Invite Hook #1

Ricardo had been delighted to be chosen as Master of Ceremonies for the Archipelago's Independence Day celebration, but that was before he found out who the speaker was to be. Because it was the centennial of Paradiso's inclusion in the Archipelago, the president was to give the keynote address.

The problem was that the people of Paradiso had short attention spans: they could pay attention to something for a bit over forty-five minutes; then they wandered away. This would have dire consequences in this case, because the president was both long-winded and short-tempered. At the neighboring isle's New Year's celebration he had gone over the crowd's attention span, and the people had left before he was done speaking. In retaliation he had slashed their budget by half. Hence Ricardo's dilemma. He had to stop the speech before the crowd up and left.

There was to be a fireworks display after the speech, and it occurred to him that he could rig the display to start early. The president would still be furious, but at least he wouldn't be furious at the island itself, and perhaps Ricardo could set it up so there was no obvious culprit.

Of course! He could use one of the beautifully-carved ceremonial candles to light the first volley of fireworks. He just had to use a forty-five minute candle and attach the end of the wick to the fuse of the fireworks.

When he went to the stores, however, there were no forty-five minute candles left. Given the population's attention span, they were always used up quickly. The only candles left were three hour-long candles. Unfortunately, because they were heavily-carved, Ricardo could not simply cut a quarter off the end of one: the carving made them burn at an uneven rate. The only guarantee was that the whole candle would take an hour to burn.

Ricardo has matches, but no watch. How can he use the three hour-long candles to create a single forty-five minute candle?

Solution