ORGAN  GRINDERS'  PUZZLE  PAGE

Why not enter the Competition (like the picture of the man on the left is doing) and win an expensive prize?

It is well-known that organ grinders and people who arrange music for mechanical organs are much smarter than ordinary people.  But how much more than ordinary people really are they smarter (and you)?  Find out by doing these hard puzzles and bamboozlers.

If you get stuck, the answers are printed upside down on the back of the page - but do not cheat unless you want to.

(Caution - don't drop your monitor on the floor whilst trying to turn the page upside-down).

1.  John is an organ grinder with a favourite roll of music.  It takes him exactly four and a half minutes to play the roll through from start to finish, and 30 seconds to reroll it.  John has a friend (also called John) who also has the same favourite piece of music, but John has a book organ instead of a paper roll organ.  The speed of the paper through John's organ is 70mm per second, but the speed of the cardboard through John's organ is only 60mm per second.  How long will it take John to play his cardboard music book all the way through, assuming that he plays the music at the same tempo as his friend John? (hint: you don't have to reroll book music.)

2.  WORD SQUARE 
Find as many words as you can to do with organs and monkeys:

O R G A N S &
M O N K E Y S
M E L V Y N W
R I G H T S M
U S I C I S T
H E B E S T T
H A T Y O U C
A N B U Y
M U S I C R O L L S
S A U S A G E R O L L S

3.  A man went into a shop to buy some music rolls.  He gave the shopkeeper a five pound note (for non-English readers, a five pound note is a green piece of paper with a picture of the Queen on it) and the shopkeeper gave the man one brown coloured coin and two silver coloured coins as change (for non-English readers, brown coloured coins are 1 pence and 2 pence; and silver coloured coins are 5 pence, 10 pence, 20 pence and 50 pence).  The man said "Hey you've given me too much change."  So the shopkeeper took one of the coins back.  How much did the music rolls cost?  (for non-English readers, there are one hundred pence in a pound; and five pounds in a five pound note).

4.  Three organ grinders went into a restaurant and decided to share the bill.  The bill came to 30 pounds, so the grinders agreed to pay 10 pounds each.  One of the men didn't have 10 pounds on him, he only had a 20 pound note (for non-English readers, there are two ten pound notes in a twenty pound note).  The second organ grinder said that he had two ten pound notes, so he could swap the first organ grinder's twenty pound note for his ten pound notes.  Then the second organ grinder discovered that he had given all his ten pound notes away to the first organ grinder.  "That's all right" said the third organ grinder.  "I have got three ten pound notes, so I can change your twenty pound note into two ten pound notes, and still have ten pounds left for my share of the bill".  This they did.
When the waiter came back, he informed the men that they hadn't been charged for their beers, and instead of thirty pounds the bill should have come to ninety pounds.  Assuming that the new bill was divided equally between the three men; which organ grinder had enough money to pay his share, which grinder did the washing up, and which grinder had to stay behind to scrub the floor?

5.  Dick was going to an organ festival.  He put the organ on his cart and pushed it onto the road outside his house.  The wheels on his cart were 12 inches in diameter, and the outside circumference of the tyres (which were made in England) was 56 inches.  Before he started to push the cart to the organ festival, he took a knife and slashed each of his tyres. As he pushed the cart along the road at 2 miles per hour, he noticed that each of the tyres was losing air at the rate of exactly 1 cubic foot per minute.  Assuming that the tyres had a circular cross-section to start with (which they didn't) how long would it be before Dick would have to stop and pump up the tyres again?  How many times would he have to stop if the organ festival was 15 miles away?  And how much would a new set of tyres cost him to get back home again?

6.  Which is the odd-one-out of these organ grinders' words?
   MUSIC
   DANCING
   SINGING
   RUMPUS
   POLICEMAN
   ARREST

7.  Bert was busking on a busy street, when he noticed two coats for sale in a nearby shop window, one green one and one yellow one.  He worked out that the total price of the coats was 35 shillings.  If green coats are twice the price of red coats, and red coats are three times the price of yellow coats, how much money would Bert need to buy a coat to match his green hat with a red band around it and yellow spots on the top?

8.  In question 1 (above) which organ grinder would finish playing the music first - John or John?