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The guilty demon (Posted on 2002-05-29) Difficulty: 3 of 5
As the story goes, Prometheus stole fire from the gods of Olympus and gave it to humans. This made Zeus very angry. Prometheus was told to return the fire by 1:00pm, an order that he defied.

To punish Prometheus for his disobedience, at 1:00 pm, Zeus paused time (he can do this as a god), and conjured up an infinite number of demons. To the first demon he said:
"If Prometheus is still alive at 2:00 pm, kill him!" To the second one he said:
"If Prometheus is still alive at 1:30 pm, kill him!" And to the third:
"If Prometheus is still alive at 1:15 pm, kill him!"

So he kept ordering each of his demons to kill Prometheus in half the time of the demon before. After giving orders to all the demons, Zeus un-paused time again and waited.

At two o'clock, Prometheus was dead, and the council of gods was none too happy about it. They told Zeus:
"Tell us which one of your demons killed Prometheus, so that we may punish him!"

"But none of my demons could possibly have killed Prometheus!" answered Zeus. How can this be?

See The Solution Submitted by levik    
Rating: 4.1875 (16 votes)

Comments: ( Back to comment list | You must be logged in to post comments.)
No Subject | Comment 34 of 39 |

to me i think that this is what happned:

ok so zeus stopped time right? right before he stopped time Prometheus was killed. so when time was un paused it looked as if Prometheus had been killed by one of the demons but really he was killed before hand but the time freezing made it look as if the demons did. ehh im probley wrong. its just too confusing.


  Posted by Jo on 2005-01-12 13:25:14
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