Ponder This Challenge - October 2009 - Complete the sequence

Ponder This Challenge:

Complete the following sequence:

1, 13, 2, 1, 5, 3, 2, 1, 4, 4, 7, 3, 1, 5, 3, 5, ?, ?

Beware - this month's challenge is different than usual.

Hint (10/07): The solution is related to a quote about mathematicians.

We will post the names of those who submit a correct, original solution! If you don't want your name posted then please include such a statement in your submission!

We invite visitors to our website to submit an elegant solution. Send your submission to the ponder@il.ibm.com.

If you have any problems you think we might enjoy, please send them in. All replies should be sent to: ponder@il.ibm.com

Solution

• Click here to view the solution

  There is a saying (wrongly) attributed to Charles Darwin:
  A mathematician is a blind man in a dark room looking for a black cat which isn't there.
  The sequence is the number of letters in each word, so its completion is 4, 5 (or 5, 5 is you count the apostrophe).
  Thanks to one of our solvers which was inspired to make this cute lol (external link).

Solvers

• Tony Maric (10/01/2009 07:35 PM EDT)
• Albert Stadler (10/02/2009 08:11 AM EDT)
• ICM, Univ. of Warsaw (10/02/2009 08:46 AM EDT)
• Andreas Stiller (10/07/2009 01:44 PM EDT)
• Harald Bögeholz (10/07/2009 01:37 PM EDT)
• Dan Dima (10/07/2009 02:10 PM EDT)
• Mark Mixer (10/07/2009 02:26 PM EDT)
• Tom Sirgedas (10/07/2009 03:22 PM EDT)
• Alan B. (10/07/2009 04:01 PM EDT)
• John T. Robinson (10/07/2009 04:56 PM EDT)
• Beryl Schragger (10/07/2009 05:16 PM EDT)
• David Challener (10/07/2009 06:26 PM EDT)
• Jeff Blohm (10/07/2009 07:33 PM EDT)
• Alexander Wagner (10/07/2009 09:21 PM EDT)
• Nyles Heise (10/07/2009 11:16 PM EDT)
• pulsar (h.nathen) (10/07/2009 11:18 PM EDT)
• Tulasi Ram Reddy A (10/08/2009 02:15 AM EDT)
• Thursday Next (10/08/2009 02:26 AM EDT)
• Ben Tarlow (10/08/2009 05:44 AM EDT)
• L. Sabarathinam (10/08/2009 06:04 AM EDT)
• Arovit Narula (10/08/2009 06:53 AM EDT)
• Joseph Bonneau (10/08/2009 10:29 AM EDT)
• Alexander Ivrii (10/08/2009 10:34 AM EDT)
• Ioan Marius Popdan (10/08/2009 11:34 AM EDT)
• Yuval Filmus (10/08/2009 11:57 AM EDT)
• Kin Keung Ma (10/08/2009 12:04 PM EDT)
• Irem Koprulu (10/08/2009 02:10 PM EDT)
• Clive Tong (10/08/2009 02:12 PM EDT)
• Greg Janée (10/08/2009 02:16 PM EDT)
• Martin Thiim (10/08/2009 02:44 PM EDT)
• Satish Kumar K N (10/08/2009 03:34 PM EDT)
• Christian Kissig & Rick Thomas (10/08/2009 04:08 PM EDT)
• Phil Muhm (10/08/2009 04:43 PM EDT)
• Mihai Cioc (10/08/2009 06:26 PM EDT)
• Karthik Gnanamurthy (10/08/2009 07:25 PM EDT)
• Chuck Grant (10/08/2009 09:59 PM EDT)
• Zhou Guang (10/08/2009 11:27 PM EDT)
• Ivan Sobotik (10/09/2009 02:01 AM EDT)
• Shmuel Menachem Spiegel (10/09/2009 02:11 AM EDT)
• David Friedman (10/09/2009 02:24 AM EDT)
• L. J. Zigerell Jr. (10/09/2009 02:47 AM EDT)
• Mithil Ramteke (10/09/2009 03:14 AM EDT)
• Caroline Boucaut (10/09/2009 06:37 AM EDT)
• Tejaswi Navilarekallu (10/09/2009 07:33 AM EDT)
