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Hussein

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#1 Hussein
Member since 2002 • 1970 Posts

This logic puzzle took me a whole day to solve, I used a lot of Boolean logic skills I picked up throughout my years of software development just to solve it.  It's without a doubt the hardest logic puzzle I have ever encountered.

Here is my solution (warning: wall of text)

I'd ask my 3 questions to any of the guys (regardless), because the way I'm gonna formulate my question should allow me (all in one shot) to: a) extract the truth out of any of them, regardless of being truthful, lying or random. b) solve the language barrier

Q1 (for any of the guys)
Answer yes with da and no with ja then tell me what would a truthful person (that knows whether or not you're going to tell the truth) say if I asked him to tell me what would your answer be to the following question? "is A TRUE?"

The first part of this question "Answer yes with da and no with ja" forces the person to use da for yes and ja for no (regardless of what they mean in his language).

So from the first part of the question, I already eliminated the language barrier.

The second part of the question is "what would a truthful person say about what you're going to say" forces him (even if he lies) to flip his lie to truth.

Here is an explanation to the lie flipping trick:

Assume A is FALSE and B is TRUE.
If you ask A "are you a liar?"
The correct answer is "YES", but since A is FALSE, he'll say "NO"

Now, if we ask B to tell us (from his perspective) what would A answer be to the question of "are you a liar?"
B knows that A would answer it with "NO", so B's answer would be "NO" (similar to A's answer).

Now if we ask A about what B's gonna say about A's answer (I know,  complicated :P), then we actually gonna get the truth out of A.
Reason for that is, A will now know that B will answer with "NO", and because he's FALSE, he'll flip it to "YES" when he answers us.

Which in this case our original question of "Are you a liar?" would be answered by the liar as "YES".

And the good thing about this logic is that if the person in which we're trying our tricky logic here is already truthful, no truth flipping will occur. (I know it's a bit complicated but try it out for yourself with examples if you want).

So now that we dissected how our first question is formulated (the other two will use the exact same lie flipping trick), we can proceed knowing that a) we don't have a language barrier, and b) whomever we'll ask (TRUE, FALSE, or RANDOM) we should receive a truthful answer.

So back to our first question above ("Is A TRUE?"), we should get either one of two answers YES or NO truthfully and without a language barrier (since we eliminated that with the explicit instruction of "answer YES with DA, and NO with JA")

So if Q1 ("Is A TRUE?") answer was YES (we'll get to the NO answer in a bit), then it means person A is TRUE, that leaves us with B and C being either FALSE or RANDOM

For that, here is my second question

Q2 (for any of the guys, in case Q1 answer was YES)
Answer yes with da and no with ja then tell me what would a truthful person (that knows whether or not you're going to tell the truth) say if I asked him to tell me what would your answer be to the following question? "is B FALSE?"

Notice that I'm using the same lie flipping logic as Q1 (i.e. we'll get a truthful answer no matter what, and we won't have a language barrier).

If the answer was 'da' which means yes (since I forced him to use da for yes), then A is TRUE, B is FALSE, and C is RANDOM
But if answered with no, then A is TRUE, B is RANDOM, and C is FALSE.

That solves the puzzle in 2 questions only.

However, if the answer to Q1 wasn't YES (i.e. it was NO), this means A is not TRUE, which leaves us with him being either FALSE or RANDOM

So my second question in that case (using the same logic as the first one) would be:

Q2 (for any of the guys) in case Q1 answer was NO
Answer yes with da and no with ja then tell me what would a truthful person (that knows whether or not you're going to tell the truth) say if I asked him to tell me what would your answer be to the following question? "is A FALSE?"

Notice that this question is also using the same logic as Q1 (i.e. we'll get a truthful answer no matter what, and we won't have a language barrier since I forced him to use da for yes).


From this, if the answer was yes, then A is FALSE, which leaves us with B and C as either TRUE or RANDOM. But if he answered NO, then A can only be RANDOM in this case (cause from Q1 we found out that A is not TRUE, and form Q2 we found out that he's not FALSE either).

