In-Reply-To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Organization: http://www.cosmicpenguin.com/911
On Tue, Jan 11, 2005 at 06:34:42PM -0700, leaking pen wrote: >yeah, and hes right. simply ask, is it night? The way I heard it as a child, the goal is to get some useful yes/no question answered, e.g., at a fork in the road, "Is this (road to the left) the way to San Jose?" You have a member of each tribe at hand, both of whom know the answer, but you don't know which is the liar and which the truth-teller. Answer below. (spoiler space) (spoiler space) (spoiler space) (spoiler space) (spoiler space) (spoiler space) (spoiler space) (spoiler space) (spoiler space) You ask one of them how the other one would answer the question. Thus you always get a single inversion, and the truth is the opposite of whatever he says. You never do find out which is the liar and which the truth-teller, which makes sense, because there are four possibilities -- red- or green-foot is the truthteller, times left or right is the way to San Jose. Since you only receive one binary bit of information, you can resolve one of the two sets of alternatives, but not both (which would require two bits). On Tue, Jan 11, 2005 at 06:34:42PM -0700, leaking pen wrote: >yeah, and hes right. simply ask, is it night? > >On Tue, 11 Jan 2005 00:46:33 -0900, Horace Heffner ><[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >> At 11:56 PM 1/10/5, Randy Souther wrote: >> >Why don't you just ask them if it is dark or not? >> > >> >Randy >> >> Here is the problem Richard posed: >> >> At 5:35 PM 1/9/5, RC Macaulay wrote: >> >BlankIn west Texas there lived two tribes of natives. One tribe had red >> >feet and never told lies. One tribe had green feet and never told the >> >truth. >> >Question>> If you were traveling in the area during the darkest night and >> >encountered a tribe in the dark.. >> > Phrased correctly, what single question could be posed to the tribe in >> >the darkest night that would be answered in such a way that you could >> >determine if they were lying or telling the truth? >> > >> >Richard >> >> Regards, >> >> Horace Heffner >>
