Here is the puzzle. As ever, please do NOT post your answers, but do say if you think you have solved the puzzle and how long it took. Solution on Monday.
You are all alone on a desert island and want to measure exactly 3 inches (I have no idea why, but that isn’t important right now). Unfortunately, you have only an 8.5 x 11 inch sheet of paper. How can you use it to measure exactly 3 inches?
I have produced an ebook containing 101 of the previous Friday Puzzles! It is called PUZZLED and is available for the Kindle (UK here and USA here) and on the iBookstore (UK here in the USA here). You can try 101 of the puzzles for free here.
Richard Wiseman 
Ridiculously easy once again. Let’s have some puzzles that take more than a couple of seconds to solve!
Your solution is wrong, however.
Seems pretty obvious to me:
Mark a point 2.345207879911715 inches on one edge
Mark a point 1.870828693386971 inches along the adjacent edge
Draw a line between the 2 marked points. Thanks to Pythagoras, this line will be exactly 3 inches in lenghth
(Sits back and waits for the pedants to respond)
Yes Dave’s Neighbor. Another one would be to redefine the inch and make three of them…
Hey, Dave’s Neighbor, what part of “do not post your answers” was not clear enough?
Dave’s Neighbour
Awesome
How did you come up with such a simple answer?
@Deep Field: *Likes this*
Love it! In other words, “if you can’t read instructions not to post the answer, you’re disqualified, dummy!”
It does, however, look like an intentionally humorous, tongue-in-cheek answer to me. I would post (*only* that kind!
Ok guys, just do realize that dave neighbours reply is not an answer. Its just silly.
Done it already 🙂
My mate Pythagoras knows this one
Afraid not. It needs to be exactly three inches, not an approximation.
All the daves are schytzofrenic
Call me a square but this is easy
About three seconds to get the theory and another five to work out the practicalities.
That was quite easy.
It took me about a minute to solve.
Did it on my own, in under a minute, without help from Pythagorus or anyone else
TMT
I’m with the Twits, there’s no need to square a hippopotamus.
Easy one :D. I hope there’s still a twisted answer 🙂
A minute or so…
Easy. Less than 10 seconds.
Folded this one away in a couple of minutes…
Unless my maths is wrong – you can’t be exact – only approximate to 5 hundreths of an inch?
Sorry – 5 thousandths of an inch
You can be exact.
Got an exact answer in under a minute. No pythagoras whatsoever.
I liked this one actually!
Yo can be as exact as the dimensions of the sheet allow.
Very easy. My origami skills came in handy.
5 minutes – there must be many possible approaches but I am not inclined to start searching for a ‘better’ solution.
Less than 10s. Much longer afterwards trying to work out how to do it with Pythagoras’ theorem as some of the other comments suggest.
Don’t listen to Dave – he’s a fool.
I take it all back. Sorry Dave.
About a minute
I used the folding up pieces of paper method
My middle finger is exactly 3 inches long but I don’t use it as a rule.
That sounds like a very good rule of thumb
Yep, too easy.
One key question for me is just how exactly is “exaxtly”
My solution is at least not mathematically exact, as the e.g. the thickness of the paper and the exactness of the 11 annd 8,2 both are unknown…
less than an minute…
Nice spoilers chaps – saves me the bother of posting the answer.
About 2 minutes with different permutations. I don’t have any letter paper here to check though 😦
I use to run an origami shop. It was not very successful and the business folded after 8 months
The shadow moved a fractio on my sundial before I had stumbled upon a solution. However, it is exact, and done without the assistance of my friend Pythagorus.
Less than a minute for the “exact” solution. Another minute to work out the Pythagorean approximation others mentioned.
One second.
About couple of minutes, with no help from anyone! I really enjoyed this one 🙂
got it in 3 folds
Go for less.
I hope that the Pythagorean geniuses will post their inexact answers to educate all us idiots that got a precise answer in under a minute.
On Monday, of course.
Every friday im surprised about the mess here. All bad human characteristics appears in this place. Poor intelligent human being !
Bad spelling and grammar too
It depends on what you mean by “exact”, but I think I got it pretty easily, thanks to Vi Hart.
Indeed, very easy. I wonder if there is more than 1 solution?
And how can you measure three and half inches? 🙂
actually, yes, there seem to be at least 2 solutions. One with 1 and one with 2 folds.
3,5 inch is more difficult though.
The difference of this quiz is what makes it easy.
Pretty easy. Less than 20 seconds
What the hell’s an inch?
Its a measuring unit of the length. Its the same as Zoll ( ” ).
15sec
I took ~45 seconds to come up with an answer, and another 20 to check it. I thought myself brilliant. Then my partner came (indepentantly) came up with a totally different, much easier answer in less time.
I am ashamed.