Analysis Advance Access published online on October 5, 2009
Analysis, doi:10.1093/analys/anp140
© The Author 2009. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Analysis Trust. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org
How to solve the hardest logic puzzle ever in two questions
Pembroke College Oxford OX1 1DW, UK gabriel.uzquiano@philosophy.ox.ac.uk
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Rabern and Rabern (2008) have noted the need to modify the hardest logic puzzle ever as presented in Boolos 1996 in order to avoid trivialization. Their paper ends with a two-question solution to the original puzzle, which does not carry over to the amended puzzle. The purpose of this note is to offer a two-question solution to the latter puzzle, which is, after all, the one with a claim to being the hardest logic puzzle ever.
Recall, first, Boolos's statement of the puzzle:
Three gods A, B and C are called, in some 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,. . . [Full Text of this Article]