Six witnesses gave conflicting descriptions of the suspect.
Each witness had exactly one item correct. Each correct value appears at least once.
What would be the correct description of the suspect?
Hair
|
Jacket
|
Shirt
|
Pants
|
Brown
|
White
|
Red
|
Gray
|
Red
|
Blue
|
Pink
|
White
|
Black
|
Purple
|
Yellow
|
Blue
|
Blond
|
White
|
Not Yellow
|
White
|
Brown
|
Purple
|
Green
|
Gray
|
Gray
|
Blue
|
Orange
|
Blue
|
This can be solved analytically without trial and error.
From Mensa Puzzle Calendar 2017 by Mark Danna and Fraser Simpson, Workman Publishing, New York. Puzzle for May 12.
What about if the shirt is not-yellow and not any of the listed colors? A cyan-colored (or any color not in the list) shirt for example could be identified truthfully as not-yellow, making it's column have a singular true answer.
Since jacket & pants -options come in pairs they fix 4 options into these two columns, leaving shirt -option column constrained to have only a single selection thus limiting only yellow or not yellow as feasible options in this column. Making jacket blue and pants gray. This way the suspect could have black hair.
I guess it depends how you interpret the: Each correct value appears at least once. Not-yellow might be correct value appearing at least once? Or?..
HAIR JACKET SHIRT PANTS
Gray
Blue
Black
Not Yellow
Gray
Blue
|
Posted by atheron
on 2017-05-18 15:06:11 |