Brain teaser thread

[Winston]

Then he could also be 51, or 52, or... you know, old.



Shouldn't that last piece of information have been ""but I'll only tell you that my oldest child is exactly such and such younger than you"?

[OzzyKP]

Originally posted by Winston
Well, I looked it up...

If you have another teaser for us, I don't see any harm in posting, since Zero-Tau apparently isn't.

I don't have any, and I think the only one i've gotten so far was that hour glass riddle. Oh well, maybe I'm not as smart as I thought. But of course the fact that no one is telling them correctly and leaving out information doesn't help either, hehe.

I don't know what to make of this Prof. Jones one. I'm thinking something critical is left out.

[DaShi]

Originally posted by Stefu


Dammit! I know I screwed it up somehow. In original version, I think, the gnomes didn't know how many blue and red hats were there.

However, the right answer's close to this (First one gnome stands somewhere, then another gnome checks the first gnome's hat and goes stand... Oh, wait, I just remembered I screwed the question up in more ways than one. Blast. I'm not really good at this, am I?)

Anyway, Winston gets to go next for his sanguine (Do I even know what that means?) and intelligent opinion which we all should strive to remember at all times.

Stefu, that was bloody brilliant!

[N. Machiavelli]

Originally posted by Zero-Tau
Yay! The Danes will conquer the thread!

...now where the hell did ADG go...

Okay, here's the brain teaser, for all of you.

One day when professor Jones is going for a walk, he meets his old friend, maths teacher Smith. Smith has been married twice, and now has three children.
"Say, " asks Jones, "how old are your children?"
Smith answers: "Well, since you like puzzles, you can think a bit about this. The product of their age is 2450, and the sum of their age is equal to the age of our mutual friend, vicar Anderson."
Jones knows the age of Anderson, and with this in mind, he sets about working out the age of the children.
Late that night, Jones calls Smith and says: "That really wasn't nice of you. You know very well that I need one more piece of information to work out the ages."
"Yes," Smith answers, "but I'll only tell you that my oldest child is younger than you." And then he hung up.
With this information, Jones could work out the ages of the children.

Now, here's the question for you: How old is professor Jones?

Yessir, that's no typo, it really says professor Jones!

Edit: Winston, be patient.

Now if we had a link between Jones' and anyone else's age (other than OldestChildsage < Jonesage), there'd be a more concrete answer. Otherwise I'll guess:

Child1: 25
Child2: 14
Child3: 7
Anderson: 46
Jones: 26 or older

[Zero-Tau]

To everyone: There's nothing left out of the riddle. It can be solved using only the information I've given you.

But anyway, a hint: Remember that even knowing the sum of the ages, Jones can't solve the problem. Anderson can't be 46 years old, as Machiavelli suggested, because then Jones would have solved the problem. But he didn't.

Hope this helps.

[rah]

First you must factor 2450. It breaks down into 1x2x5x5x7x7. Combining these numbers to make 3 ages reveals 20 different combinations: (1 1 2450), (1 2 1225), blah blah blah. Now Jones obviously knows the Vicar's age but can't figure out the ages of the children. This implies that two sets of factors add up to the same value. The sets (5 10 49) and (7 7 50) both have a sum of 64.
When Smith reveals that Jones is older than all of the children, that's the final piece of information needed. If Jones was 51 or older we would not be able to figure out which set of factors is correct, so he must be 50 years old and the children's ages must be 5, 10, and 49.


Nasty.

[Stefu]

Jones: 50
Child1: 49
Child2: 10
Child3: 5
Anderson: 64

Please no-one get this before me.

[Zero-Tau]

Rah got it first. By less than a minute. Bad luck, stefu.

Go ahead, rah, your turn.

Nasty.

[rah]

RAH

[Stefu]

Goddamn you rah! God damn you!

Well, I get the moral victory, because I'm younger than you!

(I would have probably got it before rah if I hadn't bothered to write that part about no-one getting it before me...)

My chain of logic was that Jones must obviously be struggling with two choices, where the age of the oldest child is separated by an year (so there's only one answer.) After that, it was only a matter of experimentation until I found 49 and 50, and after that, it was easy.

[Immortal Wombat]

@ Stefu

[N. Machiavelli]

Nice 1 Rah.

