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Question 27
Beginning at Cornwall, New York, go due west until you reach a city with a population of at least 375,000.
If you are in a state capitol, go south 400 miles. If not, go north 400 miles.
If you are in the Continental US, go east to the closest meridian that is evenly divisible by 10; if not go west to the closest meridian that is evenly divisible by 10 (no fractions).
Go due south until you reach a body of water larger than Lake Ontario. Continue south until you reach a parallel that is easily divisible by 5.
If you are on land, go east 10°; if you are on water, go west 10°.
Make a 90° turn and cross four borders.
What is the abbreviation for the state you are in?
Answer: KS
Minneapolis/St. Paul is the big city you will reach after leaving Cornwall. Since it is a capital, we go south 400 miles and since we are in the Continental US, we go east to 90 degrees. Then we head south into the Gulf of Mexico to latitude 25 degrees. We are now in water so we go west 10 degrees to longitude 100 degrees. If we turn south, we will not end up in the US so we go north. We cross the borders of Nuevo Leon/Coahuila, Coahuila/Texas, Texas/Oklahoma and Oklahoma/Kansas.
Comments
I kept getting an answer that I had already used elsewhere...
I just noticed that there is more than one Cornwall, NY...
Having two towns with the same name in the same state...
That would be confusing...
Posted by: Jim from Minnesota | Nov 23, 2004 10:14:46 PM
Having grown up in Ulster County, NY, I know that there is a Town of Rochester, NY, down in Ulster County, in addition to the well-known Rochester farther upstate. I guess the Ulster Rochester shares a zip code with Kerhonkson, NY. The Town of Rochester even has a website. Haven't tried this question yet.
Posted by: Monica/MLR | Nov 24, 2004 8:40:19 AM
A thousand apologies. We simply neglected to proofread this one adequatly. The first line SHOULD read:
"Beginning at Cornwall, just across the river from Massena, New York, go due west until you reach a city with a population of at least 375,000."
I hope you guys didn't spend TOO much time looking in all the wrong places.
Posted by: DonV | Nov 24, 2004 11:31:03 AM
Aha! Amazingly, starting at the small Cornwall in Orange County also ran into an appropriately large city and neatly generated a solution, but it happened also to be the solution to another question.
Posted by: Bob Lodge | Nov 24, 2004 3:29:21 PM
Ah, the old Canadian-reference dodge. I hope, Don and Sue, that you also took into consideration, for question 25, that up here in Canada the letter Z does not rhyme with "free". We, of course, pronounce it as "Nancy".
Posted by: John | Nov 24, 2004 8:02:36 PM
Gee, I thought it was pronounced "Zed".
Posted by: DonV | Nov 24, 2004 10:53:28 PM
Naw, that's what we let the Americans think. It's pronounced "Nancy" up here in Canada.
Posted by: Michael | Nov 25, 2004 10:48:24 AM
Well, even so, I think that, technically, Nancy rhymes with free.
Posted by: DonV | Nov 25, 2004 2:50:37 PM
That struck me an hour later. I think this puzzle is absorbing all my energies, including telling a decent joke.
Posted by: John | Nov 25, 2004 2:53:45 PM
OK, I don't know about anybody else, but my results on this one still leave me with questions. For starters, that 375,000 figure seems to be a pretty close shave on some possibilities. One prospect changes status
between the 2000 census and modern cites only 4 years later. Is there a particular date source for the population?
To resolve another conundrum, let me
pose this example: If you started a bit northeast of Havana, right underneath Key West FL, and went due north until you crossed four borders, would you say that you crossed back OUT of Florida as you went past the 12 mile limit north of Key west, and back IN again south of Naples, so the 4th border crossing would put you in Georgia, OR would you say that once you are in Florida, that holds until you reach the next state, so the 4 border crossings would be into FL, GA, SC, and NC, and you end up in NC? Either I'm lost or I need to know the answer. (Probably the former)
Posted by: Bob Lodge | Nov 26, 2004 10:05:24 PM
Gee, and here we thought this one was somewhat of a gimme. We're asking for the first city you come to with a population of at least 375,000. According to the 2000 census, the city we have in mind was over that amount, is still over that amount in 2004 and we could find nothing else even close along the way. But I'll check this again, just in case.
Also, in our scenario, the question you ask is not an issue, because no states were entered more than once. In other words, you should have a total of four distinct states (all with different names).
Hope that clears some stuff up.
By the way, you DID see my November 24 posting, I trust.
Posted by: DonV | Nov 26, 2004 11:54:03 PM
Does it help if we stipulate that the the first city IN THE US with a population over 375,000 is what we meant?
Posted by: DonV | Nov 26, 2004 11:57:38 PM
I'm confused about the statement...
Make a 90° turn and cross four borders.
What is your definition of "borders"?...
I get multiple answers depending on how I interpret it...
Posted by: Jim from Minnesota | Nov 27, 2004 5:34:42 PM
border; the line or frontier separating political divisions or geographic regions; an imaginary line separating two countries, states, etc.
Posted by: DonV | Nov 28, 2004 4:37:36 PM
We were not trying to be tricky on this one, but we were a little lackadaisical in our wording. When we mentioned the city with the 375,000 population, we were referring (erroneously) to the entire general population of the twin cities (which includes a state capital). Sorry for any extra work this may have caused.
Posted by: DonV | Nov 30, 2004 12:29:33 PM
Well, that DOES make quite a difference. I'll save further discussion until after the contest, but it's rather interesting where it led before your last clarification.
Posted by: Bob Lodge | Dec 2, 2004 9:43:46 PM
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