Games & Recreation Could you piece together a 100 page book?

[JuddsABlue]

Ok so a random 100 page book has all of its pages torn out, and thrown around a room randomly.

Do you believe you could piece together the book page by page and get it in the right order? You would need incentive of course, so lets say if you put the book back together in correct page order you are awarded $1 million dollars

You are obviously allowed to read the pages, then hunt around the floor and read the remaining pages.

You cannot leave the room, and you lose if you pass more than 1 minute without attempting to put together the book (reading, looking at pages, searching the floor etc) so no sleeping or resting and having a year to do it. You are bound by your own mind and concentration

How much do your odds increase if you're able to read the book before doing the task?

And no the page numbers are not located on the book, neither are chapter numbers. The only recognizable page is the beginning and the ending.

 

[Scootyb]

I reckon the no sleep bit is a bit rough, but apart from that id give myself a bit of a shot... I think the key would be to take one page and try and match it with another by seeing if the last part of one page gels with the first part of the next eventually you'll hopefully have 50 pairs of pages that go together. Then repeat the process with bigger and bigger groupings of pages and the million is in the bag, easier said than done though

 

[Ed_Gein]

I could do it easy if it's a choose your own adventure book. They wouldn't know the difference.

 

[checkraiseulite]

What am i missing?

This seems easy, especially if the book was a regular sized paperback novel and only 100 pages (50 bits of paper) long.

It gets a lot harder if it was some sort of technical manual or non-fiction book or somehow words are only printed on one side of the paper.

The main factors are the type of the book (obv if it's a weird structure it's hugely helpful to have read it before) and the facilities in the room.

An intelligent, mentally stable person will do this easily for $10k let alone $1m.

 

[rickyp]

Pages are probably numbered, so yeah sure.

 

[JuddsABlue]

Pages are probably numbered, so yeah sure.

And no the page numbers are not located on the book, neither are chapter numbers. The only recognizable page is the beginning and the ending.

your reading skills lead me to believe you would not win the million dollars

 

[rickyp]

your reading skills lead me to believe you would not win the million dollars

Probably a fair assessment.

 

[DrVanNostrand]

I liked the OP for sheer originality for a thread topic. I may attempt this over the weekend.

 

[courtjester]

I reckon this would be harder than it sounds, initially I thought it would be simple, but the more I think about it, the more frustrating I think it would be.

But I'd back myself to be able to do it in about 48 hours. If I'd read the book already, I reckon I could do it in about 3 hours.

 

[DJ Dupree]

It depends on the book.

If the book was 'The Atrocity Exhibition' by J.G Ballard, I could tear it into tiny pieces, flush it down a toilet, recover it from the sewage plant ten years later, piece it together by randomly throwing excrement-covered fragments of it at a wall, and have it make more sense than ever.

 

[Hipster Doofus]

Initially it sounds not to complex, but the more i think about it, the more frustrating it seems to have to delve through 100 pages over and over again without any real certainty to what you are doing.

I'd give myself a shot

 

[devil demon]

Are you allowed pen and paper to help you?

 

[Northworth]

hmmmmm do-able i reckon






(may or may not be)

 

[courtjester]

You'd need to be systematic. I reckon the idea would be to find the first page, then the first ten. From there it would all begin to fall in to place. And it would get progressively easier as you worked through it, as pages would be eliminated.

 

[Hard_to_Beat]

Put the pages together in any random order and title it "Naked Lunch"

 

[Poseidon]

Will rip apart a few novels when I get home tonight to test this. Thanks OP.

 

[FootyJunkie]

would need to highlight the people's names and locations, might help

 

[Stratton_Gun]

yeh I reckon I would be able to if 1 mil was an incentive!!

 

[dbcrow]

Presuming the pages are double sided, I'd start by working out which side comes first. Should be able to do this by reading the few sentences at the bottom/top of each page. Do this for all 100 pages first.

Then, go through each page and split the pages into two groups - the ones that start at the beginning of a sentence, and the others that start mid-sentence.

Then, go through each group and split it into a further two groups each - ones that end at the end of a sentence, and ones that have a sentence going onto the next page.

So you'd have 4 groups. Shouldn't take very long to work out (by doing a bit of reading), where each page fits.

 

[JuddsABlue]

Presuming the pages are double sided, I'd start by working out which side comes first. Should be able to do this by reading the few sentences at the bottom/top of each page. Do this for all 100 pages first.

Then, go through each page and split the pages into two groups - the ones that start at the beginning of a sentence, and the others that start mid-sentence.

Then, go through each group and split it into a further two groups each - ones that end at the end of a sentence, and ones that have a sentence going onto the next page.

So you'd have 4 groups. Shouldn't take very long to work out (by doing a bit of reading), where each page fits.

This is a pretty solid starting point

You'd also be helped by the chapter beginnings and endings. Although not numbered, you can get the end and start pages and work through them pretty quickly. From there, depending on the style of the book, you might find it easier to locate pages belonging to that chapter (especially with books where chapters are written from a specific characters point of view). Probably much harder from a random fantasy novel

 

[southernswannies]

I wouldn't have a clue where to start..

 

[checkraiseulite]

There's only 50 pages.

Assuming the side of the rip is identifiable you can see which pages will be odd and which pages will be even.

Locate first page. Turn all remaining pages to the even side. Locate second page. Turn all remaining pages to the odd side. Rinse and repeat.

Profit?

 

[TheGhostOfJohnBelushi]

As suggested above, it wouldn't be too hard. Bit of initial organisation and then you'd skim the start and end of each page from selected piles as you piece them together. Kinda like a jigsaw puzzle but with words. 100 pages is not much.