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Please help with the rules of the Hardest Logic Puzzle!

 
 
Sizzly
 
Reply Thu 30 Jan, 2020 11:26 pm
I'm working on that Hardest Logic Puzzle Ever, the one with the three gods, and I keep running into a big question mark. NOTE: I don't want the answer to the puzzle! I'm just asking a question about the rules! Thanks.

The thing is, I keep getting outcomes where a god's head explodes. For example, suppose you ask one of the gods, ''If I were to ask the other two gods whether your (the god I'm talking to) name is Random, would exactly one of them answer yes?'' If you're talking to True, True knows that False would say yes, but they don't know what Random would say, so True couldn't answer the question, hence their head would explode. Asked the same question, False would explode for the same lack of information that would enable them to lie properly. If, however, the question received an answer - any answer other than a head explosion - you'd know you were talking to Random.

This explosion effect applies to many possible lines of questioning, yet the rules don't mention anything about the other gods being able to predict what Random will say. In fact, the rules sort of seem to indicate that Random's answers can't be known ahead of time. So, QUESTION - which is NOT A REQUEST FOR THE SOLUTION TO THE PROBLEM, ONLY A QUESTION ABOUT THE RULES: Does anyone know of a rule about True and False having an ability to predict what Random will say? Because, much though I like the idea of solving the problem by blowing up heads, I don't think the puzzle's designer intended that as the answer.
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izzythepush
 
  2  
Reply Fri 31 Jan, 2020 03:12 pm
@Sizzly,
I don't know anything about a random god, but this is how the Doctor dealt with it when it was just true and false.

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nacredambition
 
  2  
Reply Fri 31 Jan, 2020 07:45 pm
@Sizzly,
The Hardest Logic Puzzle Ever is a logic puzzle so called by American philosopher and logician George Boolos and published in The Harvard Review of Philosophy in 1996.[1] Boolos' article includes multiple ways of solving the problem. A translation in Italian was published earlier in the newspaper La Repubblica, under the title L'indovinello piĆ¹ difficile del mondo.

It is stated as follows:

Three gods A, B, and C are called, in no particular order, True, False, and Random. True always speaks truly, False always speaks falsely, but whether Random speaks truly or falsely is a completely random matter. Your task is to determine the identities of A, B, and C by asking three yes-no questions; each question must be put to exactly one god. The gods understand English, but will answer all questions in their own language, in which the words for yes and no are da and ja, in some order. You do not know which word means which.

Boolos provides the following clarifications:[2] a single god may be asked more than one question, questions are permitted to depend on the answers to earlier questions, and the nature of Random's response should be thought of as depending on the flip of a fair coin hidden in his brain: if the coin comes down heads, he speaks truly; if tails, falsely.[3]
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