Albert, Barney, and Curtis were questioned about the murder of Dwight. Evidence at the scene of the crime indicated a lawyer might have been implicated in Dwight's murder. Each suspect made two statements, as follows:

• Albert said he was not a lawyer and that he did not kill Dwight.
• Barney said he was a lawyer and he did not kill Dwight.
• Curtis said he was not a lawyer and a lawyer killed Dwight.

The police subsequently discovered that only two of the statements quoted above were true, and only one of the three suspects was not a lawyer.

Which of the suspects killed Dwight?

There are only 3 possibilities for who's not a lawyer and 3 for who's the killer, and for the 9 possible combinations there are 6 statements to evaluate for each possibility. I'd rather program my computer to evaluate all 9 sets of 6, and see which amount to two true statements out of the six:

n$(1) = "Albert "
n$(2) = "Barney "
n$(3) = "Curtis "
FOR notlaw = 1 TO 3
FOR k = 1 TO 3
  true = 0
  IF notlaw = 1 THEN true = true + 1: a1 = 1:  ELSE a1 = 0
  IF k <> 1 THEN true = true + 1: a2 = 1:  ELSE a2 = 0
  IF notlaw <> 2 THEN true = true + 1: b1 = 1:  ELSE b1 = 0
  IF k <> 2 THEN true = true + 1: b2 = 1:  ELSE b2 = 0
  IF notlaw = 3 THEN true = true + 1: c1 = 1:  ELSE c1 = 0
  IF k <> notlaw THEN true = true + 1: c2 = 1:  ELSE c2 = 0
  IF true = 2 THEN
    PRINT "Lawyers: ";
    FOR i = 1 TO 3
      IF notlaw <> i THEN PRINT n$(i);
    NEXT
    PRINT
    PRINT "Killer: "; n$(k)
    PRINT "True statements: ";
    IF a1 THEN PRINT "A1 ";
    IF a2 THEN PRINT "A2 ";
    IF b1 THEN PRINT "B1 ";
    IF b2 THEN PRINT "B2 ";
    IF c1 THEN PRINT "C1 ";
    IF c2 THEN PRINT "C2 ";
    PRINT
  END IF
NEXT
NEXT

As a result we find:

Lawyers: Albert Curtis
Killer: Albert
True statements: B2 C2

Posted by Charlie on 2012-11-13 12:26:17