A knight remembers a banquet that he had:

"Oh, that was a really nice banquet; all the liars and the knights of the kingdom were there, even the village fool. We all ate and drank and at the end of it the king asked each one of us to make a statement about someone else, I mean, to say if he is a liar or a knight. finaly, one statement was said about each one of us, and every one made the same statement except for the village fool who made a different statement. By the way, can you tell me how many people were in the banquet?"

"No", you say, "but I can tell you something else about the NUMBER of people that were in the banquet."

What can you tell? What statement did each one of the participants make?

There could be an even number of knights and liars, say, conjoined alternately, with each knight saying of the liar next to him, then thsat liar saying to the next person (knight), etc., "He's a liar." This would be truthful from every knight with regard to adjacent liar, and a "lie" from each liar about the adjacent knight. The fool would say something different. Total cannot be ascertained exactly -- only even number total (equally distributed) of knights and liars is required (whether 4 or 400) -- and an odd number, overall, if fool added to the count.

Posted by CharleyA. on 2007-02-09 20:46:33