hardmath

It takes 10 minutes to fry one steak -- 5 minutes from each side. Two steaks can fit on a pan. What is the shortest possible time to fry 3 steaks?

15 minutes. Start with steak 1 and steak 2. After five minutes you take steak 1 off, start to fry steak 3 and turn over steak 2. After 10 minutes steak 2 is ready and steak 1 and steak 3 need to be finished on the second side. Remove steak 2, and fry the other side of steak 1 and steak 3.

Why this works

This riddle cleverly plays with the timing and overlapping cooking processes. Initially, you can fry two steaks simultaneously, taking 5 minutes on each side. By starting with steaks 1 and 2 at the same time, you can remove steak 1 after 5 minutes and then introduce steak 3 while flipping steak 2. After 10 minutes, steak 2 is ready, and you can finish cooking steak 1 and steak 3 together for an additional 5 minutes, resulting in a total cooking time of just 15 minutes for all three steaks. The key lies in maximizing the use of the pan space and timing, allowing for efficient multitasking!

Common Wrong Answers

“20 minutes”

This guess assumes that each steak must be cooked separately, which is not efficient since two steaks can fit on the pan at the same time.

“30 minutes”

This guess incorrectly assumes that frying each steak requires a full 10 minutes on both sides sequentially, not utilizing the ability to cook two steaks at once.

“10 minutes”

This guess assumes that all steaks can be cooked simultaneously in the time it takes to cook just one, which ignores the need to cook each side.

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