[This is a slight rewording of a problem I got from Phil Wadler, who said he read the problem on xkcd.]

A man has a medical condition that requires him to take two kinds of pills, call them A and B. The man must take exactly one A pill and exactly one B pill each day, or he will die. The pills are taken by first dissolving them in water.

The man has a jar of A pills and a jar of B pills. One day, as he is about to take his pills, he takes out one A pill from the A jar and puts it in a glass of water. Then he accidentally takes out two B pills from the B jar and puts them in the water. Now, he is in the situation of having a glass of water with three dissolved pills, one A pill and two B pills. Unfortunately, the pills are very expensive, so the thought of throwing out the water with the 3 pills and starting over is out of the question. How should the man proceed in order to get the right quantity of A and B while not wasting any pills?

January 2011