I met a man with seven wives.

Each wife had seven sacks;

Each sack had seven cats;

Each cat had seven kits.

Kits, cats, sacks, wives;

How many were going to St. Ives?

I haven't heard that one; but I have seen different versions of the St. Ives problem before.

In reading this one, I didn't notice the penultimate line, which might imply only to count the kits, cats, sacks, and wives, in which case the answer would be zero. To be extremely pedantic about the English, though, a semicolon (;) separates a sentence into two independent (although usually related) clauses. For the last sentence of this puzzle, then, the first clause "Kits, cats, sacks, wives" is an incomplete fragment without a verb; the second clause "How many were going to St. Ives?" is separate, in which the subject of 'many' could be ambiguous. A comma instead of the semicolon there would leave the first list as descriptors of the word 'many.'

Honestly, I was on my way out to work this morning and didn't notice that line, but an answer of one could be defended.

Posted by DJ on 2003-05-19 18:44:13