• Andrew J. Gambier (10/09/2009 07:51 AM EDT)
• William G. Hunter (10/09/2009 08:35 AM EDT)
• Guillaume de Longeaux (10/09/2009 09:33 AM EDT)
• David Englund (10/09/2009 09:44 AM EDT)
• Panio Donev (10/09/2009 11:45 AM EDT)
• David Zimmermann (10/09/2009 12:09 PM EDT)
• Christian Blatter (10/09/2009 12:12 PM EDT)
• Udit Narayan Sharma (10/09/2009 01:22 PM EDT)
• Mark Abramson (10/09/2009 01:40 PM EDT)
• Bojan Basic (10/09/2009 02:21 PM EDT)
• Frank Vernaillen (10/09/2009 04:35 PM EDT)
• Ante Turudic (10/09/2009 04:50 PM EDT)
• Marek Krzysztof Misztal (10/09/2009 06:35 PM EDT)
• V (10/09/2009 06:45 PM EDT)
• ictor Chang (10/09/2009 06:45 PM EDT)
• Hendrik Krauß (10/09/2009 09:26 PM EDT)
• Prithwijit De (10/09/2009 11:35 PM EDT)
• Hyeshik Chang (10/10/2009 07:46 AM EDT)
• Josh Matthews (10/10/2009 12:16 AM EDT)
• Erick Wong (10/10/2009 02:55 PM EDT)
• Farid Lian (10/10/2009 03:36 AM EDT)
• Robert Szafranski (10/10/2009 06:47 PM EDT)
• Marcin S. (10/10/2009 06:49 PM EDT)
• Deepti Agrawal (10/11/2009 02:03 AM EDT)
• Sen Gu (10/11/2009 02:11 EDT)
• Hoang Nguyen (10/11/2009 03:37 AM EDT)
• Ingrid Voigt (10/11/2009 11:31 AM EDT)
• Corey Cerovsek (10/11/2009 07:13 PM EDT)
• Subramanian C. A (10/12/2009 01:27 AM EDT)
• Dan Ungureanu (10/12/2009 07:21 AM EDT)
• Abhiram R Devesh (10/12/2009 08:48 AM EDT)
• Inbal Shafran (10/12/2009 10:00 AM EDT)
• Wooyoung Chin (12/10/2009 11:06 AM EDT)
• Federico Felizzi (10/12/2009 11:18 AM EDT)
• Karl D’Souza (10/12/2009 12:30 PM EDT)
• Mark Perkins (10/12/2009 12:43 PM EDT)
• Keith Wilcock (10/12/2009 01:21 PM EDT)
• Michael Quist (10/12/2009 02:14 PM EDT)
• Harold Gutch (10/12/2009 03:42 PM EDT)
• Satish Vedantam (10/12/2009 06:46 PM EDT)
• Armin Stranjak (10/12/2009 08:26 PM EDT)
• Ranjit Eswaran (10/13/2009 03:50 AM EDT)
• Aravindakrishnan V. (10/13/2009 04:18 AM EDT)
• Radu Borza (10/13/2009 07:45 AM EDT)
• Vicente Rubiella Amorós (10/13/2009 08:59 AM EDT)
• Basavaraj Kanthi (10/13/2009 12:01 PM EDT)
• Krunoslav Kovac (10/13/2009 01:04 PM EDT)
• Emilio Pierro (10/13/2009 02:19 PM EDT)
• Mark Pilloff (10/13/2009 07:29 PM EDT)
• Shalini Goel (10/14/2009 02:19 AM EDT)
• Bobby Brennan (10/14/2009 03:06 AM EDT)
• Amos Guler (10/14/2009 04:31 AM EDT)
• Fabio Filatrella (10/14/2009 04:46 AM EDT)
• Adriana Clerici (10/14/2009 12:34 PM EDT)
• Boian Popunkiov (10/14/2009 03:15 PM EDT)
• Joshua Lewis (10/14/2009 03:42 PM EDT)
• David Banyas (10/14/2009 06:41 PM EDT)
• Dave Dodson (10/14/2009 06:51 PM EDT)
• Nicholls State Univ. (10/14/2009 09:10 PM EDT)
• Josh Kerr (10/14/2009 09:27 PM EDT)
• Doug Tonder (10/14/2009 09:30 PM EDT)
• Haritha Mathsyaraja (10/15/2009 12:56 AM EDT)
• Somesh Kumar (10/15/2009 01:47 AM EDT)
• Kaverappa O T (10/15/2009 07:09 AM EDT)
• Andrew Buchanan (10/15/2009 11:41 AM EDT)
• Daniel Chong Jyh Tar (10/15/2009 02:10 PM EDT)
• Dheeraj Kumar (10/15/2009 05:40 PM EDT)
• Mihnea Stoenescu (10/16/2009 04:01 AM EDT)
• Ganesh Pagade (10/16/2009 09:40 AM EDT)
• Joachim Ripken (10/16/2009 10:12 AM EDT)
