The Blue Eyed Islanders

[yebellz]

Another epistemic puzzle involving a Cheryl…

Miscellaneous trivia, riddles, puzzles and other games

One of our newest members came up with this puzzle invloving some “epistemic trickery”. Can you tell what do you know that he knows that you know? Problem #10: Some Sum Puzzle (by Vsotvep) A teacher is testing his best students Albert, Bernard and Cheryl with a little game. He glued a piece of paper with a number written on it on each of their foreheads and told them that one of their numbers is the sum of the other two numbers, and that each of the numbers are between 1 and 5. Th…

And there were several other epistemic puzzles posted in that thread as well

Miscellaneous trivia, riddles, puzzles and other games

I present to you another epistemic puzzle, my personal favourite: Problem #12: A Rational Problem Albert and Bernard are being tested by their teacher once more. He gives them both a little note with a number on it, and he tells them both numbers are different from each other and of the following form for n and k natural numbers larger than 0: 1/2n + 1/(2k+1)×2n Then the following conversation happens: Teacher: "Who of you has the smallest number?" Albert: "I don't know." Bernard: …

Miscellaneous trivia, riddles, puzzles and other games

I’m stumped by this one: Holmes once had a visit from an old acquaintance whom I had never met before. I found them chatting freely in a way he seldom did with me as I came in to offer them some tea. “And how are your children?” Holmes was asking. “You have three, if I remember rightly, although I must admit I don’t quite recall their ages.” “You always enjoyed deduction, didn’t you, old chap?” his acquaintance replied. “What if I told you that the product of their ages was 40?” “That’s no…

Miscellaneous trivia, riddles, puzzles and other games

Here’s one: Alice and Bob, two perfect logicians, are captured by an evil logician, who believes that the world should be rid of all those who are not perfect logicians. He puts them in seperate prison cells, with no communication to one another. However, he offers a way to escape. He gives Alice the sum of two distinct positive integers greater than 2 and less than 100, and Bob the product of them. He explains: “I gave Alice the sum, and Bob the product, of two distinct positive integers s…