SECOND ANSWERS Dr. Ziege could have started from a spot so near the south pole that when she made the drive east it would have taken her around the pole twice. Of course this generalizes to eastern trips that go n times around the pole, where n is any positive integer, so the problem is solved by an infinity of spots, on an infinity of circles. POSTSCRIPT
A more familiar story line for this puzzle tells of an explorer who looks due south and sees a bear 100 yards away. The bear walks 100 yards due east while the explorer stands still. The explorer then points his gun due south, fires, and kills the bear. What color is the bear? The answer is white. The bear is a polar bear, and the location is the North Pole, but as we have seen, the man may also be near the South Pole. Benjamin Schwartz, writing on “What Color Was the Bear?” (Mathematics Magazine, vol. 34, September-October 1960, pp. 1-4), found still other in finite sets of answers that arise from ambiguity in the prob lem’s wording. For these solutions, and some amusing correspondence on the problem, see my M athematical Carnival, chapter 17. Does 124C41+ look familiar? Historians of SF will rec ognize it as part of Ralph 124C41 + , the title of one of the worst SF novels ever published, although astonishingly ac curate in its scientific predictions. The author was none other than Hugo Gernsback, the father of SF. It was Gernsback who, in New York City, began publishing Amazing Stories in 1926, the world’s first magazine devoted ex clusively to SF. The “Hugos” awarded annually to SF writers honor Gernsback’s first name. His novel ends with superman Ralph pointing out to his true love that his sur name can be interpreted to mean “one to foresee for one.”
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