Tim Brustad submitted this riddle; check back next week for the answer!
Four people want to go to this great AA meeting. Two of them are already working a great program; the other two are a little tipsy and moving pretty slow. BUT they are willing to hit the meeting and see what it’s all about.
The challenge is that in order to get to this dynamite meeting they have to walk up this old, dark, rickety, stair case, ironically it has “12-steps.” They can see the lights through the partially open door to the meeting room at the top of the stairs.
They decide that only two people can go up at a time and they are running out of time before the meeting starts.
Since some are sober and some are too tipsy, they discover that they all move at different speeds. The individual with 10 years of sobriety can make it up these 12 steps in 1 minute. The other recovery “dude” can make it up the stairs in 2 minutes. Of the two stoned guys one can make it in 5 minutes, the other in 10 minutes. Since the program is all about helping another individual, if two people walk together they can only walk as fast as the slowest person can make it. They only have one flashlight so once two arrive at the top of the stairs one has to go back down with the flashlight.
Unfortunately, there are only 17 minutes left until the meeting starts. How can these four AA travelers climb the 12 steps before time runs out?