Five couples went for a dance together. The names and surnames of neither boys nor girls started with the same letter. The list of names & surnames of boys and girls are given below.

Boys
Names – Arnold, Brad, Chris, Dennis, Elvis
Surnames – Aniston, Baker, Campbell, Davis, Edwards

Girls
Names – Angelina, Betty, Catherine, Diana, Elizabeth
Surnames – Austin, Burton, Carrey, Dean, Everts

The following things are known

Clue 1- Brad Aniston is neither going around with Ms Burton nor Catherine
Clue 2- Angelina Dean is neither going around with Mr Baker nor Chris
Clue 3- There are "two boys" whose name and their fiancée's surname start with the same letter. One is Chris, but the other is neither Arnold nor Mr. Baker.
Clue 4- There are two girls (who are not paired with either of the "two boys" referred in clue (3)) whose name and their fiancé's surname start with the same letter. One of them is Angelina but the other is neither Catherine nor Ms Everts.

Who is Elizabeth's Partner?

In the following bs$ is the string of first letters of the boys' surnames, gn$ of the first letters of the girls' first names and gs$, of the girls' surnames.  The order of each is their correspondence to letters a - e of the boys' first names to which they correspond.

 

DECLARE SUB permute (a$)
CLS

bs$ = "abcde": hbs$ = bs$
DO
 IF MID$(bs$, 2, 1) <> "a" THEN GOTO not1
 baker = INSTR(bs$, "b")
 IF baker = 1 OR baker = 3 THEN GOTO not1
 FOR i = 1 TO 5
   IF MID$(bs$, i, 1) = MID$("abcde", i, 1) THEN GOTO not1
 NEXT i

gn$ = "abcde": hgn$ = gn$
DO
 IF MID$(gn$, 2, 1) = "c" THEN GOTO not2
 angelina = INSTR(gn$, "a")
 IF MID$(bs$, angelina, 1) <> "a" THEN GOTO not2
 catherine = INSTR(gn$, "c")
 IF MID$(bs$, catherine, 1) = "c" THEN GOTO not2
 matches = 0
 FOR i = 1 TO 5
  IF MID$(gn$, i, 1) = MID$(bs$, i, 1) THEN matches = matches + 1
 NEXT
 IF matches <> 2 THEN GOTO not2

gs$ = "abcde": hgs$ = gs$
DO
 IF MID$(gs$, 3, 1) <> "c" THEN GOTO not3
 IF MID$(gs$, 1, 1) = "a" THEN GOTO not3
 IF MID$(gs$, 2, 1) = "b" THEN GOTO not3
 IF MID$(gs$, angelina, 1) <> "d" THEN GOTO not3
 IF MID$(gs$, baker, 1) = MID$("abcde", baker, 1) THEN GOTO not3
 FOR i = 1 TO 5
   IF MID$(gs$, i, 1) = MID$(gn$, i, 1) THEN GOTO not3
 NEXT i
 everts = INSTR(gs$, "e")
 burton = INSTR(gs$, "b")
 IF catherine = everts OR catherine = burton THEN GOTO not3
 IF MID$(bs$, everts, 1) = MID$(gn$, everts, 1) THEN GOTO not3

 matches = 0
 FOR i = 1 TO 5
  IF MID$(gs$, i, 1) = MID$("abcde", i, 1) THEN
    matches = matches + 1
    IF MID$(bs$, i, 1) = MID$(gn$, i, 1) THEN GOTO not3
  END IF
 NEXT
 IF matches <> 2 THEN GOTO not3

 ct = ct + 1
 PRINT bs$: PRINT gn$: PRINT gs$: PRINT ct

not3:
 permute gs$
LOOP UNTIL gs$ = hgs$

not2:
 permute gn$
LOOP UNTIL gn$ = hgn$

not1:
 permute bs$
LOOP UNTIL bs$ = hbs$

The permute subroutine is elsewhere on this site.

 

The result is:

eadbc
eabcd
bdcae

indicating Elizabeth Burton is with Arnold Edwards.

Also, Angelina Dean is with Brad Aniston,
Betty Carrey is with Chris Davis
Catherine Austin is with Dennis Baker
Diana Everts is with Elvis Campbell

Posted by Charlie on 2006-04-04 16:25:37