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?
as chaz wrote in his comment, you must only find were the 7 apples lie. However, the problem with Chaz's argument is that alonso could have had only his first apple. If he had one, bertrand could have had two and george 3. this would make the solution:
A - 1
B - 2
G - 3
K - 5
however, as chaz pointed out
A - 2
B - 3
G - 4
K - 2
also works, as well as
A - 1
B - 3
G - 3
K - 4
so no one solution can be found
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Posted by drew
on 2002-12-04 12:56:08 |