All about a Book

Logic Level 3

"Stacy, what novel are you reading?" Beatrice asked her.

"Oh, just a novel about adventure." Stacy answered back.

"Stacy, I bet that I will know whether that novel have an even or odd page number at its last page."

Stacy flipped through the pages by using her right thumb, until it reached the last page. "All right, I am at the last page of the novel." she said to Beatrice. "Go ahead."

"The page number that is on the last page is =====." Beatrice said confidently.

"How did you know?!" Stacy said in shock.

Now, was the page number on Stacy's novel's last page odd or even?

Assume that the last page does have page numbers, and is not a blank page.

There is no way to know which page number Stacy is at, so Beatrice was just guessing and got lucky It was even It was odd There is a different page number on each side of a page, so it could be either odd or even

Winston Choo by Winston Choo , 46, Singapore

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1 solution

Winston Choo
Sep 9, 2018

A novel will have odd page numbers on the right, and even page numbers on the left.

So when Stacy used her right thumb to flip through the pages, she was actually flipping through the pages on the right .

By the time she got to the last page, even though there is indeed a page number on both sides of the last page, her right thumb would stop at the last page, meaning she would only see the 1st side of the last page, which is on the right of the book.

Hence, the page number will always be odd , no matter what adventure novel she was reading at that time.

3 Helpful 0 Interesting 0 Brilliant 1 Confused

After looking through a variety of books it seems that while there is wide variation on which page is 1 1 . I already knew this. However, I didn't realize there is a universal convention that this page is on the right , when the book is opened.

Jeremy Galvagni - 2 years, 9 months ago

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When I was thinking about a problem about books, I realised that there were many internet pages about odd page numbers on the right and even page numbers on the left. Somehow there is a universal convention for the production of books!

I was also surprised as I have never taken page numbers on books seriously, so that's why I created this problem to give awareness.

Winston Choo - 2 years, 9 months ago

Hope you guys are intrigued about this fact! You can go on internet and search about this!

Winston Choo - 2 years, 9 months ago

Apparently I used a different set of assumptions for what last page means. I did use the convention that the first page and all subsequent odd number pages were on the right. However, I figured that the bet was about the last page of the story and not any filler afterwards. In that case Stacy would not know she was on the last page until she saw that the subsequent page was blank. If the last page was odd she'd have to turn it over to see the next page was blank and then turn back, which would involve more than just her right thumb. Since she didn't have to do that the last page must have been on the left and was therefore even.

David Herman - 2 years, 8 months ago

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That's what I thought, too.

Saya Suka - 2 years, 1 month ago

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