Three gods, A, B and C are called in some unknown order:true, false and random True always says the truth False always lies And random sometimes lies sometimes tells the truth. Your objective is to discover who is who, by making three questions with can only be answered with yes or no. Each question can only be made to one god. The gods understand english, but they will answer in their language where yes and no are ja and da, in some order you dont know. ¿So, with questions would you use in order to identify who is who? Thanks in advance have fun.
Heeeey, this was featured in io9's sunday puzzles once (don't worry, the answer is not in that link). Cool beans. Those always used to make me feel either incredibly smart or incredibly stupid, but I think my favorite part was reading the possible solutions people came up with. Those comment sections were always pretty rich. You can check it out if you don't get many answers here, see how the io9's readership fared against this braintwister.
Ask them 3 factual questions, "like is this a dog <show a picture of a dog>?" or "is my the color of my shirt <actual color of your shirt>?", in that way you will know who truth is. I dont know about False and Random
The problem here is that you have to devise a way to tell Random apart from the others. Otherwise, even if you know the right answer to the question you are posing, how can you be sure you aren't talking to Random and it just managed to luck out? By the same token, if it gets the question wrong, you can't assume it's False. Figuring out Random is the real challenge of this puzzle.
Im wondering.... The problem states i have to make each questionto each god... But it doesnt specifyhow many times i can make the same question.... So, if every time i make a question to someone i ask that god the very same question agaian and again... The answer will always be the same for truth and for false, but it will change for random... That way i will figure out who is random easily...
Cheeeating. You can only ask a total of 3 questions, and you only get to ask one question to each god once This is why it is regarded in some places as the hardest logic puzzle ever (I know, I know, hyperbolic statements are rarely 100% correct). It's basically two problems (which god is which? and what do "ja" and "da" mean?) merged into one, with zero room for mistake and the wild card of Random. Madness.
^ But therein lies the problem. If you could ask two questions, you could determine which was Random easily. What about the whole, "What would the other guy say?" bit that works with the Knights and Knaves version of this?
I'm not familiar with the Knights and Knaves version, but asking one god about the other gods is probably the smartest thing you can do. That is, if you can figure out which of their monosyllables means "yes" and which one means "no." Hahaha, this is the Dark Souls of logic puzzles. EDIT: My bad. I misrembered the rules of the puzzle. Here are the guidelines, from the guy who created it: It could be that some god gets asked more than one question (and hence that some god is not asked any question at all). What the second question is, and to which god it is put, may depend on the answer to the first question. (And of course similarly for the third question.) Whether Random speaks truly or not should be thought of as depending on the flip of a coin hidden in his brain: if the coin comes down heads, he speaks truly; if tails, falsely. Random will answer 'da' or 'ja' when asked any yes-no question. Point being, you can ask one god more than one question (or none), but the total amount of questions you can ask is 3 (repeated or not).
