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        riddles >> hard >> Truth, Falsehood, and Randomness - Minor Variant
        
(Message started by: Tasselfoot on Mar 23^rd, 2008, 4:14pm)

Title: Truth, Falsehood, and Randomness - Minor Variant
Post by Tasselfoot on Mar 23^rd, 2008, 4:14pm

So, first off, I searched as well as I could and could not find a single topic for this riddle. A similar riddle to this has been posed to a group of us on another forum, although with an additional twist.

You have 3 people, one always tells the truth, one always lies, and one will do whatever he wants (truth or lie, arbitrarily). In addition, they understand English (or whatever language the question asker is asking in), but will only respond in their own language, which the question asker does not know (so you do not initially know if they are saying yes or no). But their responses will always be yes or no, so they will only say 1 of 2 things. The goal is to use 3 yes/no questions to determine which of the 3 is which.

So firstly, I'm curious as to whether the language barrier addition will actually change which questions need to be asked... and beyond that, I'm still unclear as to which questions need to be asked.

I believe you need to ask questions such as "Would he tell me that you lie?" or something like that, to all three... something that runs the question through 2 of them. Using that with 3 combinations of the guys, perhaps you can determine it?

Trying to work it out myself is giving me a bit of a headache, so all assistance is appreciated.

Title: Re: Truth, Falsehood, and Randomness - Minor Varia
Post by Master of Everything 42 on Mar 23^rd, 2008, 6:23pm

This probally has a lot to do with the past present future puxxle

Title: Re: Truth, Falsehood, and Randomness - Minor Varia
Post by Tasselfoot on Mar 23^rd, 2008, 8:31pm

Just looked at that riddle... and yes, it seems to have to do with that one as well.

Call it a combinational variant of both Truth, Falsehood, and Randomness AND Past, Present, and Future. Since it is not identical to either, but has complete elements of TFR plus elements of PPF.

Title: Re: Truth, Falsehood, and Randomness - Minor Varia
Post by towr on Mar 24^th, 2008, 2:17am

This problem is very similar to "The Gods of Gibberland (http://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~wwu/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.cgi?board=riddles_hard;action=display;num=1028840975;start=0)" as well, except there the last person is not entirely random.