Arlene(A), Brenda(B), Cheryl(C), Daniel(D), Emmett(E) and Farley(F) stayed in a hotel.

1) Each stayed in a different one of six rooms as shown here, identified by his initials :

         +----+----+----+----+
         |    | C  |    | E  |
         | B  +----+ D  +----+
         |    |    |    |    |
         +----+    +----+    +
         |      A  |      F  |
         +---------+---------+

2) One of the six murdered one of the other five.

3) If the murderer and the victim stayed in rooms that did not border on each other, then Arlene or Farley was the victim.

4) If the murderer and the victim stayed in rooms that bordered on different numbers of rooms, then Brenda or Cheryl was the murderer.

5) If the murderer and the victim stayed in rooms that were different in size, then Daniel or Emmett was the murderer.

Who was the murderer? Who was the victim?

Wow... you lot seem intent on making this problem way more difficult than it is! Here's my solution;

It seems to me that - from the information we're given - there's no way of knowing who was the murderer or who was the victim. The only details we know to be true are 1) and 2) - that each person stayed in a different room, and one of them killed another member of the group. Statements 3), 4) and 5) are conditionals (If... then... ) - not facts - and don't tell us anything at all. To get any useful information out of the sentence below, we would need to know whether or not the murderer and victim stayed in rooms different in size (the truth value of the constituent sentence) - without knowing that we can't say whether Daniel or Emmett was the murderer.

5) If the murderer and the victim stayed in rooms that were different in size, then Daniel or Emmett was the murderer.

Posted by Paradox on 2005-08-28 19:14:36