math challenge

Weeks of June 29 - July 12, 1998

Monkey Mumbo


In an unusual experiment, Professor I. Havagrant places 40 typewriters in a room with 40 monkeys. The monkeys are to sit in the room and type for 16 hours a day.

Half of the monkeys manage to type a unique English word every 20 minutes. The other half of the monkeys manage to type a unique English word every 50 minutes.

How long will it take for the monkeys to get a list of 10,000 unique English words?


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