You ’re reading the first episode in a stigma new puzzle serial here at io9 – and what good way to kick thing off than with the world ’s most difficult system of logic teaser ?
The Sunday Puzzle – An Introduction
Some calendar month back , I posted a petty genius teaser here on io9 . hoi polloi seemed to savour it . Encouraged by the positive response , I adjudicate to drift an thought I ’d had bouncing around my head for some fourth dimension : How would you all feel about me dedicating one C. W. Post per hebdomad to a especially dastardly mystifier or brain mystifier ? , I asked . Again , lots of positive response . The estimation for The Sunday Puzzle was bear .
Can You fancy Out This Parking Lot ’s Numbering System ?
I confess this estimate was not entirely my own . The genre of public , published puzzling was arguably open up bythe fabled Martin Gardiner and his ‘ Mathematical Games ’ column inScientific American , andlots of situation to this twenty-four hours post puzzles and enigma with some regularity . But the light stirring for io9 ’s Sunday Puzzle was theTierneyLab web log over at the New York Times , where John Tierney used to put out puzzle , and discussions fence premature hebdomad ’ teaser , every Monday .
Alright . I ’m go to intercept spill now ( can you tell I ’m really excited about this ? ) . Onto the puzzler .
Sunday Puzzle #1: 100 Green-Eyed Dragons
UPDATE:SOLUTION
This week ’s puzzler is an old darling of mine . It ’s been around for a longsighted time , and survive in various form , but the version we ’ll be figure out I earlier encountered ina press release feed to cathartic students at Harvard , and is called “ Green Eyed Dragons . ”
XKCD ’s Randall Munroe tells a adaptation of this puzzle , called “ Blue centre , ” that he ’s dubbed “ The Hardest Logic Puzzle In The Earth . ” The teaser is basically identical to Green - Eyed Dragons , but Munroe ’s rendering admit some wording that supply what I cogitate is a fair big cue , so if you find yourself struggle with the dragon , steer on over to XKCDand give his rendition a go . Here , now , is what I believe to be the most challenging version of the puzzle :
You confab a remote desert island live by one hundred very friendly dragons , all of whom have green eyes . They have n’t seen a homo for many centuries and are very unrestrained about your visit . They show you around their island and tell you all about their dragon way of life ( dragons can talk , of course ) .
They seem to be quite normal , as far as dragon go , but then you find out something rather odd . They have a dominion on the island which states that if a dragon ever find out that he / she has green eyes , then at just midnight on the day of this discovery , he / she must relinquish all dragon powers and transform into a long - tailed sparrow . However , there are no mirrors on the island , and they never verbalize about eye color , so the dragons have been inhabit in blissful ignorance throughout the ages .
Upon your departure , all the dragons get together to see you off , and in a tearful farewell you give thanks them for being such hospitable dragons . Then you decide to secernate them something that they all already bang ( for each can see the color of the centre of the other dragon ) . You tell them all that at least one of them has dark-green eye . Then you leave , not recollect of the moment ( if any ) . assume that the dragons are ( of row ) infallibly logical , what happen ?
If something interesting does fall out , what exactly is the Modern entropy that you give the tartar ?
I will make the same closing points here that Munroe does : This is not a trick question . There ’s no guessing or lying or discussion by or between Dragon . The answer does not take Mendelian genetics , or signalise language . The result is ordered , and the dragons are absolutely consistent beings . And no , the answer is not “ no dragon transforms . ”
We ’ll be back next week with a breakdown of the solvent – and a new puzzle !
Illustration by Jim Cooke
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