The worlds first riddle!

Well, let's settle this item first then.

Point out to me where earlier you said: "Either you will kiss me or you will refuse me the photograph"

I don't see it -- but if I missed it, I'll agree with you that you said the same thing twice.

In the meantime, I am tending toward agreeing with you that the statement as you made it now does fit the bill -- but there still is an area that I can't figure out. Be back on that in very short order.

I did not express any problem with the word "or." Qualifiers certainly can be used - and I used a qualifier in the solution I came up with.

I merely said that I could not do it with algebra. But you certainly can.

In your earlier post the statement you suggested was:

I asked you to word the statement so I could evaluate it. Keep in mind that I have to think this thing out - I don't have an answer sheet to work with, because there are several ways of making a statement that works. (Try to work with me on this -- it ain't easy!)

Now your statement is: "Either you will kiss me or you will refuse me the photograph"

First, let me give you my solution - and the reasoning behind it - and then we will talk about your statement, which looks very, very much like mine.

Mine is: You will not give me your photo unless you also give me a kiss.

The lady is presented with this situation: She can only give him the photo if she also gives him a kiss (or else the statement would be false and she would be required NOT to give him a photo.)

But the only way the statement can be false…is if she gives the photo without giving the kiss - which she cannot do because of her promise NOT to give a photo if the statement is false.

So the statement HAS TO BE true - and she is required to both give a kiss and give a photo.

Now let's take a look at your statement as offered and see if it truly is the same.
I THINK there is a necessary element missing from your construction. The element I think is missing is: "Either you will kiss me and give me your photo or you will refuse me the photograph."

Your statement: : "Either you will kiss me or you will refuse me the photograph"

How can the statement be false.

It can be false if she both kisses him and refuses the photo - which means he does not get the photo. (He ends up with just the kiss and not the photo) And she has met the requirements of her promises.

If your statement is amended to include the element I mentioned, however, I think the dynamics change.

I'll let you be the judge - because I've worn myself out thinking about this.

The amended statement: "Either you will kiss me and give me your photo or you will refuse me the photograph."

How can this be false? It can only be false if she both "kisses him and gives him her photo" and refuses to give the photo. Which of course, is an impossibility.

So the statement as amended has to be true. Which means she WILL give him both a kiss and a photo.


Lemme say out front - that the riddle has several answers and I truly labored over the reasoning in your statement as unamended.

I am certainly willing to listen to whatever you have to say in response.

Tough goddam problem, I'll tell ya that!

Hi Frank,

I was just wondering about your statement

"You will not give me your photo unless you also give me a kiss."

I am not a native English speaker and I don't understand 'unless' precisely.

What i want is to make the 'truth matrix' for this:

A unless also B

A B A unless also B
true true false?
true false true?
false true false?
false false false?


In other words : is (A unless also B) true only if A is true, but B is not?

I don't know so that's why I'm asking

I'm not sure I am intellectually up to the job of responding reasonably to your question, Relative.

I'll give it my best -- but I have already written "my best" and have come back to add this introductory paragraph, because I don't see my explanation as truly explaining anything.



"Unless" as used in my sentence, is a qualifier -- it creates a contingency. (The contingency, by the way, is to logically create a situation where the young lady, in fullfillment of her commitments, will have to give the young man both a kiss and a photo of herself.)

The sentence is actually nonsense except that it creates the logical situation that gets the kiss and the photo for the young man. In fact, that is the only reason for the sentence's existence.


She can only give him a photo if the sentence is TRUE. So if she gives him a photo she must also give him a kiss.

The only way the sentence can be FALSE is if she DOES give him a picture but without a kiss. But she cannot meet the first half of that contingency (give him a picture) if the sentence is false.

So there is no way the sentence can be FALSE.

So the sentence is TRUE. And if it is true, she must both give the photo -- and the kiss.

Any other option requires that she break her promises.

Frank said, "But I do not know an "x" from a "y" -"

If someone aboard the ship asks you for the ?'aye' to cut the rigging, don't say, ?'exe' ?'exe' Sir.

Lacomus, Damn, No, I mean well done. That answer took me over a week!

Relative, My apologies, I thought that Slovenia and Wind surfing were part of a joke.

Now, I find that not only do you write better English than I. But, it is not your first language. You have impressed.

