One person comes up to another person beside his bike. "Can I use your bike?" he asks. The person by the bike replies, "Only if you figure out the combination to my bike lock, which is made up of 4 different numbers from 1 through 8. You can guess 3 numbers."

He guessed 1235, 4721, and 3862. All three were answered with "One number in the combination is in the wrong place, and another is in the right place. The other two aren't in the combination."

The guesser was puzzled and asked "Is the number divisible by 7?" The person with the bike answered this question and after thinking for a while, the guesser told him the combination. What is the combination?

(In reply to re(2): Dear Silver Kinght and Charlie,,,,, by Dan)

Interestingly, I "held my tongue" on my last message... I was gonna say... "I'm sure you don't use one, but a lot of people use Fritz or some other computer program to win on those internet sites".... heheh...

Seriously, though, do you really use a program to beat others? And if so, why?
_____________________

As to Charlie and my use of programs.... We both 'brute forced' the solution. But it's not like we pretended to do otherwise.... we both posted our code, acknowledging the use of the 'puter (unlike some people who play chess online).
______________

One must admit, it virtually guarantees we don't miss one of the valid combinations.

Posted by SilverKnight on 2003-11-18 11:52:10