Topic: The Chit-Chat Thread

Problem: You have a cake that you need to cut into eight pieces. The problem is, the knife that you have can only make three cuts before it breaks. How do you accomplish this?

Oh, so this takes part in the Breath of the Wild universe.

Anyway, that question is lacking in information. Mostly, what does the knife consider "one cut".

If it's defined as "the knife enters and exits the cake = 1 cut", regardless of the duration or distance, then you just need to cut an inner circle, and slice the cake(s) in fourths.

@Meowpheel You cut the cake into four quarters, put them in a line and divide all of them in two in a single cut.

That's also a nice solution.

It's a bit weird to handle cake like that before serving it though. And you may end up damaging the table if you go outside the cake tray.

Unless the knife is also super dull...

I mean, It does break with cake... So this is a low quality knife we are using.

Edit: Oh snap! we don't know the shape of the cake either! So I guess my method is only optimal for circular cakes. We don't want weird cake pieces.

(moved to a new post because it's been a few hours since I last posted)

On the subject of cakes, my dad just came home with a huge King's Cake because they were on sale for next to nothing (it's kinda like buying Christmas decorations after Christmas).

These usually come with two or three little cheap plastic baby figurines hidden in the bread, but this one has the whole nativity set, and ceramic too. Fancy~

And it's actually pretty good to boot... It's so much bread though...

Pfft you are all wrong. You just forget about the cake and order pizza. Just for precaution, you ask the workers to cut it in 8 pieces.

@Tyranexx
wait.
this cake you speak of...is this a coconut cake or a carrot cake?
@Meowpheel
dude i love king cakes. this guy came to our job once all the way from louisiana and got us some official ones from:

@Meowpheel: I forgot to mention that the cuts have to be straight lines. @Octane more or less got it though. The trick is to think about the cake in 3D vs. the instinctive 2D reasoning. The shape and type of cake doesn't matter.

I don't think I've ever heard of King's Cake, but it's an interesting concept!

It's a tradition with religious origins. In Mexico it's still pretty religious, but from what I hear, in some parts like New Orleans, they've separated it a bit to make it more widely attractive.

The tradition, in its simplest least religious form, is that you share the cake with friends and family, and whoever finds the hidden baby in their slice of cake must host the next party.

Yup, he has to invite tamales in his/her party.

@Tyranexx The type of cake matters a lot when working with 3D. If the cake is topped with icing and chocolate and other yummy things, then there will be arguments if some people get yummy top pieces and others get boring bottom pieces.

@roy130390 and champurrado!

@crimsontadpoles exactly! The cake is important. You can't just treat cake like it's a slab of styrofoam.

The point of the problem (according to my friend) was to try and see if someone could solve problems with some outside-the-box thinking. It was meant to be a simple word problem. You're all over thinking it a bit. XD

Granted, this was the same interview where he got a question (don't recall exactly how this one went) about how many times a light bulb must be dropped from a certain height before it could break (when compared to the manufacturer's rating). According to him, that involved an actual math problem. My response was "Why would you go through the trouble of doing that when the manufacturer already did all the work for you?"

But but but the caaaakeeee~

It kinda reminds me of a question I saw in a Facebook post. It was from some elementary school test. The question was something to the effect of...

"If a band of X musicians takes Y minutes to play a song, how long will it take for a band of Z people to play the same song?"

That was an actual fail by some math teacher trying to be fancy though, not a trick question...

Dibs on the name "Z people" for my new band!

By ze people for ze people.

i just had some tamales yesterday.
but i still want carrot cake and coconut cake.
to hell with the math equation tricky smartypants question.
bring on the cake!

Why don't you put coconut in the carrot cake.

No, no ... you're supposed to put the lime in the coconut and drink them both up. Then call the doctor, wake him up and inquire if there is anything you can take to relieve the bellyache.

Then we should put pineapple on top of it too.