[rah]

There are five houses, all in a row.
You are standing in front of the houses.
Each house has its own unique color.
All house owners are of different nationalities.
They all have different pets.
They all drink different drinks.
They all smoke different cigarettes.
The Englishman lives in the red house.
The Swede has a dog.
The Dane drinks Tea.
The green house is directly to the left of the white house.
In the green house they drink coffee.
The man who smokes Pall Mall has Birds.
In the yellow house they smoke dunhill.
In the middle house they drink Milk.
The Norwegian lives in the first house.
The man who smokes Blend, lives in the house next to the house with cats.
In the house next to the house with the Horse, they smoke Dunhill.
The mak who smokes Blue Master drinks Beer.
The German smokes Prince.
The Norwegian lives next to the blue house.
They drink water in the house that is next to the house where they smoke
Blend.

So, who owns the camel?

[Stefu]

Hey, waittaminute!

How old is professor Jones?

He's fifty

I WIN! I WIN!

[Kassiopeia]

Well, I get the moral victory, because I'm younger than you!

Rah wrote a longer reply and still got ahead of you

[rah]

Originally posted by rah

so he must be 50 years old and the children's ages must be 5, 10, and 49.


Nasty.

Nice try.

[loinburger]

Originally posted by rah
So, who owns the camel?

The German, in the White house on the far right. He/she also drinks water.

[Stefu]

First house: Yellow, Norwegian, Water, Dunhill, cats
Second house: Blue, Dane, Tea, Blend, Horse
Third house: Red, Englishman, Milk, Pall Mall, birds
Fourth house: Green, German, Coffee, Prince, (camel)
Fifth house: White, Swede, Beer, Blue Master, dog

[Stefu]

And my this answer:

He's fifty, because I once knew one half-insane person, and he was only 25!

...which is correct, though the logic is bit woozy (I confess nothing!) was well before rah's.

[loinburger]

Oh crap, I forgot that the Dane drinks tea. I had the Norwegian drinking it.

[Stefu]

Oh, you get to submit the next one, loin. I'm too tired.

[rah]

This test was given by the German Institute of Logical Thinking in Berlin
1981. The failure rate was 98%.

The 98% failure rate bothers me, since a pure guess should be right 20% of the time and the fact that the study was given by Germans and the answer is Germans should have made that a logical guess and raised the guess percentage.

House 1 House 2 House 3 House 4 House 5
Norwegian Dane Englishman German Swede
Water Tea Milk Coffee Beer
Yellow Blue Red Green White
Dunhill Blend Pall Malls Prince Blue Master
Cat Horse Bird XXXXX Dogs


HAHAHAHA Loin got the German part right, by just the margin that I beat Stefu before.

But since Loin missed on the extra info he provided, (mistake) I declare Stefu the winner for the complete answer. You're good, it took me longer than you took to figure it out originally.

Your turn Stefu, congrats.

RAH

Yes your guess of 50 was before mine, but similar to my decision against Loin. I was the winner of that one

[loinburger]

Dammitalltohell, I had a riddle all worked up, and now I forget it, so here's an easy one instead...

More beautiful than the face of your God,
Yet more wicked than the Devil's forked tongue.
Dead men eat me all the time,
Live men who eat me die slowly.

[Stefu]

I declare Stefu the winner for the complete answer. You're good, it took me longer than you took to figure it out originally.

Well, you just got to apply a little methodology - and pen'n'paper (notepad in this case) - and you can solve any of these (well, the ones which have solutions, anyhoo)

[Tuberski]

I was on my way, made on incorrect mark and blew my train of thought.

I was almost there.

[loinburger]

Originally posted by Stefu
Well, you just got to apply a little methodology - and pen'n'paper (notepad in this case) - and you can solve any of these (well, the ones which have solutions, anyhoo)

They had a ton of these on the Analytic portion of the GRE's, but they provided a lot of extraneous data that had to be sifted out. Made it a real pain in the ass.

[rah]

Originally posted by Stefu


Well, you just got to apply a little methodology - and pen'n'paper (notepad in this case) - and you can solve any of these (well, the ones which have solutions, anyhoo)

I used pen'n'paper for that one too. But being part german, I had to make a real NEAT grid to help me solve it. It took me almost an hour, where you took less than 30 minutes. If someone had posted it in less than 15 minutes, I would have declared cheat, that they must have seen it already or looked it up on the internet..

[Dauphin]

Originally posted by loinburger
More beautiful than the face of your God,
Yet more wicked than the Devil's forked tongue.
Dead men eat me all the time,
Live men who eat me die slowly.

Words?

[loinburger]

Nope

[Stefu]

Wutang... cheese?