The ‘bot is in Your CourtThe local robotics team has come up with a robot designed to automatically paint the lines on a standard tennis court.  The only issue with the robot is that turning the paint on and off makes a mess, but the team has realized that going over a line twice will work just fine.  They don’t want to waste any more paint than is absolutely necessary, so their challenge is to find a starting point and a route that will paint all the lines at least once, while minimizing the overall trip length.  What would be the route (shortest distance) that the robot could take to paint the lines?

 Breakroom 1

That Rhino Sure is Zippy

Otto went shopping at AutomationDirect.com for some supplies for his factory.  He bought one Ziplink™ Module, two SureStep™ Stepping Motors, and three Rhino Encapsulated Power Supplies.  He spent a total of $250 exactly (and he even got free shipping).  But he lost his paperwork and forgot the prices of the three items (he also forgot that he could review all his purchase history, and even reprint past invoices on the Web store).   All he could remember was that the price of three of the ZipLink modules plus one of the SureStep motors totaled exactly the same as the price of two of the Rhino Power Supplies.  Can you help him figure out the actual prices of the three components?

Production Deduction

The shiny new automated machine in the puzzle factory produced one-fourth of the day’s total production of puzzles before the morning break, then it produced one-fifth between the morning break and lunch.  Another one-third of the total was produced between lunch and the afternoon break.  After the afternoon break it produced 13 puzzles.  What was the overall production total for the machine that day?

Cable Tie-up

With the cable tie layout shown, you might notice that the larger shape encloses exactly three times the area of the smaller. Can you move one cable tie from the larger group to the smaller, and still have the larger shape enclose exactly three times the area of the smaller?  Remember, 12 of the cable ties must remain in their current positions, and no doubling-up the cable ties or loose ends, please.  The dotted lines are shown only to help visualize the areas of the two shapes.

 Breakroom 2

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