For that my third question would be:


Q3 (for any of the guys) in case Q1 answer was NO
Answer yes with da and no with ja then tell me what would a truthful person (that knows whether or not you're going to tell the truth) say if I asked him to tell me what would your answer be to the following question? "is B TRUE?"

This answer along with Q2 & Q1 answers will give us the full picture.

Here are the 4 possible answers along with their meanings:
(1)
Q1 answer = NO, Q2 answer= NO, Q3 answer = YES
This means, A is RANDOM, B is TRUE and C is FALSE

(2)
Q1 answer = NO, Q2 answer= NO, Q3 answer = NO
This means A is RANDOM, B is FALSE, and C is TRUE

(3)
Q1 answer = NO, Q2 answer= YES, Q3 answer = YES
This means A is FALSE, B is TRUE, and C is RANDOM

(4)
Q1 answer = NO, Q2 answer= YES, Q3 answer = NO
This means A is FALSE, B is RANDOM, and C is TRUE

 

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Hussein

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#2 Hussein
Member since 2002 • 1970 Posts

I think I beat just about everyone. :P

Truth_Hurts_U

Nice collection. I have few more than that. Probably you and I alone are responsible for this .4 increase from 5.3 to 5.7 :P (j/k)

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Hussein

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#5 Hussein
Member since 2002 • 1970 Posts
not to brag, but I haven't seen an account older than mine :) (May 9, 2002)

P.S. Let me tell you how kind and sweet GS staff is; they decided back in 2002 to give me an honorary account just because I was one fo their first customers (how sweet and kind is that?!)
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Hussein

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#6 Hussein
Member since 2002 • 1970 Posts
What's to license? There's nothing hugely complicted or technologically advanced about the XBL network... It's just very well done.  Nintendo could put together something good, they just have to stop being complete slackasses when it comes to online gaming.AfterShafter
take my word on this one (I'm a lead developer, but it's a long discussion to explain why); xbl is both hugely complicated and technologically advanced.
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Hussein

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#7 Hussein
Member since 2002 • 1970 Posts
It was sometime in the early 80s I used to post on a public board called the SwampBBS which was an Atari computer board.

Lord_Daemon
that's cool. (I didn't even know the internet existed back then)

my first time was probably in 1999, and it was 3dfx forums. Once that gone (the company went under) I started posting in hercules.com (a video card company that manufactures nVidia based video cards) forums.

Then they closed their forums (I know I jinx forums), so I started posting in GS back in 2002 (probably I have the oldest account around here)

P.S. I also post in asp.net forums
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Hussein

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#8 Hussein
Member since 2002 • 1970 Posts
http://www.the-junkyard.net/files/halo/Halo_Total_Audio.mp3 Here's the Halo theme.Harbadakus
thanks!

Edit: Halo music is impressive, but I like flOw more, it's just more ambient and has more warmth to it. "We sought something atmospheric and electronic, but not in the stark, soundscape sort of way. Something warm and organic, as if a symphony of instruments never before played on Earth." - music composer for flOw
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Hussein

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#9 Hussein
Member since 2002 • 1970 Posts
Yeah, I had that computer. I learned my first programming language (at age 10) on the MSX (GW BASIC by Microsoft). It had an 8 bit processor (Z80) and 64KB memory (used to rival the Commodore 64.)

Konami was the main supporter for the console, they practically were the EA equivalent for that console (all popular sports titles were from Konami).

The OS was done by Microsoft and the hardware was by Yamaha (a very well established Japanese electronic manufacturer).

Of course a lot of other Japanese developers used to support it (SEGA, Capcom, and others).

You could imagine my anticipation when I heard about Metal Gear Solid approximately 8 years after I played the original (2D) on the MSX.

The original game was shockingly good at the time from a story and presentation perspectives.
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Hussein

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#10 Hussein
Member since 2002 • 1970 Posts
MGS4 looks way better than this. Also this game looks extremely boring.