34 ROBOTS OFOZ
PUZZLE If by robot we mean a machine constructed to simulate a human being, there are three unusual robots that L. Frank Baum placed either in Oz or in one of the many magic realms just outside Oz. The Tin Woodman is not, of course, a robot but a former woodchopper whose human parts were gradually replaced by tin as they were chopped off by his enchanted ax. Here are three puzzles, each related to one of Baum’s robots. 1. The Giant with the Hammer In Ozma o f Oz a giant made of cast iron guards a narrow path leading to where the evil Nome King lives in Ev. The giant neither thinks nor speaks. His sole task is to pound the path continually with an iron hammer about the size of a barrel. Now for an easy brainteaser. Assume that it takes one second to raise the hammer, and one second to lower it with a loud bong on the road. How many seconds elapse between one bong and the hundredth bong that follows? 2. Tiktok Tiktok also makes his first appearance in Ozma ofO z. As all Oz buffs know, he is a mechanical copper man made by Smith and Tinker, who also made the iron giant. But Tiktok is a much more complicated machine. He can think and speak as well as act. In fact, as Baum tells us, he “does everything but live.” Tiktok’s actions, thoughts, and speech are each con trolled by a separate windup mechanism that can run down independently of the others. When his thought machinery runs down, but not his talking machinery, he scrambles words. One day, when Tiktok was reciting a well-known fourline poem by an American humorist, his thinking mechanism ran down but his speech mechanism somehow
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