Answer to your ?'Rope' question. 2.80m

Answer to the lanterns.
If you examine the setup carefully, you'll note a number of facts which make the puzzle easier to solve by deduction. First, blowing on a lantern is a commutative property; blowing on lanterns 1, 5, then 3 is the same as blowing on 3, then 1, then 5. No matter what order the lanterns are blown on, if the same lanterns are blown on the same number of times, the final result won't change.
For that reason, blowing on a lantern twice is as good as not blowing on it at all in the end result. And thrice is as good as once. So if the puzzle has a solution, it can be done in seven steps or fewer.
What else can we tell about the solution? Since each operation changes the state of three lanterns, and there are seven lanterns, and each lantern must change its state an odd number of times, its a safe bet there will be an odd number of operations. We can also easily say it cannot be done in three or fewer steps.
So, can it be done in five or seven steps? Five steps seem plausible at first. But five can be excluded by a surprisingly quick process of elimination. There are only three different patterns for five, which are not symmetrical to other patterns: blowing on five adjacent lanterns, blowing on four adjacent lanterns and one "loner", and blowing on three adjacent lanterns and two a pair of non-adjacent lanterns. None of these three options are a solution, so it cannot be done in five steps.
That leaves seven, and because of the commutative property, the simplest solution is to blow on all seven in order!

For today, In an effort to pour oil on the flames. Try;


We live not on land, or sea.
We have two eyes, but cannot see.
We close at night, and open at dawn.
Forget the Birds, and bring on the Bees
It makes reproduction a breeze
The closer you are, the more you reflect,
on whether, your answer can be correct.
But, at the end only lies.

We are



a) Oh, no. Not the damn bookworm again!
The "Encyclopaedia Puzzle", the largest collection of Puzzles ever assembled.
Five large volumes, each is 400 pages long packed with great puzzles, riddles, and paradoxes. This particular edition has a slight problem. What you cannot see is that a tiny bookworm has been having a feast. Starting at the first page of the first volume, he was finally sated just upon reaching the last page of the fifth volume.
Assuming that the bookworm made a straight and horizontal line from left to right, that each leaf is .01 inches thick, and that each cover is .25 inches thick, how long (in inches) was this bookworm's buffet

b) A friendly stranger approaches you at your favourite watering hole and offers you the following wager:
"I'll bet $25 I can lift that half full beer bottle one foot off the bar using only this plastic drinking straw. That's right- the only thing I'll touch the bottle with is this straw, and the only thing that will touch the straw other than the bottle will be my hand."
"What's more, the straw will only touch the inside of the bottle, not the outside. And in the entire process no beer will be spilled or lost. What do you say friend, will you bet that I can't?"

Now you have learned the dangers of accepting wagers from strangers, so you politely decline the bet and he goes off in search of another sucker. Nevertheless, sitting puzzled by the bar you begin to wonder if you should have taken the bet to satisfy your own curiosity. What was Tryagain's trick

c) There are nine dots in three rows of three.

What is the fewest number of lines needed to connect all nine dots, without lifting your pencil, going back over a line or folding your monitor (not recommended)

Tryagain:

a) 11.99 ?
b) Freezer ?
c) 4

I've been thinking about the lanterns and came up with the formula:

7*n = 3*k

where n is number of all flips, and is odd
and k is number of all blows

The smallest solution is n=1 and k=7.
other solutions would be k=21 etc.

As for the 1 meter pole supported rope : the answer is about 0.74 millimeters(!) for the perfect Earth with radius of 6500 kilometers.

And the Spellcheckers can work miracles if pressed hard

Every beertender -- of which I have been one -- has seen this done. I'll allow the others to dope it out. But I have actually done it.

BTW -- it ain't quite as easy as it might seem when the explanation come forward.

If you try it, you'll know what I mean.

You gotta do the preliminaries just so.

c) There are nine dots in three rows of three.

What is the fewest number of lines needed to connect all nine dots, without lifting your pencil, going back over a line or folding your monitor (not recommended)

Why lo and behold. The ORIGINAL thinking outside the box puzzle.

And to think that I would run into it here.

Relative wrote;

a) 11.99 ?....... Far too high.
b) Freezer ?.... As Frank knows, only with the straw.
c) 4 ……………… Correct.

As for the 1 meter pole supported rope : the answer is about 0.74 millimeters(!) for the perfect Earth with radius of 6500 kilometers.

