Sunday Times Teaser 2849 – Swift Tailor
by Stephen Hogg
Published 30th April 2017 (link)
When measuring a gentleman’s chest size in inches, the tailor’s five foot long tape overlapped so that the set of numbers 1 to 9 was aligned with a consecutive set of higher numbers.
Taking each pair of these nine aligned lower and higher numbers as a fraction the tailor saw that just two of the nine “fractions” were in their simplest form and did not cancel down (i.e. the pair of numbers had no common factor greater than one).
All of this was also true when he measured the smaller waist size.
What (in inches) were the gentleman’s chest and waist sizes?
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Brian Gladman permalink1234567from math import gcdsizes = [p for p in range(51) ifsum(1 for x in range(2, 10) if gcd(x, p + x) == 1) == 1]print(f'Chest {sizes[1]} inches, waist {sizes[0]} inches.')