Four perfect logicians, who all knew each other from being members of the Perfect Logician's Club, sat around a table that had a dish with 11 apples in it. The chat was intense, and they ended up eating all of the apples. Everybody had at least one apple, and everyone knew that fact, and each logician knew the number of apples that he ate. They didn't know how many apples each of the other ate, though.

They agreed to ask only questions that they didn't know the answers to.

Alonso: Did you eat more apples that I did, Bertrand?

Bertrand: I don't know. Did you, George, eat more apples than I did?

George: I don't know.

Kurt: Aha!!

Kurt figured out how many apples each person ate. Can you do the same?

(In reply to new view by Al Harmon)

Yes, if Al, Bert and George each ate 3, leaving Kurt with 2, they would answer as they did, but how would Kurt be sure that Al didn't eat only 1 and Bert and George each 4, still leaving Kurt with 2? They would also answer the same in that case.

Posted by TomM on 2002-10-01 19:11:16