Ok, so I was 6mill out after walking around the globe. My 80mill also included the 1 Meter rise(to the pole) and 1 Meter and fall. :wink:

Your formula works perfectly. Try it on this;

The following is what seems to be a mathematical proof that two equals one. What is wrong with it?
a = b
aa = ab
aa - bb = ab - bb
(a + b)(a - b) = b(a - b)
a + b = b
a + a = a
2a = a
2 = 1

For those who believe in Christmas.

In the far, far north grows a lonely tree. Legend has it that when this tree is cut down, there will never be another Christmas. Ten years ago, a woodcutter drove a marker into the trunk of the fifty-foot tree at a point half his own height.
Not knowing of the legend, he promised himself he would finally get around to felling this lonely tree when the marker was as high as he. This woodsman was a bit of a legend himself- he was twenty-five feet tall ten years ago (Legends are rife in the northern reaches where it's winter year round).

Ten years ago, the woodsman grew at a rate of a foot a year. Today he grows at only eleven inches per year. Every ten years (on the dot) his rate of growth shrinks by an inch. Someday, he will stop growing altogether. The tree, on the other hand, will grow until it is cut down at a rate of one inch per year.

If legends live forever (and were true), in how many years will the last Christmas be

Never!

Never say never. The answer is in years.

I would give you the answer but as you started the ?'paradox' topic, I was struggling with this: ?'The classic paradox'

One night in a guilty man was brought before the judge for sentencing.
"Given the enormity of your crimes, I have no choice but sentence you to death by hanging. The execution shall be carried out at high noon, one day this coming week."
"Which day would that be?" the prisoner gulped.
"It is the decision of this court that the day of the hanging be a surprise to the prisoner; you shall not know for certain what day you will be hanged until one hour before the execution. This is the ruling of the court and so it shall stand."

As the prisoner was led back to his cell, to await a not particularly uplifting week, a thought occurred to him. It was the strict law that judges must speak the truth at all times to the prisoners and accused. If a judge was found to be lying, he could be punished severely and the prisoner acquitted. That night, the prisoner wracked his brain and devised a legal defence based on the judge's decree.
What was the defence, and would it save him

Sitting in his cell, the prisoner noted that if noon passed for him on the sixth day, only one day remained for the hanging to be carried out. But this would be a violation of the sentence, because one condition was that the prisoner could not know the date until 11:00 on the day of the execution. Because the judge may not lie, the execution could not occur on the seventh day. It would be like the judge saying "You will be hanged tomorrow and you will not know what day you will be hanged on until 11:00 tomorrow."

The prisoner then realized he had just reduced his expected life span by half a day with that logic. At first this depressed him until he made the next observation: by eliminating the possibility of being executed on the seventh day, if noon on the fifth day passed without execution, only one day remained for the hanging, the sixth. But then the prisoner would then know the date of his hanging too soon. So the sixth day was eliminated. And the same logic from applied to each preceding day, eliminating all possible days.

That night the prisoner called for his counsel and presented his defence. His counsel agreed and spent rest of the night preparing the argument. At the morning's first light, the judge was awakened and the defence presented its case against the sentence.

The prisoner waited optimistically as the judge and counsel retreated into closed chambers to debate the problem, until eleven o'clock rolled around and the hangman arrived. Much to the prisoner's surprise.
But the question remains, what was wrong with his defence

Hmm, I don't get the bookworm puzzle - the answer I gave seemed wrong anyway.

Here's another drinking challenge:

A merry fellow walks up to you in the bar, etc. etc., and asks you if you are ready for a drinking bet. You lift your eyebrow, look at him, then sip your beer. "Not that straw thing, eh? If you really wanna know.."
"Phew, that is passe, my friend. I have something REALLY big this time! And it comes with extras!"
"Well, OK then. Anyway I've already had my 3rd glass..."

"Here's the deal : I bet you 40$ I can drink seven, yes seven pints of beer BEFORE you finish your last of five shots of whisky! And what's more the loser pays for the drinks!"
You look at him through the mild haze of your eyes, tatoos and all and you almost say "nay..".
"We'll line them up here on the table! 7 beers for me, 5 shots for you, we'll space them nicely and I promise I won't touch any of your glasses, and you don't touch mine! Yep, that's the rules!"

Well, you think to yourself, I can manage five small shots of Cutty Sark before this barrel gulps his 3 liters of beer, and I can still see all of my ten fingers .. all on my right hand, though that's strange..
And with that thought you slip under the bar, and just as well. Because that big guy wasn't joking!


