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There's a similar topic at SMG's forum. I thought I'd put one up here too. Keep you guys busy

I'll start with an easy one:

A bookworm is eating an encyclopaedia, starting from the first page all the way through to the last. He's eating in one straight line. The encyclopaedia exists of 10 parts, each part has 1000 pages, and is standing on a bookshelf in the usual order.
Question: how many pages will have a hole in them when the worm reaches the final page?

99.999 ?

Considering there are only 10.000 pages: wrong.
He does chew through the first and through the last page, btw.

sorry, I meant 9.999...

But since you just said: "He does chew through the first and through the last page, btw", it's not right either ::)

http://users.boardnation.com/~smartguy240/index.php?board=1;action=display;threadid=41;start=40

might wanna send them here...where the riddle actually is... ;D

Jelle wrote: sorry, I meant 9.999...

But since you just said: "He does chew through the first and through the last page, btw", it's not right either ::)

So what's your next guess?

when the worm reaches the final page

The way this question is worded, makes me think that the final page has not yet been eaten, but rather been arrived at. Because there are two pages on one sheet of paper, the worm has eaten 9,998 pages when it reaches the final page.

Here's the tricky part:

CESS.tk wrote: (...) and is standing on a bookshelf in the usual order.

That means the first book is on the left, and the last one is on the right. BUT that also means the first page is on the right of the first book and the last page is on the left of the last book. That makes 8 * 1000 + 2 = 8002 pages with a hole in them.

maybe it's just one book in the whole encylopedia.

- Nick

When I said 10 parts, I meant 10 books. Apologies if I wasn't being clear enough. :-[ :-\ :-[

Isn't a bookworm someone who reads books a lot?

There's that term in German as well, but as far as I know it comes from a worm, that eats bookpages??? Maybe I'm just mixing things up because there are many terms for worms in German and it is difficult to determine which are made up and which really exist... ::)

Now what about the worm itself? It fills up some of the holes, 'cause it's in them. Filled-up holes aren't holes, so it's even less.

-Kon-Tiki-

Anyway...

New riddle (hope this is a little bit more clear) :

How many letters does the answer to this question have?

Four ? ;D