• Keith Power (10/16/2009 11:32 AM EDT)
• Alexandru Nicau (10/16/2009 11:38 AM EDT)
• Kang Seonghoon (10/16/2009 12:01 PM EDT)
• Aliaksei Sanko (10/17/2009 08:33 AM EDT)
• Arran Fernandez (10/17/2009 07:27 PM EDT)
• Sevag Papazian (10/18/2009 07:06 PM EDT)
• Roger (10/18/2009 08:50 PM EDT)
• Yin Jintao (10/19/2009 05:38 AM EDT)
• Luv Bhatt (10/19/2009 02:17 PM EDT)
• Michael Cho & Erdem Varol (10/19/2009 09:12 PM EDT)
• Anu Chakravarty (10/19/2009 10:44 PM EDT)
• Achava Nakhash (10/19/2009 11:50 PM EDT)
• Reinder Verlinde (10/20/2009 04:19 AM EDT)
• Amit Chattopadhyay (10/20/2009 04:45 AM EDT)
• Ian Barnard (10/20/2009 06:02 AM EDT)
• Mauro Lattuada (10/20/2009 11:07 AM EDT)
• Aleksandar Damnjanovic (10/21/2009 12:21 AM EDT)
• Romila Pradhan (10/21/2009 05:13 AM EDT)
• César Escusa (10/21/2009 10:21 AM EDT)
• Meredith Watts (10/21/2009 10:56 AM EDT)
• Simone Podico (10/21/2009 11:44 AM EDT)
• Kiran Bhogadi (10/21/2009 10:27 PM EDT)
• Brendt Hess (10/22/2009 05:48 AM EDT)
• Steven Langerwerf (10/22/2009 07:00 AM EDT)
• Ionut Poclitaru (10/22/2009 08:40 AM EDT)
• Robert Michael (10/22/2009 03:26 PM EDT)
• Gary M. Gerken (10/22/2009 10:47 PM EDT)
• Raj Vaidhyanathan (10/23/2009 02:07 AM EDT)
• Bernardino Romera Paredes (10/23/2009 08:37 AM EDT)
• Guillermo Indalecio (10/23/2009 10:19 AM EDT)
• Kalyan Chakravarthy Gudimella (10/23/2009 01:27 PM EDT)
• Ilya Khivrich (10/23/2009 04:22 PM EDT)
• Ashutosh Mahajan (10/24/2009 04:47 PM EDT)
• Roni Forte (10/25/2009 05:27 PM EDT)
• Mahesha In (10/25/2009 05:43 PM EDT)
• Sean Lolmaugh (10/26/2009 12:27 AM EDT)
• Kartikeya Shandilya (10/26/2009 07:21 AM EDT)
• Udit Kapoor (10/26/2009 07:24 AM EDT)
• Luke Pebody (10/26/2009 09:20 AM EDT)
• Thomas Rohr (10/26/2009 11:12 AM EDT)
• Milan Jovanov (10/26/2009 12:33 PM EDT)
• Jonathan McCue (10/26/2009 08:21 PM EDT)
• Morgan Sherman (10/27/2009 03:49 AM EDT)
• Jack Torres (10/27/2009 02:24 PM EDT)
• Jason L. (10/27/2009 03:42 PM EDT)
• Brydon Eastman (10/27/2009 03:48 PM EDT)
• Ramkumar Balaraman (10/27/2009 04:52 PM EDT)
• Robert Pond (10/27/2009 06:59 PM EDT)
• Jesse Benck (10/27/2009 08:56 PM EDT)
• Pratik Poddar (10/28/2009 04:38 AM EDT)
• Roland Parenteau (10/28/2009 06:12 AM EDT)
• Dan Peleg (10/28/2009 08:08 AM EDT)
• Carlos Henrique Cano (10/28/2009 09:13 AM EDT)
• Yungu Zhu (10/28/2009 09:49 AM EDT)
• Chris Shannon (10/28/2009 08:39 PM EDT)
• Nicholas Goken (10/28/2009 09:32 PM EDT)
• Bernardo Recamán (10/29/2009 12:42 AM EDT)
• Rickard Björklund (10/29/2009 11:22 AM EDT)
• Benedikt Engels (10/29/2009 12:10 PM EDT)
• Mocanu Calin (10/29/2009 04:36 PM EDT)
• Jesse Kolman (10/29/2009 04:44 PM EDT)
• Charles Tam (10/29/2009 05:20 PM EDT)
• Mayank Singhal (10/30/2009 03:00 AM EDT)
• Cristina Popdan (10/30/2009 06:49 AM EDT)
• Charles Kingsmill (10/31/2009 01:00 PM EDT)
• Scott Smith (10/31/2009 11:37 PM EDT)
• James Carter (11/01/2009 10:37 AM EDT)
• Geert Jan Ruiter (11/02/2009 03:51 PM EDT)
• Maithili Kekre (11/02/2009 02:47 PM EDT)