And Please someone explain the other method of bottle-lifting! I am so blinded with the obvious

Frank : thank you for the explanation. I still don't quite understand 'unless', but I'll try some more. I will get it in the end, unless I stop trying. wait..



Some more Smullyan logic:

Mr. Alpha from planet Centauri X came to Earth to teach us all about mind-reading. He has a machine which allows him to see the future decision a person is going to make. For demonstration, he set up an experiment.

In a room, there are two boxes. A transparent box A, and an opaque box B. A person is invited into the room, Alpha explaining:
"In the transparent box, as you can clearly see, is a 1000-dollar bill. Now the contents of the other box depend on what I've already read from my mind-reader : IF I saw that you will decide to take ONLY the opaque box B, you will find it contains two 1000-dollar bills, and you can keep that. On the other hand, IF I read that you will opt to take BOTH boxes, you will find that the opaque box is empty, leaving you with just the 1000-dollars from the transparent box. You can choose whatever you want, but remember that I already know your choice !"

With that , Alpha leaves the confused subject in the room.

You have already seen Alpha perform thousands of such experiments and you KNOW that he's always right.

So, you reason that you should take just the opaque box, and this is the only reasonable choice , since you'll get 2000$ . If you attempt to take both, you'll only discover an empty box and get 1000$. You've seen numerous such cases. He is 100% right.

On the other hand, greed suddenly kicking in , you realize that he'd already decided and had either put 2000$ inside the box or not, depending on what he saw in the machine, and had already left. Just you and the money! So it can't hurt to take both boxes, can it?

But wait, both lines of reasoning can't be right .

Whatever, can YOU figure out what you'd take?

Relative

'Unless' is defined = as:
Not A unless B' = '-(A & -B)'
I hope this clarifies it.

Frank

You wrote:

Your statement: : "Either you will kiss me or you will refuse me the photograph"

How can the statement be false.

It can be false if she both kisses him and refuses the photo - which means he does not get the photo. (He ends up with just the kiss and not the photo) And she has met the requirements of her promises.

If she kisses him and refuses the photograph, the statement is true because she kissed him by definition of the word 'or'. In explanation, if i were to say that I would play black or white in a game of chess and I then play white, my statement is true. In an 'or' statement, and incidentally, in normal usage, an 'or' statement becomes true if only one of the conditions are met.

It is possible that you have considered this an 'exclusive OR', but by all of the rules of logic, unless specified otherwise, 'OR' means 'inclusive OR'.

If she kisses him, the statement is then true, so she has to give him the photograph.

Incidentally, an 'Or' statement can be transformed to an 'and' statement by Boolean algebra. It might interest you to know that your solution is exactly the same as mine but yours uses 'and' and mine uses 'or' ('Unless' is an 'and' statement in logic).

I have rhe 'beer ansd whisky' problem solved and "I think" I have the straw problem solved. Is anyone working oin these or can I post my results?

Well, let's settle this item first then.

Point out to me where earlier you said: "Either you will kiss me or you will refuse me the photograph"
His statement is that she will either refuse him the photograph OR give him the kiss OR both.


Frank

You wrote in an earlier post:

"Well, let's settle this item first then.

Point out to me where earlier you said: "Either you will kiss me or you will refuse me the photograph"

Fair enough. And seeing as how you asked:

From the first of the two posts -"His statement is that she will either refuse him the photograph OR give him the kiss OR both.

Both say 'refuse the photograph'
Both say 'give the kiss'
Both use 'OR'
and the 'or both' is implicit in the rules of logic concerning 'inclusive or'.

So I reckon they say the same.

However, I also said that I was prepared to have it your way, so take your pick; I'm easy.

The prisoner's defence.

The simple answer is that once the prisoner has proved that no time can be a surprise then he has proved that all times are equally unlikely, therefore any time at all will be a surprise.

Or - there is nothing quite as surprising as proving something cannot happen and then it happens.

Relative

The mind reader.

It seems to me - and I'm sure I must have overlooked something - that if the Centaurian CAN read the future then the future is predeteremined, so it makes no difference how much thinking is done you will still do exactly as predicted. Even if you toss a coin, the outcome of that con will have been predicted so nothing will make a difference.

And if it is all predetermined it will also have been predetermined how much worrying you will do before you finally make the predicted choice.

So assuming that he has never been wrong, it would be best to go for the opaque box.

TRY

your proof of '2 = 1':

At one point you divided by 'a - b',
but it was given that a = b
therefore a - b = 0, and dividing by zero is not allowed.