self Maths Puzzle

Here is a pretty puzzle from Mother Goose's story of Jack and Jill's race for a pail of water.

The distance to the top of the hill was 440 yards, which is just a quarter of a mile.

Jack got to the top first and was 20 yards on the return trip when he met Jill whom he beat home by half a minute.

The record of the race is complicated by the runners being able to run down hill one-half again faster than they ran up, so you are asked to figure out Jack's time for the half mile run.

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self Other Question

Big Jim, engineer of the Oval Express says: "We blew off a cylinder head an hour after leaving the station and had to continue the trip at three-fifths of the former speed, which brought us in two hours late. If the accident had occurred fifty miles farther on, the train would have arrived forty minutes sooner".

How long was the run between stations?
The clown after juggling with the five triangular pieces of cardboard to attract attention proceeds to cut one of them into two pieces.

He then lays the six pieces upon the top of the box and shows that they will fit together and form a perfect square.

The pieces represent five right-angled triangles, say one inch high by two inches on the base, so you can readily cut five similar pieces from paper and then guess how to cut one of them so that the six pieces will form a perfect square.