h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

If one small mole can dig a hole in 9 hours, a medium mole can dig a hole in 6 hours and a large mole can dig a warren in 4 and a half hours. How long will it take one small, one medium and one large mole to dig a hole if they all work together?

2 hours

4 hours

2 hours

Well done, Egon! I slipped up there.

Impossible to say, as we don't know how large a 'warren' is in relation to a 'hole'.

2 hours

OOps , just a little late there

Well I thought 2 hours to begin with then started worrying about how big a warren is compared to a hole - is a warren x * holes?

Or should I just shut up and say well done Egon?

The small will be in the way of the medium one, who will in turn be in the way f the big one. Moles, it is known, do not work well together, and theyre going to be at it all day...


Dancer

Warren's the bloke in Dalziel and Pascoe, isn't he?

He'd scare the cr*p out of me if I was a mole.

B

Really, I dig him

*boots Egon, Rooney-like, into the top-left corner*

B

That was my other point.

Mole holes tend to be built one mole wide. Therefore there can be only one mole digging at a time, with the other two doing the moley equivalent of leaning on their shovel and drinking a cups of .

Shovels? Leaning on their front paws, maybe...

...although that would make it very hard to drink the as well.

B

On the principle that as soon as you scrape away the topsoil you have a hole (though admitedly not a very big one):

instantly


Geggs

How deep is a hole anyway? How wide?

¦M¦

Quick - read this before it gets moderated The copyright gnome will soon be here - you must all have been reminded of it immediately


As I don't have a chance of winning the question, I thought I'd offer the literary equivalent of a cup of cocoa by a blazing fire:

"The Mole had been working very hard all the morning, spring-cleaning his little home. First with brooms, then with dusters; then on ladders and steps and chairs, with a brush and brimming pail; till he had dust in his throat, small splashes of white-wash all over his black fur, and an aching back and weary arms. Spring was moving in the air abover and in the arth below, entering even his dark and lowly little house with its spirit of change."

TC, Kenneth Grahame died on 6 July 1932, so the copyright has expired on that text since 7 July this year.

Right, I'm going to get some lunch, so if anyone sees Greebo on-line in the next 15 minutes, could you distract her with these until I get back...