HL. Bear Hunt
Happy Palindrome Day! (For some of us)
Many listeners will have heard about the hunter who walks one mile south, one mile east, then one mile north—and is right back where he started. But in fact there are infinitely many places on the Earth where he could be, and in at least a couple of different ways!
And what is the deal with Carlos May?
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martin said,
February 11, 2012 at 8:41 pm
[spoiler] all points on the surface of the earth that are 1/ k(2 * pi) miles away from the south pole.
k = 1,2,3,4,5….
ie. all points that remain the same points after the “walk one mile east” transformation.
[/spoiler]
Shawn said,
February 16, 2012 at 6:32 pm
[spoiler] Perhaps the one of the answers to the bear thing involves being somewhere close enough to the South Pole so that after going one mile south, going one mile east would result in the hunter going all the way around the Earth n times, where n is a natural number. I don’t know if many bears live near the South Pole, though. [/spoiler]
Carly said,
March 4, 2012 at 9:09 pm
The point is that the North Pole is the only place you can shoot a bear in those conditions – the Antarctic doesn’t have Polar Bears.
strauss said,
March 7, 2012 at 8:27 am
Well, not quite– the puzzle we ask is a variation on the older one that leads to the shooting of a polar bear. The surprise here is that there are other solutions, which lead only to hypothetical bear deaths.