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Here is a probably easier puzzle than the last, this time involving a bar of gold.
You've got someone working for you for seven days and a gold bar to pay them. The gold bar is segmented into seven connected pieces. You must give them a piece of gold at the end of every day. If you are only allowed to make two breaks in the gold bar, how do you pay your worker?
My guess is computer literate people might get this before others.
Solution below:
The question is solved by constructing a binary counter using the gold and the action of giving / receiving gold from the worker. You divide the bar into a segment of 1, 2, and 4. You then distribute the gold like so:
1st day: Give worker the 1 gold segment.
2nd day: Give worker the 2 gold segment, take the 1 gold segment back.
3rd day: Give worker the 1 gold segment.
4th day: Give worker the 4 gold segment, take 1 and 2 gold segments back.
5th day: Give worker the 1 gold segment.
6th day: Give worker the 2 gold segment, take the 1 gold segment back.
7th day: Give worker the 1 gold segment.
Its a simple binary clock, with bars of gold representing the powers of 2 that binary uses. To put it in a more technical way:
Let 000 be the clock at day 0. The right-most position represents 2^0 (1), the postion to the left of that represents 2^1 (2), and the position to the far left represents 2^2 (4).
With 000, none of the representations are filled.
With 001, the (1) representation is filled, and the total value is 1.
With 010, the (2) representation is filled, and the (1) isn't anymore, so the total value is 2.
With 011, both the (2) and the (1) representations are filled, so the total is 2+1 = 3.
