There are 8 people that need to cross a river. The water is too deep and fast to walk or swim across, and the only transportation device available is a raft. The raft can only be operated by adults, cannot float across the river on its own, and can carry at most two people.

The 8 people are a juvenile delinquent, her jailer, and a dysfunctional family of six: mother, father, two sons, and two daughters. To be clear, the only adults are the jailer, the mother, and the father.

Unfortunately some people fight with each other:

The juvenile delinquent will fight with anybody if her jailer is not present.

The father fights with either daughter if the mother is not present to mediate.

The mother fights with either son if the father is not present to mediate.

How can these 8 people cross the river without any fights? How many trips on the raft did it take?

For a fun way to test out your theories, click here and then click on the blue circle.

Hello everyone,

1) Sorry I have been away from Perplexus for so long so I did not answer your questions.

2) In my absense my solution that I had in the queue was posted so hopefully your thirst for the official word on the solution was eventually quenched.

3) Since this problem was posted, the host site of the little game restructured itself.  The new link, as of this posting, is http://www.ebaumsworld.com/games/play/1171/

4) To Leigh Lillico (if you are still here), one of your original solutions had an error in it (it had the Father on the end side alone, so when the Mother returned to the start side she would have fought with the sons).  However later on you got one of the solutions so you probably didn't need a response from me any more =)

5) Happy puzzling!

Edited on October 8, 2007, 11:52 pm

Posted by nikki on 2007-10-08 23:50:56