We want to make a little side note here: we are assuming that the burn rate is uniform – meaning that burning 1/4th of the fuse from one end will take exactly the same amount of time as burning 1/4th of the fuse from the other end of the fuse. It could potentially take 1 minute to burn the first 9/10th of the rope and 59 minutes to burn just the last 1/10th of the rope if the burn rate were not uniform. This was not an assumption stated in the problem, but it is important, and if you ever do encounter this question in an interview it is an assumption you should probably make whether the interviewer states it or not (some interviewers are bad enough to just ask this question without really understanding) because there really would be no solution to this problem if we did not assume the burn rate was uniform. Anyways, that is our little side note, please carry on and read the entire solution below.
Now that we can measure 30 minutes, how could we measure 15 minutes more to get 45 minutes total? Well, can we use the idea of burning a fuse from both sides to measure that extra 15 minutes? That sounds like it has potential – what if we burn fuse # 1 from both ends, and we burn fuse #2 from only one end. Then, after 30 minutes has passed, we can burn the other end of fuse #2. Fuse #2 would finish burning in 15 minutes because it has already has 30 minutes worth of time burned from it, but it is also burning from both ends – so that cuts the burning time in half. And 30 + 15 would give us 45 minutes – so we finally have an answer!