There were once three friends. Abe is a Knight, Bill is a Liar, and Carl is neither, having been brought up in a foreign country. (This means he can either lie or tell the truth depending on what he feels like.)

One day, the three were sitting on a bench when the king's herald stopped by to deliver a message to one of them.

He asked the man sitting on the left side of the bench:

"Who's that sitting in the middle? To which the man replied: "Why that's Abe".

He then asked the man in the middle directly:

"What's your name?" and got the answer "My name's Carl."

Confused, he asked the man on the right:

"Who is that sitting in the middle?" and was immediately told: "That's Bill, of course!"

Can you help the king's herald figure out who is who?

You get three different answers, so Carl is lying. Only Carl and Bill could claim to be Carl, but Carl is lying, so Bill is in the middle.

The man on the right correctly identified Bill, so he must be Abe, leaving Carl to be the one on the left.

Posted by TomM on 2002-06-11 13:32:05