No, he didn’t but it is implied that you take one every half hour once you swallow the first one. Only a fool would think the question was based on a mythical time in the future when you start to take them, if that was the case you could hold off forever. 60 minutes was the correct answer and the only ones disputing it are the ones who said 90 or some other answer.
Nice try, but you shot yourself in the foot with "implied".
Some of us got a free ride to college on our ability to take multiple choice tests. :-)
Greysard wrote:
The trick in this question is that most sane people understand that pill that you have is not immediately valuable, but a pill that is in your body is doing something that you need. A pill's EFFECT lasts for a certain time. Normal people read the question as "for how long the combined effect of three pills lasts?" We do not know how long is the tail of the effect, but since we know that pills must be taken with a 30 min. interval then the usable part of the effect is contained in that interval.
You can also look at it from another dimension. What does it mean "a pill ... lasts?" It means "for how long does it work in your body." You can have the pill in your hand, or you can have it in your stomach. Swallowing of a pill does not destroy it; however once it ends working and gets removed from the bloodstream then it truly disappears. Since each pill lasts 30 minutes in your blood then three pills, taken as indicated, will last 90 minutes.
One could say "How soon you have no more pills in the container?" but that was not the question. If each pill buys you a month of life, three pills will last you three months starting at the moment you take the first one. Anyone arguing otherwise is too smart for his own good; he might just as well argue what the meaning of the word "is" is.
Very pithy, Greysard. :-)