This is the first puzzle in what I hope will be a successful series operating in concert with Calden. This first puzzle is fairly straightforward and was posed by another student at SFL.

You are given two one-dimensional ropes. Each rope takes exactly one hour to burn, however the time is not distributed evenly through the ropes (e.g. if you cut one rope in half, one of the halves could burn in 59 minutes while the other half takes only 1 minute). How can you use these two ropes to measure 45 minutes of elapsed time?

You can send your answers to mail@scott.armitage.name, with the subject heading “Puzzle #1″. In about a week or so, I will post the solution to the puzzle, along with credit to those who wrote in. Please provide sufficient detail in your e-mail, and try to avoid resorting to the internet.