math-puzzles

A four-panel SMBC comic. A yellow caption box at the top reads: "TIP FOR MATH STUDENTS: IF YOU CHANGE A LOGIC PUZZLE SO IT'S EASY, NO PROFESSOR WILL EVER HAVE THE NERVE TO GUESS THE RIGHT SOLUTION." Below, a woman with flame-like hair asks an old bearded man in a green vest, seated at a desk, if he wants to hear a logic puzzle; he eagerly answers "Always." She poses a deliberately trivial puzzle: two people one mile apart run toward each other on a straight road, both at ten miles per hour, will they ever pass each other? The professor, assuming a hard puzzle, smiles slyly and says "Oh ho ho! You're a tricky one, aren't you?" The votey panel is captioned "10 YEARS LATER..." and shows the same professor, now haggard and exhausted, saying: "The answer is no, but it takes 17,000 pages of new geometric theory to explain." The joke: rather than admit the puzzle was simply easy, the professor spends a decade inventing an absurd elaborate theory to justify an overcomplicated answer.