From: Bruce Robson 
Newsgroups: uk.finance
Subject: Re: credit card interest calculated on a daily basis
Date: Thu, 25 Sep 2003 17:03:29 +0100

Ronald Raygun wrote:
> 
> On Sun, 21 Sep 2003 17:39:59 GMT, Ronald Raygun wrote:
> >
> > Did you hear the one about the fish enthusiast who had a huge tank
> > full of tropical fish in his basement room?  The room measured 14ft
> > x 11ft and the plinth on which the tank stood was 5ft x 2ft, and it
> > was in the exact centre of the room.  The wife decided to replace
> > the carpet in the bedroom, which was 12ft square, and the fish room
> > had a bare concrete floor.  Husband suggested it might be possible
> > to redeploy the old bedroom carpet around the aquarium, and wife,
> > who had a head for figures (of the numeric variety) immediately
> > realised that the old carpet, despite of course being the wrong
> > shape, had exactly the right surface area, but as she was also
> > uncharacteristically ace at spacial thinking, she soon realised
> > it would be possible to adapt the carpet by cutting it up using
> > a single unbroken cut line.
> > 
> > Can you find it?
>
> 
> View in fixed pitch.  Each letter represents 1ft wide by 2ft high.
> Chop the original 12x12 into two pieces A and B, using a single
> cut with 10 corners, then shift the B piece up 2 and left 1,
> leaving the 5x2 hole X.
> 
> ABBBBBBBBBBB
> AABBBBBBBBBB
> AAABBBBBBBBB
> AAAAAAAAABBB
> AAAAAAAAAABB
> AAAAAAAAAAAB
> 
> BBBBBBBBBBB
> ABBBBBBBBBB
> AABBBBBBBBB
> AAAXXXXXBBB
> AAAAAAAAABB
> AAAAAAAAAAB
> AAAAAAAAAAA
> 

I managed to convince myself it wasn't possible. However I assumed
that when you talked about a 14ft x 11ft room with a 5ft x 2ft
plinth you had the long sides of the room and plinth parallel.