THE GLASS THAT CHEERS
It was time for the Christmas punch to be handed round, a sociable activity that Scrooge loathed, so every year he put it off for as long as possible. This year he had a tricky puzzle, using all the punch glasses, to offer his guests.
‘Before we dip into the bowl,’ he said to his assembled guests, ‘I invite you to solve this puzzle. You have to turn all the glasses the right way up, by inverting three at a time. When you invert three glasses, that counts as one move. And you must do it in the smallest number of moves possible. How many? Eh?’
How could his guests get their punch?