A group of five people want to put a set of locks on a chest and distribute keys to the locks amongst themselves in such a way that all the locks on the chest could be opened only when at least three of them were present to open it.

How many locks would be needed, and how many keys?

(In reply to re: Revised solution to revised puzzle by Charlie)

Charlie wrote: "Why not use your original solution (comment #6) and just have a separate key for each lock: 10 locks and 30 keys?"

That would have been the logical thing to do. Why didn't I think of that ? (Don't answer that !!)

:-)

   

Posted by Penny on 2004-03-04 21:16:52