Re: Riddles (was: Lateral Thinking)

From: Eliezer S. Yudkowsky (sentience@pobox.com)
Date: Sat Jan 06 2001 - 12:22:57 MST


Dale Johnstone wrote:
>
> From: "Eliezer S. Yudkowsky" <sentience@pobox.com>
> >
> > 1) Take the key from A. Do this at 5:44PM.
> > 2) Unlock B. Do this at 5:45PM.
> > 3) Take the key from B. Do this at 5:46PM.
> > 4) Unlock A. Do this at 5:43PM.
> >
> > Now, I want to say for the record that I actually *tried* this with two
> > locked boxes each containing the other's key, and it *worked*. I didn't
> > actually time it to the exact minute, and I had to reorder the steps
> > slightly since I didn't have a time machine, but I *did* it and it
> > *worked*, so I don't want to hear any further complaints.
>
> Possible solutions:
>
> 1) You have a third key.

1, of course. "Each one containing the other's key" does not imply that
each one contains the *only* key. Though I also like:

> 4) The locks were combination locks & the keys were their numbers written on
> pieces of paper.

-- -- -- -- --
Eliezer S. Yudkowsky http://singinst.org/
Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence



This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Sat Nov 02 2002 - 08:04:35 MST