5 101
    6 110
    7 111

    where b0 = 1 gold coin
    b1 = 2 gold coin
    b3 = 4 gold coin

    and binary(0 represents take it back, 1 represents give it to the worker)

  4. priyanka on May 29, 2015 at 10:24 pm said:

    well explained@ chetan

  5. Nick on June 1, 2015 at 2:06 am said:

    Stupid puzzle. Puzzle problem does not indicate that worker can return gold pieces. What if worker decides to spend his gold piece on Day 1?

  6. Anonymous on July 15, 2015 at 11:44 pm said:

    It is a simple puzzle highlighting the fact that all numbers within a series can be formed from the combination of numbers that are power of two like 1,2,4,8,16 etc

  7. Vaithilingam on July 6, 2016 at 7:59 am said:

    superb awesome puzzle

  8. Sorry. But this is a stupid question as indicated above. And i will explain.

    Since you can take gold back from the worker. It means he cant spend it. Untill the whole bar has been given to him. Meaning that he only really gets paid when hes got the whole bar at the end of the week. So u are not actually answering the question which say how do you cut the bar in a way that allows you to “pay” him every day.
    It didnt say give him. It said pay. And i dont know about you but when i get paid. Aint nobody getting s#*& back.

  9. What happens when he wants to spend some of his payment on the third day?

    I thought this was going to involve how to stack the bars and cut multiple pieces at the same time.

  10. AJAY KUMAR MOHANTY on January 4, 2017 at 4:52 pm said:

    2^0+2^1+2^2=7
    So 7 can be divided into 1,2,4
    This is generalized solution

  11. Gaurav Khurana on January 24, 2017 at 9:11 pm said:

    thanks for this explanation… Its useful

  12. Dhiraj Pandey on July 31, 2019 at 4:40 pm said:

    Question says cuts to the bar of gold that will allow you to pay him 1/7th each day. 1/7th each day ! but by this solution whether we are paying 1/7th each day? seriously its a question from fool as per my understanding of this question or question itself is wrongly framed.

  13. Pingback: Puzzles That You Would Be?Able to?Solve - Nutshell School

Leave a Reply to Newb Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>

Post Navigation