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The guilty demon (Posted on 2002-05-29) Difficulty: 3 of 5
As the story goes, Prometheus stole fire from the gods of Olympus and gave it to humans. This made Zeus very angry. Prometheus was told to return the fire by 1:00pm, an order that he defied.

To punish Prometheus for his disobedience, at 1:00 pm, Zeus paused time (he can do this as a god), and conjured up an infinite number of demons. To the first demon he said:
"If Prometheus is still alive at 2:00 pm, kill him!" To the second one he said:
"If Prometheus is still alive at 1:30 pm, kill him!" And to the third:
"If Prometheus is still alive at 1:15 pm, kill him!"

So he kept ordering each of his demons to kill Prometheus in half the time of the demon before. After giving orders to all the demons, Zeus un-paused time again and waited.

At two o'clock, Prometheus was dead, and the council of gods was none too happy about it. They told Zeus:
"Tell us which one of your demons killed Prometheus, so that we may punish him!"

"But none of my demons could possibly have killed Prometheus!" answered Zeus. How can this be?

See The Solution Submitted by levik    
Rating: 4.1875 (16 votes)

Comments: ( Back to comment list | You must be logged in to post comments.)
Time stops forever | Comment 29 of 39 |
(In reply to Kill the demons! by Bill)

If Zeus had conjured up an infinite number of demons, then he would never finish telling them all to kill Prometheus. Therefore, time would be stopped forever and we would be just frozen in time. Naughty Zeus.
  Posted by Captain Paradox on 2004-01-04 12:06:31

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